An Unnoticed War

Pastor Tom Willcox

 Brad blew across the top of his coffee and took a small, tentative sip as he gazed out at the land around his home. The coffee was still too hot to drink but tasted too good to put down. Brad took another sip off of the top, part of his normal morning ritual. As he sat and sipped and gazed out on the land around his home Brad thought again,

 “Lord, what is happening? Why is everything changing? How could things get to this point without anyone noticing? What is going to happen to us? What are we supposed to do?”

 This line of questioning was also becoming a part of Brad’s normal morning ritual. For Brad, the questions were becoming more numerous and more serious. He didn’t feel any closer to having any answers however. As time went by Brad wondered if, or rather when the war would engulf this land, his home and Brad himself.

 Brad had been glad for his close friend Randy when he heard the first reports from him about the new school and his new community. Randy liked the school but it was the new community that had occupied most of his reports to Brad in those early months. Brad envied Randy’s early experience in his new community. It was exciting and full of life. He had described forming deep and, he thought, life-changing friendships in very short order. When he had left for school, Randy had been worried about how he would do, living so far from home. Shortly however, Randy told Brad that it was as if he had found the true home for which his heart had always longed.

 The disquieting morning questions had started for Brad when he had last heard from Randy. Randy’s wonderful new home, the idyllic community he had found was shattered. Randy and all of his friends were now displaced refugees. They hoped to stay together and to rebuild the community but, being homeless, they were beginning to scatter and lose touch with each other. Randy said that there was a war going on, all over the land, and that he and the others in his community did not even know about it until the war engulfed them, until it was too late.

 In the context of world history, the battle for Randy’s community was over in the blink of an eye. For Randy and the members of the community it seemed to drag on through one hellish and helpless month after another. No one in Randy’s circle of new friends had expected to have to fight for the life of their community. Even when the fighting broke out, most were in denial. “This can’t be real. It can’t be as bad as it sounds.” they thought. After all, the forces arrayed against them were not from some foreign country or terrorist organization. The community was a war with their own government. It was the government that was stripping them of their land and turning them out of their home. In a little more than a year, Randy and his community of friends were displaced and scattered refugees, victims of an unnoticed war.

 Though the names are inspired by people I admire and respect in the real world, Brad and Randy’s story is a fictitious account that illustrates an all too real if unnoticed war happening in our land. It is not about our federal government taking liberties away from our towns and cities, though perhaps it could be. The real war that this story illustrates is the war for the future of our Church, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCUSA).

 I have friends who are part of congregations that have been forcefully ejected from their faith community’s home, the church buildings and grounds, by the representatives of our denomination, the PCUSA. I have other friends who are part of congregations that have left the PCUSA with their property, but only at great expense and after a long and costly legal fight. And, I have yet other friends, including those in the first congregation that I served as a pastor, who were graciously and generously released to join another denomination with full ownership of their property.

 The war is not about property however. Property issues are often a battleground that people in the media notice. The war is for the heart and soul of the Presbyterian Church. It is a war over who is Lord, what is Truth, how does Salvation happen, and how should we live as Christians in this day and age.

 On one side of this contest for the heart of the Presbyterian Church are those who would keep us moving into an ever more “Progressive” understanding of how God’s Justice and Love inform our understanding of the Bible and of life itself in order to remain relevant to the culture around us. On the other side are those who would build upon and strengthen the Presbyterian Church’s foundation of Reformed theology, Evangelical ministry and Biblical authority as a corrective to the influences of the culture around us.

 This June representatives of Presbyteries from all over the country will gather for our next General Assembly. This General Assembly will be a national battleground in the war for the Presbyterian Church. In camps on both sides of the battleground the troops are preparing for war. Overtures to the General Assembly, the church equivalent of field artillery, are being written and submitted. Some of the overtures are about redefining our understanding of marriage and human sexuality to be more in line with the changes in our society. Other overtures, the counter-artillery fire, are being written and submitted to restore and strengthen the more traditional and orthodox understandings of sex and marriage. Still other overtures have to do with how congregations and the denomination relate to each other, especially in times of dispute or when a congregation chooses to leave the denomination.

 This General Assembly could radically redefine the church and the battlefield for generations to come. Or, it could be one massive fizzle, with little lasting effect. Most likely, we will see some “wins” and some “losses” for each side. The net result will then nudge the Presbyterian Church farther along the Progressive end of the spectrum or it will nudge it back toward the Reformed/Evangelical end.

 All this should inspire us to ask the Lord and each other the same kind of questions that Brad was asking at the beginning of this article,

 “Lord, what is happening? Why is everything changing? How could things get to this point without anyone noticing? What is going to happen to us? What are we supposed to do?”

 More than just asking questions however, we should find our answers together. We should become informed, both individually and as a church family. We should clarify where we stand in this contest. And, we should plan our course of action. In this era of the Presbyterian Church’s history and of First Presbyterian Church of Branson’s history, we should not be students alone. Worse, we must not be victims. Instead, we must be among those who shape and make that history.

 For the Lion and for the Lamb,

 For additional information:

http://www.pfrenewal.org  (I particularly found Ken Bailey’s article interesting. Ken is a former colleague and acquaintance of mine from Shenango Presbytery)

 http://www.layman.org/Home.aspx

 http://storage.cloversites.com/presbyteryofsantabarbara/documents/approriateresponse.pdf (download of a paper written by the Presbytery of Santa Barbara, CA in 2007)

 http://oga.pcusa.org/section/ga/ga (Information regarding the General Assembly from the Presbyterian Church)

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