LET’S LOOK AT PRESBYTERIANS
This is the second stage of guiding your congregation about how to respond to conflict in the church. You should continue to email the entire congregation and not just those who participated in the first phase. If a number of people participated in the first phase, there may be some buzz around the conversation by now. There will be those who don’t actively participate but will follow the conversation as it develops.
In the first stage, you invited the congregation to play a game testing their awareness of major historic church conflicts and their causes. The next step is to bring it a little closer to home by looking at conflict within the Presbyterian denomination. You can get the type of information I’m sharing here by using a search engine like Google. By about the third stage of your interaction, after their interest is peeked, you might suggest that this is a source of further information.
Begin by reminding them that you are examining the area of conflict in the denomination. Last time you noted that conflict has been a part of the church from the beginning, and you specifically looked at some major historic splits in the Body of Christ.
PRESBYTERIAN GAMES
In this part of the game, you are looking at the Presbyterian Church in this country. Currently within the United States some of the major Presbyterian denominations are:
A. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
B. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church
C. The Presbyterian Church in America
D. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church
E. ECO–A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
F. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
G. The Bible Presbyterian Church
H. The Reformed Presbyterian Church
I. The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church
Each of these denominations was established as a result of conflict over some issues about which people were deeply concerned. Your task is to look at the issues as listed below and see if you can match the issues with some of the nine denominations listed. Some of the issues may be associated with more than one of the denominations.
ISSUES THAT HAVE SPLIT US
Some of the issues that contributed to separation into different denominations were:
- Biblical Authority: Is the Bible the inerrant word of God?
- Confessions of Faith: Are we guided by several confessions or should the Westminster Confession take priority?
- Are there Essential Tenets of Faith to which all ordained officers must adhere?
- Is the property of a local congregation held in trust for the denomination or belong to the local congregation?
- Should women be ordained to the ministry?
- Should gay people be ordained to the ministry?
- Should same sex couples be permitted to marry?
- Does final authority on disputes rest with the local congregation or the denomination?
- Should the primary emphasis of the church be evangelism?
- Can everyone be saved or only a select few?
- Can only Christians be saved?
MATCHING ISSUES & DENOMINATIONS
See if you can identify which of the eleven beliefs are held by the Presbyterian denominations listed?
Make your list of denominations—A through I—and following each alphabetical letter identify by number the issues that you think are essential for that denomination.
Make an additional list of issues that are important for you. This will be for a later exchange.
Send your response to me and I will share a summary of your responses.
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That is the end of that phase. Next blog we look at conflicts that currently cause tension in churches around us.
