Evangelical leaders from around the world to speak at New Wineskins convocation
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, May 11, 2005
Leaders in Christian evangelism, both in the United States and the world, highlight the list of speakers at a national convocation considering a “bold new design” for the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The convocation, with the theme “Following Christ into the 21st Century,” will be held June 15-18 at Christ Presbyterian Church in Edina, Minn.
Some of the speakers include:
Middle East
The Rev. Dr. Sameh Maurice is the pastor of Kasr el Dobara Church in Cairo, Egypt, which event organizers describe as the largest Evangelical (Presbyterian) Church in the Middle East – 7,000 people regularly attend services and reach out to the city and region through multiple ministries and activities.
Maurice, who also is a physician and surgeon, is the Regional Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. His address to the convocation will be “Return To Your First Love,” according to a statement on the convocation Web site.
He was the keynote speaker for the 2004 Global Forum for World Evangelization, and his preaching and teaching regularly is broadcast on both radio and television in more than 50 countries.
The Rev. Tom Edwards, associate pastor at Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kan., who is coordinating the convocation for the New Wineskins Initiative, said Maurice “has a warmth and servant heart that God delights in.”
Brazil
The Rev. Dr. Ludgero Morais, executive secretary of the Supreme Council and stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, has spoken often about “liberalism’s threat to the integrity of Reformed Christian faith.”
The Presbyterian Church of Brazil is a rapidly growing body of Reformed Christians. Morais has served his congregation in for 25 years in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of Minas Gerais province. When he began his ministry there, Morais said his province only had 13 congregations. That same province, he said, has grown to 148 congregations and more than 600,000 members today.
In 1999, the Presbyterian News Service characterized the Presbyterian Church of Brazil as “an unabashedly conservative million-member denomination, the fruit of the first Protestant missionary forays into Brazil more than a century ago. [It] broke its ties with the Presbyterian Church (USA) in the 1970s.”
In the spring of 2003, the Witherspoon Society criticized the Presbyterian Church of Brazil as “fundamentalist,” and said its leaders had “purged its seminaries of their progressive professors and students.” Those “progressives,” according to the Witherspoon Society, then formed their own denomination, the United Presbyterian Church of Brazil.
Africa
The Rev. Dr. David Githii is the evangelistic leader of the fast-growing Presbyterian Church of East Africa, whose 4.5 million members are nearly twice that of the PCUSA.
A year ago, 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 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.”
United States
The Rev. Dr. Dean Weaver is vice moderator of the New Wineskins Initiative and senior pastor of Knox United Presbyterian Church in Kenmore, N.Y.
Convocation organizers call Knox “one of the fastest growing Presbyterian churches in the Northeast United States,” and it offers four worship opportunities every weekend. The congregation averages up to four out-of-the-country mission trips per year, and also ministers to college students, inner city youth and refugees.
In recent years, Knox has become heavily involved in building an orphanage in Sierra Leone. A number of children from that orphanage have been adopted by Knox families, including Weaver’s.
Weaver broadcasts weekly during the “Knox Church of the Air” program on 99.5 WDCX-FM, a Christian radio station that covers Buffalo, Rochester, Toronto and all of western New York and southern Ontario, Canada.
The Rev. Clark Cowden is the evangelist presbyter for the Presbytery of San Joaquin and parish associate at First Presbyterian Church in Visalia, Calif.
He is the author of a paper titled “A Vision for the 21st Century.” In it, he writes:
“It is time for a change. A small tinkering will not do. It is time for a radical new reinvention of the denomination. The 21st century denomination will function as a servant to its missionaries, its pastors, its lay leaders and its congregations. It exists to help them do the ministry on the ‘front lines.’ The denomination is the support system, the rescue squad, the back-up team that works to make the most ministry possible. It seeks to glorify God in all it does, operating under the authority of Scripture. Through its congregations and its people, it calls all people to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as the only Savior and Lord of the world. The church will only be fruitful when it is faithful …”