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Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment: A Comment

April 30, 2009 By dtatusko 1 Comment

I finally got around to a careful read through of Beau Weston’s essay Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment which has received quite a bit of criticism from Presbymergent folks with whom I regularly interact. I started posting a couple of quick blog posts here and here, but they turned into a far bigger critical analysis. I post this here with the hope that it will 1) help the various conversations, and 2) save others some time in their analyses as I quite frankly do not perceive this discussion to be of the greatest importance to the life of the church in this hour of our life together. My reasoning for this judgment is, I think, clear enough in this document. Freely distribute to other discussion groups and presbyteries in the church as is useful and helpful.

Peace.

On Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment: A Comment – Andrew Tatusko

Filed Under: Churches, Culture, Leadership, Podcast, Polity

The Presbymergent Mission

March 14, 2009 By dtatusko 10 Comments

I had posted this during the last day of the Presbymergent CG meeting and have received very positive feedback thus far. I am opening it up for hopefully further conversation and exploration in order to gain a sense of common purpose in common language as PODS hopefully begin to gather and coordinate activities. This is its edited form. The original can be seen here, but with very little difference.

I have been involved in a discussion surrounding Presbymergent for over a year now. The term is a combination of ”Presbyterian” (as in Presbyterian USA) and ”emergent” as in emergent Christianity. As most nascent organizations of like-minded people, it has begun as something with a lot of energy, a lot of ideas, and ideas of structure, but no real structure until recently. But in a pragmatic way of looking at the world, structure is something that tends to follow clear ideas rather than come prior to it. So my own Presbyterianism, a denomination named after its political structure rather than a founder (Lutheran) or a theology (Baptist) or ecclesiology (Catholic), causes a continual problem. Organizational structure comes prior to clarity of good ideas and that structure assumes that it has already been formed by good ideas; or, it has been formed with good enough ideas to persist.

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Filed Under: Open Source, PC(USA), Polity, Presbymergent, Theology Tagged With: Christianity, Emergent, mission, Presbymergent

Emergent for the Small Church

July 21, 2008 By dtatusko 7 Comments

Shawn Coons raises an important question or two about membership and mission that seemed to dovetail with a couple of emails that have gone around my own session.

This past Sunday I had the pleasure and challenge of filling in for the pastor of my church to preach and lead worship (putting that M.Div. to work). It is a classic reformed building in the style of a large raised center pulpit, stained glass windows, etc. You have been at a church just like it and perhaps preach in one on a regular basis.

Since my wife and I have been going to this church, now for the past two years, it has been in a rebuilding stage after a less than amicable stage in its development about a year or two prior to our arrival. It is strange because looking around at the congregation demographics of regular attenders, an entire generation is missing. There are a lot of golden agers and a lot fo really young families, including my own, but there is no youth group. We have a lot of small kids, but no real high school age group yet. Our pastor’s vision has been to rebuild what had been damaged.

The weekly attendance is normal for what constitutes most membership roles in the PCUSA. We get about 100-120 each week over three services. As of 2006, almost half of all PCUSA congregations have a membership of under 150. There is something vital and important about the small church ministry that in some ways seems anachronistic in our culture of larger than life spectacle and consumerism. In many communities, such as the one in which I live, the small church still plays a vital and central socio-cultural role.

Yet there I stood, towering above this modest, yet normatively sized congregation behind this massive edifice to bring the Word of God. I felt distant and very alone up there. In short the architecture did not serve its purpose, it actually betrayed its purpose to a degree since it physically spread people apart.

As we continue to build and restructure the identity of my small church, there seems to be something of vitality to the ideas of being incarnational, missional, and non-hierarchical (emergent buzz words) to fostering community development. In many ways, the house church model would seem to cater well to a small church seeking to build and reimagine itself. What I find it hard to do is to wrap our community in these ideas that are so often socio-culturally alien to the expected form of community and worship that people tend to bring to the table namely, the pastor as the traditional head of the church, traditional use of architecture in worship, and on and on. Postmodernity is miles away from these types of communities.

So what are your thoughts? What can the emergent ideas do for smaller congregations such as my own that are trying to rebuild and re-imagine their roles as an important part of the community? What can emergent ideas do in the midst of the rather foundational lives of the local residents? How can these ideas bridge clear generational expectations by continuing to respect the elders while at the same time seek out and be vital to younger generations?

Filed Under: Churches, PC(USA), Polity