Roughly 100,000 Presbyterians want a new paradigm of "being the Church" because in their current or, for some, former denominational home, they feel they cannot be faithful to Christ.
"It is our belief that we live at the very precipice of a new moment in history when God is yet again reforming and reshaping His church as He has done in the days of old," said the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver, senior pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church Pittsburgh.
The conservative New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC) has offered churches that are discontent with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) several ways to get on with their mission - the Great Commission - as they wrestle with conflict in the national church.
Already, 46 churches of NWAC's 180 congregations have voted to leave the PC(USA) over the denomination's liberal direction on Scripture and theology, according to The Layman, a conservative Presbyterian publication. And according to a list made public this week of congregations that have joined a newly created presbytery, 16 have voted to realign with the New Wineskins-Evangelical Presbyterian Church Transitional Presbytery, which was created by the smaller and more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church in June.
The presbytery, also referred to as a "support network," was inaugurated Tuesday during NWAC's fourth convocation in Fair Oaks, Calif.
"New Wineskins is not just about leaving one denomination for another," said Weaver, also co-moderator of the NWAC. "In fact, I would suggest to you it's not about denominations at all. It's about the new thing that God is doing in our midst and the desire to get on with being a truly evangelical and Presbyterian missional church."
The New Wineskins network representing about 100,000 Presbyterians was formed in 2001 after the General Assembly of the PC(USA) would not affirm the singular saving Lordship of Jesus Christ. Conservative Presbyterians began discussing what a church in the 21st century and faithful to Christ would look like as they tried to rediscover their Reformed and Presbyterian roots.
Further controversy was stirred in the PC(USA) when the denomination adopted a resolution in 2006 that gave some leeway to churches for homosexual ordination.
The claims of truth "have been reduced to mere opinions and morality adds up to no more than your particular set of personal preferences. Many Presbyterians really believe that God says nothing other than what we put in His mouth," the Rev. Noel Anderson, executive pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Bakersfield, Calif., told more than 400 people at the Oct. 28-30 convocation.
"In the PC(USA), we no longer are united by clear confessions or doctrines but, instead, we tolerate each other and celebrate the unity of polity and property. Property is the new confession," he added.
The conservative bunch was done trying to bring about change for an organization that had only resisted it, Weaver explained as he described the birth and growth of the NWAC.
It was now time to "design a new expression" which was really an old expression of an evangelical and Reformed Presbyterian faith, said Weaver.
Their dream was to be a church that functioned more as a missions agency than a regulatory agency and a church that "unashamedly without any hesitation or reservation would profess Jesus Christ as the only way, the only truth and the only life and that no one would come to the Father but by him," Weaver highlighted. Continue >>
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