Confusion At All Levels

Since the PCUSA's deletion of its "fidelity and chastity" requirement for ordination, confusion reigns at most every level of the denomination.  I know, the Fellowship of Presbyterians offered four alternatives for congregations to ponder: stay and seek reform, leave and fight in court for your property, form a new denomination or presbyeries within presbyteries, etc.  But those choices only lead, at this point, to more spintering and more confusion.  Just read the numerous blogs and subsequent post/responses and you easily see how confusion reigns.

Small congregations with severely limited resources have little choice but to stay in the PCUSA.  They don't have the funds to fight in court for their property and the large churches aren't going to 'fund' them.  Medium size congregations dont' want to exhaust the funds they might have to engage in court fights.  Hostile presbyteries, who care only for protecting their boundaries and funds, will make life miserable for any congregation with limited resources that seeks to leave.  Congregations of all sizes have at least a percentage of members who favor the 'progressive' wing and  will vote NOT to leave, thus splintering the local church and producing ill-will at home.  More overtures will land in the General Assembly's 2012 agenda seeking to overturn the 2010 vote on the 10-A amendment, or create presbyteries within presbyteries, etc.

Pastors of congregations with limited resources will fear loss of or drastically reduced income.  Pastors of congregations with great resources will make sure they are protected in any new venture, thus leaving the smaller church pastors on their own and 'out on a limb'.  Presbytery executives will follow the lead of the power-brokers in their presbytery and allow the attacks on smaller churches considering leaving the PCUSA. 

Meanwhile, higher judicatores will face increasingly shrinking dollars.  (The only action that got the attention of the hierarchy was the massive designating of benevolent dollars.)  Mission dollars will be increasingly directed to para-church or independent mission organizations, thus straining our already strapped international missions ministries.

It's just a mess!  And the immediate future promises a greater mess church-wide.

For many, at present, there ares no clear-cut choices, only to leave and give up property and shelve local history, leave and fight court battles, wait for the Fellowship to propose even more options and wait to see if a new denomination is formed and what options/choices that offers.

I was birthed, nurtured, educated and ordained by the PCUS/PCUSA.  I have no plans nor desire to leave the PCUSA.  I grieve over the present state and the ill-advised decisions that brought us this mess.  Now retired, I have little influence other than encouraging those pastors under stress and praying for the Holy Spirit to raise up some wise, courageous voices to lead us out of this 'mess' that is quickly becoming messier.

Do I have hope?  Of course I do, yet I believe it will be DECADES before clarity and resolution is achieved.  By then I will be in the Church Triumphant.  Thanks be to God.