By Mateen Elass, on his personal blog.
J. Herbert Nelson
It’s a Brave New World. No longer will the members of Presbyterian Church (USA) have to seek out God’s will together to know the mission of the Church. Instead, the Stated Clerk Search Committee has nominated a “priest and prophet” to lead the denomination to utopia.
I will reserve personal judgment as to whether J. Herbert Nelson will serve the people of the PCUSA well or not until we have enough experience with him in that office to make an educated assessment. But from what has been released by official PCUSA news outlets so far, and especially the Vimeo announcement by Rev. Carol McDonald (moderator of the Stated Clerk Search Committee), things do not look at all promising.
Having spoken side by side with J. Herbert at a Wee Kirk Conference, and having interacted with him a few times subsequently, I find him to be a warmhearted, engaging, high energy person, committed above all to social justice causes. I like him personally. Our understandings of the gospel are very different. But that is not at the heart of what bothers me about his nomination to become Stated Clerk.
My deep concern is that Rev. Nelson has no background or skill set to actually do the job detailed in the official job description of “Stated Clerk.” The qualifications which he is touted for having in fact have little relevance to the work of that office.
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“The Stated Clerk’s role is not to lead the Church anywhere, but to correctly interpret the Church’s Constitution to keep the denomination from straying from its self-determined principles.”
That cow left the barn at the 2014 GA.
Respectfully, I think whether Dr Nelson has the background or skill set to do the job detailed in the official job description of “Stated Clerk” has little relevance to his ability to do the job as it is currently practiced. Case in point,last GAs debate on the AI. When a point of Order was raised pointing out that there might be some constitutional infirmities in using an AI to rewrite a section of the BOO the Stated Clerk’s response was to pressure the ACC into backing off of a well reasoned opinion that found the AI out of order and show sufficient disregard for the constitution to advise the body they could proceed however they wished to proceed since word’s meant whatever they said they meant. I would think lobbying in Washington would be great preparation for the job.
Thank you Mateen for your grace toward J. Nelson as I am also sure he is a fine person. I agree with you that He may not have the knowledge of the polity and a vision for the church that is so needed right now. Yet, the leaders in the PMB and OGA are setting the agenda and trajectory of the denomination.
What this nominating committee does not want to recognize is that the membership is not in agreement with this vision and trajectory.
Political concerns have many sides and are divisive.
God wants to unites us behind His mandate and commission us for the work of making disciples. There is a certain spiritual blindness in this choice.
Several posts lately have admitted that the membership is in the dark and unaware of what transpires at the GA. Many pastors and Sessions have been unwilling to speak up about the decisions, large and small, and the events that are sponsored by the leaders of the denomination at GA.
There has been fear that it would rile up and divide the church membership. That is happening now as larger issues like change in marriage have become known but there are many underlying issues that are left hidden.
There can not be any objection to informing the members about the facts and details of their denominational leaders actions, decisions, and out comes of the GA!
Now is the time to set up a means in every congregation to make the members a ware. Encourage members to listen to, follow live, the happenings and decisions of the GA. Send out written material on what transpires. Be willing to speak from the pulpit boldly what the trajectory is in the denomination. Some people will cheer, some will weep.
The Denominational leadership is out of step with the membership and it is the responsibility of Sessions and Pastors to boldly share what is happening so discerned decisions under the Holy Spirit can be made going forward.
The relative merits or qualifications of the Bishop in waiting has been well discussed by previous discussions. Frankly if you had a cardboard cut out and a voice over of the 10 or 15 major talking points off “Huffington Post”, Solon, or the Sanders campaign, you would get all that would required for the next 4 years.
The selection speaks far more to the state of the organization, vice the man. The contemporary PCUSA, after 50 years of membership loss, metastasized into a hemorrhage, institutional drift, message incoherence, general management incompetence, has more or less detached itself from reality and has entered its own parallel universe and made up reality. Where the rules of representative government, redress of grievance, respect for faith, freedom, autonomy of conscious do not apply. Where “1001” was the path to rebirth, AI’s the means to achieve ends, and double down on the next parade coming down the street. Where mediocrity the norm, failure celebrated as success.
By their own projection the organization will be under 1 mil reported members in 4 years, where the cliff ends, who knows. A perfect meeting of the man and the mission.
Exactly, James H! I was also thinking that the article was right, he is probably not truly qualified, but then I thought…does anyone think that we have a qualified one now?!…evidently, qualifications and beliefs have nothing to do with this job.
