Vest was asked if he accepted orthodox doctrine on for example, the Trinity and the atonement. Vest answered opaquely, “I would not say that I’m not orthodox.”  When pressed about whether he accepted the Nicene Creed, he did not respond but suggested that his teaching would not be about his faith (or apparently the church’s faith!) rather he would be equipping others to share their faith.  

Presbytery of the James (PCUSA) has a plan to reverse the dramatic membership losses experienced by the mainline denominations including the PCUSA. It is funding a visiting professor of evangelism for four years at Union Seminary in Richmond who, in addition to teaching the next generation of seminarians, will visit congregations and equip them to do evangelism.  But, the evangelism that this visiting professor will espouse isn’t the biblical Good News and therefore will likely not produce an increase in membership but instead contribute to the denomination’s further decline.

John Vest, a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School and McCormick Seminary, has been called to the position.  Vest observes that while he grew up as a “functional fundamentalist,” he was “born again as a progressive” while at the University of Chicago.  In his statement to the presbytery at its October meeting, Vest declared: “God is not an idea.  God is not the words we use to talk about God.  God is not the words the Bible used to talk about God. Ultimately, all of the words we use to describe God are metaphors, incomplete and provisional.”  He posits that “God is the love that we share with each other, the love that binds us together in a complex network of life.”

At the luncheon presentation following the presbytery meeting, Vest was asked if he accepted orthodox doctrine on for example, the Trinity and the atonement. Vest answered opaquely, “I would not say that I’m not orthodox.”  When pressed about whether he accepted the Nicene Creed, he did not respond but suggested that his teaching would not be about his faith (or apparently the church’s faith!) rather he would be equipping others to share their faith.

Earlier in the presbytery meeting Vest invited attendees to write what they thought the Gospel was in two sentences.  Then Vest invited people to share that statement with those near them. He laughingly concluded that the results showed that there are many expressions of what people believe the Gospel to be.

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