New Wineskins leader of traditionalist Anglican movement to speak at convocation
The Layman Online, July 14, 2006
Robert Duncan, bishop of the Pittsburgh Diocese of the Episcopal Church (USA), who has declared that the rifts in his own denomination may be “irreconcilable,” will be one of the keynote speakers at the New Wineskins Convocation in Tulsa on July 19-22.
The convocation is expected to draw hundreds of Presbyterians, including ministers and elders who have already aligned with the New Wineskins. They will consider steps the group may take in response to the actions of the 2006 General Assembly.
At their first convocation last fall, the New Wineskins members, who had approved theological and moral imperatives, also approved a governing constitution – which is still a work in progress.
Dean Weaver, pastor of Community Park Presbyterian Church in Allison Park, Pa., said then that the New Wineskins would view action by the General Assembly to repeal or nullify the constitutional ordination requirements as a “precipitating” reason to consider separation from the Presbyterian Church (USA).
After the General Assembly approved an authoritative interpretation giving sessions and presbyteries the leeway to ordain practicing homosexuals in violation of G-6.0106 of the Book of Order, leaders of the New Wineskins issued a statement saying that they would “explore ways to live out our vision and wrestle with how God may wish to move us together toward his preferred future.”
Duncan has made similar declarations. As the bishop of what many view to be one of the most traditional dioceses in the Episcopal Church (USA), he has become the spiritual leader of a growing movement of Episcopalians who strongly oppose their denomination’s consecration of a bishop who left his wife and children to live with a homosexual partner.
Duncan is the moderator of the Anglican Communion Network in the United States, an orthodox group that includes 10 dioceses, 800 congregations and more than 200,000 Episcopalians.
In an interview, Duncan was asked why he continued to press the ordination issue. He said, “The battle is about the authority of Scripture. It’s about the basics of Christian faith. It’s about sin and redemption. It’s just so fundamental. The issues have to do with sexuality and morality, but at the very heart of it is whether Scripture can be trusted. In my experience, I learned the one person I could trust was Jesus Christ and the only testament that was reliable was what was in Scripture. And I cannot let the Church, of all bodies, challenge the notion that you can’t trust the plain meaning of Scripture.”
Other key speakers for the New Wineskins Convocation will be Dr. Robert Gagnon, a professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, who will talk about the 217th General Assembly; elder Lloyd Lunceford, a Baton Rouge, La., attorney and general editor of a new book, A Guide to Church Property Law; and preachers Jim Logan and Carmen Fowler.
The New Wineskins Convocation has posted its tentative schedule for the conference.
The convocation is the first of four meetings scheduled by renewal organizations preparing their responses to the actions of the General Assembly. The others are:
Presbyterian Global Fellowship
August 17-19, 2006
Peachtree Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, Ga.
Excerpt from statement posted on Web site: “The Presbyterian Church (USA) is in a deep crisis. We have turned our eyes inward, and we are an aging, dying, visionless denomination. We have lost the central focus of the New Testament church: its missional calling. While our own culture has become a mission field, we continue to devote all our efforts to maintaining the institution that we once were. The mandate of the Gospel and the needs of the world are urgent, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) is not currently positioned to respond. Dramatic measures are needed if we are to reverse this trend of recent decades.”
Presbyterian Global Fellowship seeks to create a “means by which congregations might rethink their stewardship of resources in terms of our missional calling, and intentionally invest financial resources in mission endeavors in local and global Presbyterian mission, encouraging a designation of all giving by congregations toward the most effective, accountable and biblically faithful mission efforts, within the Presbyterian family and elsewhere.”
Leaders of the Presbyterian Global Fellowship oppose separation from the PCUSA.
The Presbyterian Coalition
August 16-17, 2006
North Avenue Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, Ga.
The Presbyterian Coalition, which has often functioned as an umbrella group for other renewal organizations, rescheduled its fall meeting so that its members would be able to attend nearby sessions of the Presbyterian Global Fellowship. The theme of the Coalition’s meeting is “Post-GA Discussion of a Way Forward.”
Excerpts from a joint statement signed by Coalition leaders and representatives of 13 other renewal organizations:
“The consequences of the decision of this General Assembly throw our denomination into crisis. Many individuals and congregations will conclude from this decision that the PCUSA has abandoned the historic faith of the Church. The decision will be regarded by others in the worldwide body of Christ as profoundly offensive.”
“We will redouble our efforts to bear witness to the Gospel in this troubled time and place. We reaffirm our ordination vows at the very time when those vows are being cheapened. This recent decision marks a profound deviation from Biblical requirements, and we cannot accept, support, or tolerate it. We will take the steps necessary to be faithful to God and to those God calls us to serve.”
Joint meeting of representatives of congregations in the Confessing Church Movement and Constitutional Presbyterians in the PCUSA
September 28-30, 2006
Pittsburgh, Pa.
The Confessing Church Movement is the evangelical coalition in the denomination, with more than 1,300 congregations and nearly 500,000 church members. Congregations became allied with the movement after their sessions approved resolutions affirming three tenets: that Jesus alone is Savior and Lord for the world; that Scripture is infallible rule of faith and practice; and that Scripture clearly opposes sexual activity outside of marriage.
Constitutional Presbyterians is a new renewal movement begun shortly before the 217th General Assembly. It is the offspring of a group that issued an appeal before the General Assembly, calling on the denomination to be faithful to Scripture and not to adopt the PUP task force report. More than 1,600 Presbyterians, individually and as church sessions, endorsed that statement.
After the General Assembly, Constitutional Presbyterians issued “A Call to Action” prefaced by: “The 217th General Assembly has shown by its actions that the Presbyterian Church (USA) as an institution is in the hands of people who understand its life in a way that is incompatible with our understanding and experience. We seem to be strangers in our own denomination. Being Constitutional Presbyterians means we will be the Presbyterian Church (USA), we have long thought God is calling us to be, in this way seeking renewal and reformation in this church.”
It proposed that sessions and presbyteries adopt its “Declaration of Constitutional Presbyterians,” which is posted on the organization’s Web site.