By Tom Paulu, The Daily News Online (Kelso, Wash.)
(Bill Wagner / The Daily News) Pastor Wendy Taylor, left, of Kelso First Presbyterian Church and Pastor Vonda McFadden, of Kelso First United Methodist Church are combined their congregations and met for the first service together Sunday in the Methodist church building.
The Kelso First Presbyterian and Kelso First United Methodist churches already have much in common. They’re two of the oldest congregations in the city, dating to the 1880s. They’re a few steps away from each other on Third Avenue. Their pastors fill in for each other when one’s on vacation. And theologically, the churches are similar, according to their ministers.
So it was a natural decision for the churches to combine as the Presbyterian church faced a shrinking number of members, the pastors said.
At 10 [yesterday] morning, members of the churches will begin services at the Presbyterian church on Academy Street. Then they’ll walk a few hundred feet up the steep sidewalk to the Methodist church, where both pastors will serve Communion together. Then, of course, the churchgoers will have a potluck brunch together.
The pastors said that Acts 2: 42-46 portrays the spirit of their informal merger. It reads in part: “ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”
4 Comments. Leave new
As applied to old mainline liberal protestant denominations, yes the era of that model of church is over, and has been for sometime. As applied to the top-down OGA, 15 synod, 171 presbytery PCUSA, most if not large pockets of that structure are close to collapse if not comatose, due to the simple fact that there are no more people to support such, they have all moved, died off, lost to the culture.
Those who look forward to the demise of the PCUSA will not be disappointed, in a sense. As in any business, loss of market share and income leads to consolidation, M/A activity economies of scale. The PCUSA will not so much go away or die, as it will be seek merger or union with other like minded liberal groups, UCC, CC-DC, Unitarian are the most logical fit. This article is but a small sample of that which will be legion soon enough.
Peter….that scenario is what I see to be the most likely. The authoritarian/hierarchical mainline denominations will shrink to a point the bureaucracy, seminaries and overhead cannot be supported. The tendency to spend like sailors on leave will not be stopped. As congregations wither and disappear Louisville will find that in Real Estate terms a church building is a white elephant and not a cash cow. They are not especially adaptable to other uses. Older buildings can have asbestos, leaky roofs, old inefficient heating systems and aged electrical systems.
The UCC is probably too congregationalist to be a partner but certainly the remnant Episcopals, Evangelical Lutherans & soon-to-fracture “progressive wing” of the United Methodists will easy rejoice together at some “Grand Progressive Union” denomination with the PCUSA.
The only question is when will this occur? My guess is about 7-10 years. Could be sooner or later by a bit but not a lot.
What God hath wrought.
The post-mortem of the PCUSA has yet to be written. And as stated the PCUSA will not go to zero or collapse in a heap, but by drips and drabs-merge-close-fade away. But when historians do look back and say what happened. I can point to three choices or decisions made by the PCUSA that lead to its demise.
-Families or marriage in the traditional sense do not matter or are irrelevant to the church. Nor are biological parents, male and female, important in the child rearing or are of value to the church or culture.
-Men, specially white working are men, are at best irrelevant to the church, and at worst, perpetuate a anti-feminist mind-set that are opposed the great ends of the modern church.
-The Resurrection as real event in history is an optional matter to the church and its clergy, and the uniqueness of the person and work of Christ is not really a core concept for ordination or church leadership.
In essence the contemporary PCUSA can best be described as the unconverted preaching to the unconvinced. Not a good or affirming message to take to the world.