Two candidates were presented to the 222nd General Assembly today to replace the retiring Gradye Parsons as Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
J. Herbert Nelson II was vetted by and comes with the blessing of the Stated Clerk Nominating Committee and David Baker was nominated by the Presbytery of Tampa Bay.
J. Herbert Nelson
Nelson is well-known within the denomination’s Louisville headquarters, currently serving as the PCUSA’s Director of the Office of Public Witness (OPW) in Washington, D.C. As such, he oversees and leads the denomination’s lobbying efforts in the nation’s capitol. A third generation Presbyterian pastor, Nelson was ordained in 1986 and pastored St. James Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, N.C. for 11 years. In 1999, he planted and then pastored Liberation Community Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tenn., which is currently a 73-member congregation operating on a shoestring budget. He has directed the OPW for six years.
“The challenge for our denomination today is to find our way back to living and working for the Kingdom of God. Serving the church is not enough,” asserts Nelson. “Our vision must point toward a higher calling that demonstrates the love and faith that Jesus taught. The reign of God over all powers and principalities is the epitome of Jesus’s claim to a Godly vision for the world.”
David Baker
Baker also has experience with new church development, having served as the organizing pastor in 2005 of Living Peace Church in Ladysmith, Va. The church plant did not survive. From 2008 to 2013, he served as associate pastor of Hyde Park Presbyterian Church of Tampa, Fla., and for the next two years served as stated supply pastor of Woodlawn Presbyterian Church of St. Petersburg, Fla., overseeing the church’s redevelopment efforts (the success of the redevelopment is in question, since no statistical reports have been filed since 2010).
Along with pastoral duties, Baker has shown an entrepreneurial edge, having started Baker Sales Association in 2007 and Internet Outreach Experts in 2013. Both online businesses show his facility with both technology and business leadership. Most recently, he has served as Stated Clerk and Director of Communications for Tampa Bay Presbytery.
“Our churches are dying and our Mid Councils are suffering as they do,” according to Baker. “Despite a popular narrative, this is not primarily due controversies related to GA actions; for every church that has been dismissed in the last 10 years, almost 2 more have closed due to merger, lack of members, or other reasons related to decline.”
The election will be held Friday, June 24.
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“Our churches are dying and our Mid Councils are suffering as they do,” according to Baker. “Despite a popular narrative, this is not primarily due controversies related to GA actions; for every church that has been dismissed in the last 10 years, almost 2 more have closed due to merger, lack of members, or other reasons related to decline.”
I disagree. The same Theological Liberalism that is the impetus for Evangelical congregations to seek denominational reaffiliation is the root cause of dying churches in the PC(USA) and other denominations. Theological Liberalism teaches that God is not as wrathful as the Bible makes Him out to be, sin is not as objectionable in His sight as the Bible makes it out to be, that Heaven is not as exclusive as the Bible makes it out to be, and that Christ did not pay the penalty for anyone’s sin upon the Cross. Well did H. Richard Niehbuhr write that in Theological Liberalism, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
While Theological Liberalism has goals that are fundamentally at odds with Classical Reformed Theology (as expressed in Calvin, Westminster, Hodge, Warfield, etc.), which alienates Evangelical Presbyterians, it also would rob evangelism efforts of any compelling reason why anyone should be a Christian, holding non-Christian religions and philosophies on par with Christianity. Thus, whereas most Christian denominations are declining in membership, denominations that have given themselves over to Theological Liberalism, like the PC(USA) are declining at a much faster rate than more Evangelical denominations, such as the PCA or the SBC, while the number of Christians in America is growing, owing largely to the growth of non-denominational churches.
Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and Other Faiths Continue to Grow – http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
FactChecker: Are All Christian Denominations in Decline?
“The percentage of people identifying as Protestant has declined since the 1970s while the total number of Protestants has increased (62 percent of Americans identified as Protestant in 1972 and only 51 percent did so in 2010). Yet because of the population increase in the U.S., there were 28 million more Protestants in 2010 than in 1972.”