The Presbyterian Panel, the church's ongoing survey, found that most members, elders, and pastors agree with this statement. They want real standards, and they want the church to mean them. I think the vagueness about what any mainline church believes is one of the key factors preventing most mainliners from evangelizing. If asked the reasonable question, "Well, what do Presbyterians [or other mainline church members] believe?" many mainliners are stuck for an answer.
The silver lining of the Peace, Unity, and Purity report controversy may be that the church will establish some clear signposts of what it believes. This will help those being evangelized, skeptics, and committed members alike.
Most Presbyterians support the main points of the PUP report. What we need to do now is clarify the standards the church really does believe in. This includes clearly supporting our current constitution, as well as the new emphasis on letting the locals decide essentials whenever practical.
For more of my analysis of what the Panel says about PUP, go to the Presbyterian Outlook article here.
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3 comments:
Which Presbyterian Panel report are you referring to? The ones I looked at did not seem to have the figures you cited in the Outlook article.
I'm sure I'm just looking in the wrong place.
Nice article, by-the-way.
I was using data from the Panel that was surveyed March-to-May of this year. It has not been published yet. I am grateful to Research Services for letting me analyse it.
We most certainly as Christians need to know what we believe, why we believe it, and how to communicate it clearly. That is the aim of my blogspot.
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