Evangelist presbyter says it’s time to move into unchartered waters
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, June 16, 2005
EDINA, Minn. – Answering the question “Why are we here?,” the Rev. Clark Cowden told those gathered in Edina on Wednesday evening that “We need to create a new wineskin for the church of today.”
In a postmodern world, for a church that is on the margins of society, for a time when change is rapid and unpredictable, for a time when we need to listen to Christians from other countries, Cowden said we need a church that is “flexible, adaptable and agile.”
“As difficult as it can be, we can become a missional church again,” he said. “But you cannot walk on water until you get out of the boat, and you cannot discover new lands unless you are willing to lose sight of the land for a very long time,” he said. “Now is the time to move out into unchartered waters.”
“If you are ready for an adventure that is both terrifying and exciting, now is the time,” he said. “Let’s go.” And he received a standing ovation.
Cowden is the evangelist presbyter of the San Joaquin Presbytery, which voted in January to discontinue holding regular presbytery meetings during 2005 and enter into a missional discernment process.
He said that last year, San Joaquin closed three churches, and if nothing changes, more will be closed. The presbytery, he said, decided it wasn’t doing much to help churches, since all the time was taken up by the rules and regulations. So the presbytery decided to take a sabbatical from presbytery meetings.
“There is a sense of urgency,” he said. “If we don’t make significant changes soon, we will be history.”
Cowden quoted from one of the books in the Presbyterian Presence series, An Organizational Revolution, which was a history of the church in America. The book cited three distinct models of “how we mold ourselves in mission.”
The earliest model was basically a loose coalition of churches, “similar to what Baptist churches are today.” He said the focus was on mission, and there was unity in theology, not unanimous, but unity. During this time “elders visited church members to test their theology and morality,” he said. Presbyteries examined and received pastors, trained prospective pastors and responded to questions from congregations.
During the period of 1900-1960, a conscious shift was made to a more corporate model which “brought all together for efficiency … so the denomination changed from unity to structure, from theology to polity,” Cowden said. There was a shift in the role of elders from visiting members to now becoming a board of directors and decisions were left to national leaders and presbyteries.
Around 1960 a shift was made to the regulatory model. He called it a time when “disagreements and conflicts began to erupt … and there was more of a gap between the congregational and national level. The system started to break down.”
“We began to spend more time in meetings, figuring out more overtures and more rules to pass and began fighting over budgets … that is the outline of where we have been,” he said.
To a chorus of “Amens” Cowden said, “We have done it differently before, we can do it differently again.”
He quoted what he called “a very striking statement” from An Organizational Revolution: “The American denomination is undergoing an organizational revolution. What was once a highly effective bureaucracy capable of delivering goods and services is now severely weakened and fragmented.”
Cowden called the authors of the book “people who love the Presbyterian church. They are denominational loyalists – not extremists … but, in spite of that, they are saying our system is dysfunctional ,” Cowden said. “They were saying 13 years ago ‘We need new wineskins.'”
“The problem is that we can reproduce dissatisfaction. We can make it bigger and it is a cycle we need to get out of,” he said.
‘Where we are now?’
“In each congregation there are those who want to go back to Egypt – or back to the 1950s when everything worked and the churches were packed,” Cowden said. “The old road maps won’t work, and no new road maps exist. … We are the new map makers … perhaps over the next few days we can turn up a new map.
Cowden theorized that in the Exodus story, God let the people wonder in the wilderness for 40 years to get the past 400 years of slavery out of their heads.
“In our denomination we have had 40 years of membership decline … and some people feel we are walking in circles … but what if God has been re-orienting us and we haven’t even noticed,” he asked. “Maybe God is getting the old world out of our heads and preparing us for a new world.”
What does this all mean?
“Our part of the body is dying,” he said. “I don’t say that with joy or hope, but, in my experience, I don’t see our best and brightest people wanting to be involved in the denomination. I don’t see our smartest people wanting to invest their lives in this institution. … We need to ask what to do?”
He quoted from the Book of Order G-9.0402: “Mission determines the form of structure and administration. All structures should enable the church to give effective witness to the Lordship of Christ in the contemporary world. … All structures shall be open to the possibility of change and new forms of ecumenical cooperation.”
Cowden called attention to the word “shall,” in the sentence that “all structures shall be open to the possibility of change.”
“What happened?” he asked. “Why did we get a reputation for having our heels dug in and being resistant to something new?”
He referred to Ephesians 5:25-30, which reads in part, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. …”
“Christ loves the church so much he was willing to die on the cross and give up his life for her. As Christians I believe that Christ wants us to love the church,” Cowden said. “Christ is not walking away from the church, Christ isn’t throwing the church away.”
“If the Holy Spirit hasn’t given up on the church yet then we shouldn’t.”
Cowden said that the worst thing evangelicals could do was what he called the “Kevorkian approach,” or assisted suicide.
“I think it is a terribly thing to work for split/division.” He also warned against impatience.
The best thing to do, he said, was to take a resurrection approach. He advised:
- Get affairs in order, prepare for the future
- Rejoice and celebrate the life lived ·
- It is okay to die, we are a resurrection people
He compared the resurrection approach to a metamorphosis where the caterpillar dies and gives birth to the butterfly.
“Our denomination needs people to help it see what is coming – to help our fellow Presbyterians prepare for the future and new things coming,” Cowden said.
Cowden said the answer was not to become independent churches. “We must remain connected to other believers,” he said.
He called for a new kind of connectionalism which would develop relationships and networks, would have shared values, mission, and would have a generous orthodoxy and mutual accountability.
Cowden reminded the group that the “founders of our country worked from general principles, general plans and no one knew where it was going to come out.”
He continued that following the Revolutionary War, the government was a disaster. The delegates had to be called back together to re-think and re-work the government.
“This is the way you create a new wineskin. The world is changing rapidly,” he said. “You have to make it up as it goes.”