I have been blessed by the leadership and preaching of J. Herbert Nelson. He is a man of God. I know this because I have been in his presence. I didn’t hear about him from a web site, or read what some talking head on the left or right wrote about him. He is a man passionate about sharing his faith. The Laymen might be better served to begin to pray for Dr. Nelson and his leadership. Rather than continually travel the path toward condemnation and scorn, perhaps the Layman might expect the movement of God that is wiser than humans. Could you for once give up expecting only the worst from a denomination that you clearly loathe? I am proud that a person of deep faith and commitment to Jesus Christ has been nominated as the Stated Clerk. I expect God to do great things through Dr. Nelson.
Rev, don’t blame the Layman for telling it like it is, your side has created the denomination that somehow we now “loathe”. Much like the 2014 GA when gay marriage in an illegal vote was pushed through anyway. Your side has gotten pretty much everything they have wanted, and look a the state of the pcusa.
This new “movement of God” as you put it has very little to do with God and everything to do with feel good theology and political correctness, and it’s slowly killing the pcusa. Yeah your side go what they wanted, so don’t blame the Layman for pointing out the destruction that is upon us now, let alone a VERY bleak future.
Mitch,
Thanks for your response. I think, however, your criticism is misplaced. First of all, the thoughts expressed in the post above are my own, not the Layman’s. Please don’t tar and feather them simply because they reposted my blog to create space for conversation on PCUSA items of interest. Second, J. Herbert has only been nominated at this point, not elected. It wouldn’t hurt to pray for him, but it may be that he is not the choice of the GA to serve as the next Stated Clerk. Third, although you are proud that “a person of deep faith and commitment to Jesus Christ has been nominated as the Stated Clerk,” this is something that I would expect should be the case as a fundamental requirement for any position in the PCUSA. My blog never questioned J. Herbert’s personal commitment to Christ, but whether he had ever demonstrated any requisite experience to fulfill the job description which the denomination posted for the position of Stated Clerk. The statement made by the Search Committee “chair” completely ignored any assessment of that, and instead spoke of him as “priest and prophet” to the denomination and by implication to the world. He may fit that mold, in the eyes of some, but that is not the job description of the Stated Clerk. For the denomination to hire someone to a position for which he/she is unsuited would be poor stewardship. I am simply asking for further clarification as to why J. Herbert Nelson is suitable for this call, or whether the Search Committee and present “administration” are trying to change the polity of the church by bringing in someone who will be an activist to move the church even further to the left rather than serving as stated clerks are meant to serve.
Rev Coggin engages in the classic defense mechanism of dislocation. Or the placing the onus of responsibility for a state or condition outside of one’s self. In that sense it seeks to shift the locus or accountability for individual choices or behaviors, outside of self. In the world of Rev. Coggin it is the Layman’s fault, conservative-evangelicals fault, those who resist new orthodoxy. If only they would just get on board and play ball. Then its ponies and rainbows for all, and we all enter the new utopia.
The facts are that even if the Laymen or Lay committee did not exist, the PCUSA would still have lost 60% of its membership since reunion and that will be 75% in 2 years. Even if the Layman did not exist, even if all those who post did not exist, the PMA would still be negligent if not criminal in terms of its management of other people’s money. Even if all evangelicals said not a word, the OGA/Office of the Stated Clerk would still be dominated by mediocre political hacks and driven by race and gender based ideology. Even if the ECO, EPC, did not exist, people would still seek the exits from the PCUSA plantation-big tent. And that’s the cold, hard facts.
I have no doubt that God will use James Herbert Nelson II and others like him for the accomplishment of his divine purposes, although I do not believe that he will do so in quite the way that the Rev. Coggin imagines. I am thinking more along the lines of how God used the Babylonians for the accomplishment of his purposes in regard to Zedekiah, Judah and Jerusalem in the years 589-587 BC. Such, I believe, is the role that James Herbert Nelson II and his allies and enablers will play in the unfolding destruction of the PCUSA.
Well said! We also don’t want to forget the way God used the Assyrians and Romans for his purposes as well! Do you think with the current state of affairs in the PCUSA and the greater USA that God will continue his blessings?
True that, JB. Thank you for the reminder that God has been consistent throughout history in the way that he ultimately deals with apostasy. As Paul wrote to the Galatians: “God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” And what applies to individuals who turn against God also applies to denominations and to countries.
Does anyone else remember Mr. Nelson’s comments when he became head of what was then the Washington Office? He basically said two things:
1. as head he was going to “speak truth to power.”
2. he would be effective in the job because he was in sympathy with the Obama administration (I am probably not quoting him exactly, but that is what he meant).
He seemed not to see the extreme inconsistency here. If he supports the Obama administration in everything they do (as he seems to), where does “speaking truth to power” come in?