posted on January 1, 2007 in News
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ENI – Britain's Christian Muslim Forum has strongly criticised moves to take the religious message out of Christmas in the country on the grounds that offence might be caused to members of other faiths.
posted on January 1, 2007 in News
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Assembly Council adopted a draft policy on racial harassment entitled Growing in Christ: Seeing the Image of God in Our Neighbour, at its November meeting. “The Presbyterian Church in Canada welcomes its cultural diversity,” states the policy. “Both at the congregational and national level, the Presbyterian Church will actively involve the cultural diversity in its midst when it comes to decision-making, service on boards and committees, preparation for ministry in the church, representation of the church at all levels and employment within the church.”
posted on January 1, 2007 in News
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ENI – “Our Christian values are at the core of our call for urgent, concerted action on climate change. Not only do we believe that, in the beginning, we were given stewardship of the earth, but we believe that good news for the world's poor people is rooted in justice. Climate change brutally exposes humanity's failure and the failure of its institutions,” a united Christian platform of Caritas Internationalis and the All Africa Conference of Churches said in a statment at the UN conference on climate change held in Nairobi in November.
Debating the historical Christ
The Gnostic gospels are old news in a modern context
posted on January 1, 2007 in Features
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It is easy to blame author Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which has sold more than 61 million copies worldwide in 45 languages and is now the eighth-best-selling book of all time, for sparking a renewed interest in the Gnostic gospels and related texts. Instead, the novel's success can be seen as merely a symptom of a larger phenomenon, which seeks to find an alternative history of Christianity. Obscure academics and many populist authors have been pecking away at the authenticity of Christianity's roots for a very long time. Elaine Pagels has been writing about Gnostic texts for decades, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail laid out more than two decades ago much the same landscape that Dan Brown trod. (In fact, that book's authors sued Brown recently for fictionalizing their unsubstantiated facts.) Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ stated much of the same 55 years ago. The modern resurgence of Gnosticism and enduring questions about the identity of Jesus and the origins of Christianity all helped fuel the sales of Brown's novel.
posted on January 1, 2007 in Features
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The Year Of Sabbath Preparation
Speaking different languages
Presbyteries have to recognize local gifts in each congregation
posted on January 1, 2007 in By the Numbers
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This summer I spent time with the statistical report of The Presbyterian Church in Canada.
- One-quarter (25.7 per cent or 238) of PCC congregations reported average worship attendance in 2005 as 30 or fewer. A further 20.3 per cent (188 congregations) reported attendance between 31 and 50. That is, nearly half (46 per cent or 426 congregations) of PCC congregations had 50 or fewer people in worship.
- The other end of the spectrum, 7.5 per cent of PCC congregations (70) reported their average worship attendance in 2005 as 200 or more.
Analyzed this way the figures confirm: The Presbyterian Church in Canada is a denomination of small congregations.
There is another way to look at the figures:
- The 70 largest congregations in the country (those with 200 or more in worship) account for 30.8 per cent of all the Presbyterians who are in worship on a given Sunday. (Five of the nine largest congregations in the PCC are Korean.)
- At the same time, six per cent of Canadian Presbyterians worship on Sunday with 29 or fewer people.
To paint this picture even more starkly: the nine largest Presbyterian congregations in the country have a combined attendance greater than the combined attendance of the 238 smallest congregations.
Depending on what is counted, two very different pictures of the church emerge. These divergent pictures create challenges for presbyteries. For presbyteries are charged with overseeing the ministry of the congregations within their bounds, but a one-size-fits-all approach does not work.
Presbyteries have a couple of hundred congregations with 30 or fewer people in worship to relate to and look after. Congregations this size function in a particular way. Like a family, decisions are made through extended conversation and finally arriving at consensus. Worship reflects the particular needs of the congregational family, and the minister is the family's spiritual guide. Questions about financial viability are always close to the surface as these congregations are constantly negotiating ways to stay open.
Yet nearly one-third of Presbyterians worship in congregations with 200 or more people in worship. These congregations are served by a team of program staff. The leadership team casts a vision and works to implement goals. Congregations over 200 face challenges in managing personnel, articulating vision and developing and staffing new programs.
These two types of congregations often seem to speak different languages, sharing little in common. For example, the sessions of congregations with 200 or more are likely to give a great deal of thought to the study paper on Multiple Minister Congregations sent down to sessions by the General Assembly and spend very little time discussing the Lay Missionary study paper which was also sent down by the assembly. Meanwhile, the sessions of congregations with 30 or fewer in worship are likely to have a significant conversation about the Lay Missionary proposals while sending the Multiple Minister document to the recycling bin. Both congregations with 30 or fewer and congregations of 200 or more are here to stay, along with the experiential and cultural divide that exists between them.
