None of these hopes are unique to the FOP and ECO. All of these hopes exist in the current PCUSA and are openly expressed at other events like NEXT church, a similar in-gathering of Presbyterians who are theologically progressive. What radically differentiates the FOP and ECO from other efforts is the culture they are seeking... Continue Reading

And last week’s lightning at York, as the Church of England continued to debate the ordination of female bishops, will do the same. We actually don’t need a bolt of lightning to tell us that such debates within the Church are debates about the nature of God and the status of the Bible.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing is one of Charles Wesley’s most famous hymns. The punctuation is critical. The herald angels sang “Hark!”–as in “behold” or “listen up”–when they approached the shepherds keeping watch o’er their flocks by night. They were not singing, “Hark the Herald!” The Christmas story would be less glorious with the angels singing about themselves.

Dobson resigned from a teaching position at NorthPointe Christian School in 2008 amid fallout from a Discovery Channel program in which he appeared. The program questioned Jesus’ birthplace and whether there are truths in the Gnostic gospels

The proposal says the financial settlement must enable the congregation "to carry on its desired mission post-dismissal with its property intact." The settlement can't make the presbytery responsible for any debt. A majority of the congregation must approve the settlement, as must a majority of the presbytery.

Imagine Christ stepping onto the floor of the assembly. Would we yield him 90 seconds at the microphone (the normal time allotted to commissioners on the assembly floor)? That was all it took at key moments in his ministry for him to spell out his first priorities for the church: the Great Commandment and the... Continue Reading

Multisite churches have grown from fewer than 200 in 2001 to 1,500 in 2006 to an estimated 3,000 in 2009 to more than 5,000 today. In comparison, U.S. megachurches have grown from about 50 in 1970 to about 1,650 in 2012 in North America.     The number of congregations that host worship services at... Continue Reading

We, the Board of Trustees, affirm these statements and commit to the students, staff and faculty our intention to provide governance which stands true and upholds this commitment. It is our desire that Erskine Theological Seminary continues to be a distinct seminary which men and women can attend and know that they will be instructed in the things of Jesus Christ, His Church and His mission.

Pastors are neither generic nor ideal. They are not universally nor uniformly gifted. There is no redundancy or irrelevance in the body of Christ. These are individual people created for a specific time for specific “works, which God prepared in advance” (Eph. 2:10).

They didn’t know what Calvinism was, but they nevertheless wanted to know what my friend felt about it. His answer to their question was open and honest. And it led to his being able to open the Bible with the committee and lead them through his own beliefs directly from the scripture. After hours of teaching from my friend, the committee finally asked him, “Can you please come to our church and teach us more about this?”