PCUSA: Bad stewardship

According to figures published at the time, the cost of a General Assembly in 2002 was around $5 million. I don’t suppose the cost has gone down. What did the church get for its money in 2006? What did the long hours and hard work of the 217th G.A. (official view, alternative view) actually yield? An end run around the constitution that will further splinter the denomination, tinkering with the language of the Trinity, backtracking on a dumb attempt to punish Israel for Palestinian terrorism, and a belated awareness that killing a viable baby during a partial-birth abortion might be a bad thing to do. (The PCUSA response to that discovery, of course, is to continue financial support of unrestricted abortion “rights”.) This is stewardship? This is what the church is called to do?

I don’t question the need for an organization the size of the PCUSA to occasionally get together to affirm itself, do business with itself, and get an emotional lift out of the whole process. By all accounts, Wal-Mart managers and Mary Kay Cosmetics salespeople do the same thing. What I do question is how much of this business ever translates into actual souls saved. I’m no expert in the cost of foreign missions, but some quick calculations suggest that $5 million for a biennial confab such as the G.A. could have supported at least 65 foreign and domestic missionary families for two years.

Paul’s first letter to Timothy (6:20-21) included an admonition to “guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.” The PCUSA should pay attention to such wise and Godly counsel as it plans the 218th G.A. in 2008, but will no doubt turn away from it as it has turned away from most of the Bible.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at 11:23 am and is filed under PCUSA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.