Despite the differences between small and large congregations, there are approaches that can benefit both types of congregation. Two of the habits presbyteries need to encourage in both large and small congregations are:
- High expectation culture: Presbyteries should expect excellence of themselves and of the sessions to which they relate. Excellence is not an issue of congregational size; both large and small congregations can be committed to excellence.
- Recognition of local leaders: Presbyteries should encourage congregations to recognize and use the gifts of the lay people in their pews. Both small and large congregations would benefit from having leaders who innately understand the congregational culture and do ministry that makes sense in their context. Congregations would be supported in employing program staff on the basis of ministry gifts and not on the basis of credentials.
Focusing on these two habits will assist presbyteries in finding flexible ways which support both small and large congregations in developing personalized patterns of ministry that are sustainable in their context.
posted on January 1, 2007 in News
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ENI – Pope Benedict XVI and leaders of five other leading faiths in Britain have subscribed to an inaugural $1.15-billion bond issued by the British Treasury that will pay for immunizing half a billion children in developing countries over the next 10 years.
Money Talks (have you been listening?)
Stewardship means we choose life in the image of God
posted on January 1, 2007 in Books
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Thanks Giving: Growing Generosity Among God's People
On Earth as in Heaven
There is plenty of non-Gospel evidence to prove that Jesus did exist
posted on January 1, 2007 in Features
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Tom Harpur's attempt in The Pagan Christ to disprove Jesus' earthly existence is as futile as that of his many predecessors. These go back to Docetism, a heresy hinted at in 1 John 4 and 2 John 7, developed by second-century Gnostics to the point where Christ's earthly appearance was an illusion, likewise his death, being replaced on the cross by Judas or Simon of Cyrene.
Wilderness epiphany
There is no doubt I am out of control and God is in control
posted on January 1, 2007 in For the Journey
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It was a special spot embedded in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. It was a hot spring nestled in a cliff on the edge of Sheep Creek. My Dad and I lived in a shack without running water, so we went there every Sunday for our weekly bath. Even when it was 35 below (Celsius) and the snow was three feet deep, the hot spring maintained lush green vegetation and warmth for a few metres around, an oasis in the icy desert of winter.
posted on January 1, 2007 in News
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ENI – Two of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian synods in Malawi which are at loggerheads with one another over boundaries, have rejected offers from the country's civil society to act as arbitrators.
posted on January 1, 2007 in News
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The Life and Mission Agency Committee met outside of Ontario for the first time, gathering at Surrey Presbyterian Church in British Columbia in November. The Korean congregation offered the invitation, and hosted the meetings. Committee members visited area congregations, missions and schools. Mary Fontaine, founder of the native Hummingbird Ministries mission in Vancouver, visited the committee.
God's Kingdom reclaims us
A challenging book could set us on a hopeful path
posted on January 1, 2007 in Books
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The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for Those Who Serve God, the Church and the World
posted on January 1, 2007 in For the Record
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Hero, fool or traitor? Those are now the three possibilities for Judas, the onetime apostle, based on the Bible and a recently published text.
Strength of heart
Barbara Edmonds has left a huge void
posted on January 1, 2007 in Lives Lived
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Barbara Edmonds, co-founder of Edmonds, Gallagher and McLaughlin Insurance Brokers Limited and Royal Lepage Edmonds and Associates Real Estate, Pembroke and life member of Petawawa Presbyterian passed away peacefully in a hospital, in March last year, at the age of 74.
Another side of Christ
A peak into Gnostic Christianity
posted on January 1, 2007 in Features
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- The Lord would not have said “My Father who is in Heaven” unless he had had another father, but he would have said simply “My father.” – The Gospel of Philip
posted on January 1, 2007 in Features
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“Sabbath is a time of realizing that we do not run the world. It is a time to recover the rhythms of Grace, as we trust in God the Creator. It is a time to realize our responsibilities to the poor and the lost as we look around us. We recommend a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
Reclaiming Sabbath
On the seventh day you shall reflect
posted on January 1, 2007 in Features
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What is the Sabbath? Who is it? Why is it? When, how and where is it? These days, many books and studies try to find the answers.
posted on January 1, 2007 in Features
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Christian bookstores in the Montreal region report that while the sales of Da Vinci-related books geared to believers have been good, these have been dwarfed by the much brisker sales of the smaller booklets and evangelistic tracts that were obviously being distributed to the public at large. Rather than dealing with the background debates and the Gnostic controversies, both the books and the tracts tend to become academic listings of historical errors in a book that the world at large and the secular media have already understood to be intended as fiction. The church is responding to questions that nobody seems to be asking.
posted on January 1, 2007 in News
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Four Christian movements were needed for Christianity to take hold in China. As a result of a colonial past, a Communist government, cultural revolution and a history of a patriarchal and culturally obedient society, Christianity has come and gone several times as the political and social contexts in China change. Below is a brief outline of major events in Chinese-Christian history:
