Emerging Leadership Needs in the PC(USA)

So, I attended a discussion of leadership needs in the Presbyterian church with the Presidents of every seminary.  It was an interesting night with lots of big talk, of bold action in the future of the PC(USA).  This was good to hear but not very deep.

The discussion quickly turned to the usual debate of "others."  Personally, this is a waste of time.  There is no point in trying to hash out a a definition of "multiculturalism" and trace the history of the word.  People today are more aware of the differences in the people around them.  The subjectivity of human experience leads many to the recognition of value in all of humanity.  The debate then over multiculturalism is not an issue.  The issue is the old white guys, a.k.a. presidents of PC(USA) seminaries, coming up with agreeable way of talking about changes they cannot stop or slow.  The PC(USA) is losing people for a number of reasons but "multiculturalism" is not one of the reasons.  It is a characteristic of the church.

In the midst of the attempt at defining a Presbyterian way of dealing with "multiculturalism," the President of Princeton Theological Seminary remarked, "I am a Brit and we are dealing multiculturalism in a different way.  We do not have the shameful past that you do."  WHAT? The British don't have a shameful past of slavery and colonialism? This blew me away.  The President of Princeton Theological Seminary was disregarding his own countries history to point out that multiculturalism an issue for Americans not for the British.

The biggest issue with the discussion was that it was trying to come up with a way of talking about "others." And not finding ways to draw them into the church.  As long as there is an us/them nature to the way Christians talk, people will be pushed away.  PC(USA) must update itself, and this can talk many forms but, at the heart the Presbyterian church, and many other churches, must be a way of speaking to the situations in which people live.  We must recognize the humanity of all and build our churches, and leaders, to address the needs of humanity.