PCUSA ‘has become irrelevant to the mission and ministry of the church,’ minister says
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, July 21, 2006
TULSA — The Presbyterian Church (USA) “has become irrelevant to the mission and ministry of the church,” a minister told more than 600 people at the second convocation of the New Wineskins Initiative.
Gerrit Dawson, senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, told the audience that, “June 20, 2006, was Emancipation Day in my spirit and my life.” That was the day that the General Assembly in Birmingham approved the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity. “I am not angry,” he said, “I am energized. I’m not depressed, I’m excited.”
Dawson said he “knew after the 2001 General Assembly that evangelicals were never going to win. That didn’t mean that we didn’t have to bear witness — we did.”
He said evangelicals have borne witness “in every place where the church has made crucial decisions,” citing in particular Presbyterians Pro-Life for its continuing witness before the committees at General Assembly.
Dawson said he finally realized that he was wasting his time “beating his head against this denomination. People are starving and dying, and the church needs to get at it.”
He then spoke about Acts 13:46, the “story about how Paul goes to preach in Antioch.” Dawson reminded the audience about a key passage in that verse: “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.”
“‘You have thrust it aside,'” he said. “The point is the lost. We’re sent to the Gentiles all around us who are yearning for God’s Word.”
When the PUP report was passed, Dawson said, “I felt emancipated. God is sending us to the Gentiles. The denomination has become irrelevant to the mission and ministry of the church.”
“There is a lost world out there,” he said. “Not everyone has thrust aside the Word of the Lord.”
One of those who is spreading the Word is the Rev. David Githii, moderator of the 4.5-million member Presbyterian Church in East Africa. In 2004, in an action that stunned the leadership of the PCUSA, Githii severed his denomination’s relationship with both the Presbytery of National Capitol and the Presbytery of Detroit over their support for violating the PCUSA’s constitutional prohibition against ordaining practicing homosexuals.
Githii made the decision knowing that almost $300,000 in funding that his denomination receives from various agencies of the PCUSA might be jeopardized.
The Presbyterian Church of East Africa “has to terminate the partnership … because we are not yoked together by the cross of him who emptied himself for the human race,” Gitthi said in a letter to the stated clerk of the Detroit Presbytery.
“We find it unfortunate for you to question the inspiration of the Bible as the Word of God,” Gitthi wrote. “This contradicts the message that the Western missionaries gave to us when our people first heard the gospel from them. They told us that the Word of God is an inspiration of God — it is his breath.”
In a videotaped message to the New Wineskins Convocation in Tulsa, Githii said that, “The church in the U.S.A. has problems. We know that the path is not easy, but the Lord is with you at this critical time in the life of the church.”
In light of those problems, Githii called on the participants to pray. “When the church fails to pray, evil of every kind prevails. What we need to emphasize more in this church is prayers.”
“We need to pray for the church in America,” he said. “Prayer is needed. The Kenyans are praying for you in the PCUSA church.”
The Rev. Dean Weaver, co-moderator of the New Wineskins Initiative, said that Githii had called on the Presbyterian Church of East Africa to “create an overseas presbytery in the United States” so that people of like fellowship seeking Biblical connectionalism would have a means to be able to do that. Githii “has taken a great deal of persecution for that,” Weaver said. The Presbyterian Church of East Africa “stands in solidarity with us and is willing to be with us.”
Commenting on the actions of the 217th General Assembly, particularly its approval of the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity, Weaver said that “no thought was given to what is purity, no consideration was given to the unity of the church and how that action has fractured and hurt our brothers and sisters in the Two-Thirds World.”
“I think that is what we’re going to talk about when we talk about unity in the church,” he said. “We need to talk about the Church — not the American church. That’s the unity, that’s the realignment in the Church. It’s happening again in our lifetime. It’s not about how we realign, it’s about how we get in alignment with what God is doing in his Church across the globe.”