Comments for Honoring Whose We Are at http://pres-outlook.com , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://pres-outlook.com Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:16:24 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://pres-outlook.com/opinion/commentary/4864.html#comment-3302 As I write in response to the ad hominem attack by Reverend John A. Dalles (any who disagree with Mr. Halles about the faithful response to God's call on them are accused of having no "ethical integrity"), I am striving to avoid going nuclear. Were it not that the letter is so historically and Biblically deficient, I would turn away. But I'll write anyway, to set the historical record straight. It is a history that Mr. Dalles ignores, because he assumes that the history of his infant congregation of 30 years is identical to that of churches who were older than that on that fateful 18th of April in 1775. I'm glad Wekiva had a nice dinner--it is always good to fellowship with one another. To be with people who actually remember the birth of a congregation--its struggles and its pains--must be enlightening. I'm glad, too, that 30 years ago, they had a presbytery that gave them property on which to plant their church and money to build it. They are truly blessed to have received such a gift. And if it was truly a gift, then I agree that the ethical thing for Wekiva's people to do (should they are called to do so by God)is to turn out the lights, lock the doors, and hand the keys to their landlord, the presbytery. Of course, if the members of Wekiva simply received a loan and they have since repaid it, then Mr. Halles' argument is leakier than the Titanic. But that is something for the folks at Wekiva to deal with. My problem with his letter is that he is ignorant of the history of churches older than his own. He says, "Every Presbyterian congregation, no matter its age or circumstances has this same story at the inauguration of its life and ministry, be it thirty-seven or two hundred and thirty-seven." Certainly the circumstances of my 278 year old church present a different story. It began as a small group of people on the far frontier (40 miles west of Philadelphia!) in 1735. The hearty prospective members of the congregation---not the presbytery-- raised money amongst themselves and leased the use of a tract of land for the yearly quit-rent of "one Shilling Sterling Money of Great Britain." At their own expense and labor, they raised a meeting house and cleared the land for a burial ground. In 1761, the members of the congregation themselves---not presbytery--purchased the land for the additional sum of ten shillings. In the ensuing 278 years, God having blessed the congregation with the wherewithal to do so, it has been the congregation that has purchased, expanded, and maintained the property. So Mr. Halles' assumption that every church was given its property by a paternal, all-knowing and beneficent presbytery is short-sighted and simply wrong. The history of presbyterianism on this continent is considerably older than a mere thirty years. While Wekiva can remember only the reunion of the Northern and Southern Churches, some (mine included) can remember several instances of restructuring the Church catholic in this land. Our two burial grounds still stand as a reminder of the Old Side-New Side split (1741-1758). We were an old congregation at the time of the Cumberland split in 1810. We witnessed the Old School-New School split (1837-1869) and the PCUSA-PCCS (later PCUS) split of 1861-1983, as well as the OPC departure in 1938. God-inspired movements of people within the Church universal hold no terror to us. It is only the bureaucrats who fear the loss of their power and perquisites. Mr. Halles continues, "We are all in debt to the talents, the vision and the faithfulness of those who have come before us." Here, we agree. My congregation was founded before the centenary of the Westminster Confession. We are indeed indebted to those brave souls who cleared the Pennsylvania frontier, whose vision and faithfulness to God enabled them to endure the privations of the wilderness and the birth pangs of a Nation. But then he gets squishy in his thinking. "We would honor them best by remembering that we stand on their shoulders; that the church facilities are placed into our hands in trust--they are not ours. For practical purposes, they are the Presbytery's and for eternal purposes, they are the Lord's." Once again he confuses 1783 and 1983. In 1786, two years before the advent of a national Presbyterian denomination, my church was incorporated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The corporation received the property of the pre-existing congregation, 'in trust.' But the trust was in favor of the congregation itself, the people who in each time and place use the property for worship and ministry. There is no mention of the presbytery (and, for obvious reasons, none of the denomination). After two centuries and more, the facilities are in this generation's hands in trust, but only in trust for the congregation and the future generations that will in their time be the congregation. The land, buildings and property are God's gift to a faithful congregation of believers, but in no way--legal, equitable, ethical or moral--can they be said to be the presbytery's or the denomination's. And for so long as the people place their faith in God rather than a man-made construct, He will continue to bless them with their property. Finally, Mr. Halles says "We are, all of us -- pastors and people, elders and laypersons -- simply stewards, only renters, merely leaseholders. No one in the world of real estate would confuse such as these with the property owner. Nor did the Lord Jesus in any of His many parables confuse the laborers in the vineyards and fields with the Great Land Owner. Why would we?" Nonsense: Everyone in the temporal world of real estate would recognize the fee simple owner of property as the owner. But theologically speaking, he is correct that we are stewards of that which God has given us. God is the "Great Land Owner" who alone gave each congregation a 'lease' on the property it uses to fulfill the Great Commission. That being so, how dare a mere man-made organization trespass and interfere with God's tenants? When God sends His people out, we are taught that they may faithfully take with them the property that God has showered upon them: "Now the LORD said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.' So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan." Genesis 12: 1-5 "Then he [Pharoah] summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, 'Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!' . . . The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. And the LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians." Exodus 12" 31-32, 35-36. The Strategy Report of the New Wineskins Association of Churches identified two equally faithful options for congregations in the PC(USA). The people of Wekiva are, apparently, content to stay in the PC(USA). Indeed, if they are called by God to do so, they have no faithful option but to stay and fight to reform and revive that body. But there is another faithful option for those who are called by God to shake the dust of the PC(USA) from their feet and to move to other of His pastures. They are a people who will risk slings and arrows in order to depart from a denomination that places validation of the world over adherence to Scripture. They are a people who, having freed themselves from the taint of a decaying organization, will join with others with the same vision to spread the Good News to those who have not yet heard it. They are visionary, faithful and faith-filled men and women who are called to a new thing: a church that is inspired by the call to mission rather than tied down by a failed polity. So, faithful to the call that God has made on them, they will go, with all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired. 'Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing in your midst. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?' Isaiah 43: 18-19 Now is the time. Michael R. 'Mac' McCarty Elder-member NWAC Strategy Team - Michael Mccarty Tue, 15 May 2007 12:00:00 +0100