 Tall steeple pastors denounce PCUSA GA actions By Charles F. Burge Executive Director The Layman Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Rev. Vic Pentz, pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, the denomination's largest congregation with 8,700 members, described the PCUSA in a blog entry as "a slow motion train wreck for the past thirty years." He says that, with the close of the General Assembly on June 28 in San Jose, "the smoke seems at last to have cleared, and the steaming debris of the PCUSA has settled into place. It's not a pretty sight. One thing (is) for sure: this Humpty won't be getting back together again for a long time, if ever." Seeing little chance of renewing the denominational structure, Pentz said, "The battle is lost for evangelical renewal groups within the system. The old 'stay-fight-and win' strategy is history." The Rev. Ron Scates, pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, said he was "shocked and dismayed" in a letter dated June 30 to church members and friends. "Yesterday, I stepped off the plane from Ethiopia and was greeted by the news that the General Assembly of the PCUSA has taken a number of actions which are at odds with Scripture and threaten to unravel any vestige of purity, peace, and unity that may still exist within the denomination." "The PCUSA is clearly on a path of self-destruction in cutting herself off from the larger, global church," said Scates. He called the denomination's direction "a different path than the path God has revealed to the Church in His Word." The Highland Park pastor promised that the congregation's Church Relations Committee will convene a special meeting, as will the church's session. Included in actions that Scates will propose to the session are to issue a call for a "town hall" meeting "where the congregation can be informed and ask questions as to what this might mean for HPPC's future, seriously consider withholding all funds to the PCUSA, and explore every option concerning our future relationship with the PCUSA." Scates said he would also be talking with other "Biblically orthodox" pastors across the country "as to what united actions we might take together." Highland Park has struggled over its connection to the denomination before. In 1991, the congregation suffered an agonizing split in which some 1,500 of its members left to form the now 5,000 member Park Cities Presbyterian Church, aligned with the theologically conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). When Highland Park learned that the 2006 General Assembly had declared the denomination's sexual behavior standards optional, the congregation severely curtailed its funding to General Assembly agencies. Highland Park and Peachtree are leader churches in the Presbyterian Global Fellowship (PGF), a mission focused organization that maintains a shadow-church relationship to the Presbyterian Church (USA). "The Presbyterian Global Fellowship seeks to be a parallel society living a new vision for the church within the PCUSA," said Pentz. "In PGF we treat the PCUSA for what it is: a relic of a Christendom that is disappearing before our very eyes." PGF is sponsoring an August 14-16 conference in Long Beach, Calif., in which its congregations' relationship to the denomination will be a front burner topic. |
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