STATEMENT OF FAITH
I come to the PCUSA through ordination in the United Church of Christ, where I was baptized as a youth and ordained as an adult. Although all theological claims are provisional and finite, inadequate ways of talking about an infinite God, I can say with good conscience that I share the theological principles that define Christianity as a historical tradition and living community, namely the reality of a triune God, variously called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer; or God Beyond, God in Flesh, and God Among Us. I affirm that all three persons of the Trinity are necessarily present where any one of them is present, but that we associate particular persons with particular acts – Father or Creator with creation, giving of life, and ordering of nature, Jesus Christ the Son with redemption and transformation, and the Holy Spirit with sustaining life and ordering the lives of Christians, individually and collectively in the Church. I acknowledge a God who created and is creating still and I witness to the redemptive power of Christ’s life and death, as well as the accessibility of the divine through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, I profess the key contentions of Reformation theology that are shared by the UCC and PCUSA, including grace as a freely given gift from God which manifests through, but does not rely on, human action; the role of faith as a response to this grace; and the primacy of scripture, as well as the responsibility of Christians to read, interpret, interact with, and learn about scripture both as individuals and in community. With in mind, I’m able to maintain that the Church is simultaneously a fallible body of finite humans, which can and regularly does err, and the body of Christ on earth, a universal fellowship uniting living Christians with fellow believers across time and space. In the context of this body, both finite and eternal, errant and filled with grace, I acknowledge the sacraments of baptism and communion as a way of signifying divine grace and making spiritual realities perceptible materially, through the movement and feelings of our bodies, making them flesh in the same way the
Incarnation made God flesh in Jesus Christ.
My background in church polity necessarily begins with the congregational polity of the United Church of Christ, my home denomination. While congregational polity is different from Presbyterian polity in some ways, many of the underlying theological principles of the Reformed tradition are similar, among them the contention that Christ is the sole head of the Church, the role of gathered Christian community in discerning the will of God in a particular situation, and the right of Christians to select their leaders through processes of dialogue and voting. After having studied the PCUSA Book of Order, I appreciate some of the key differences, particularly the emphasis on shared leadership between pastor and Session (rather than congregationalism’s focus on a lay church council) and the ability of higher boards within the church to intervene in the work of lower boards. This latter strikes me as a particularly important institutional system of checking individual and group egos and fostering mutually accountable service, a sensible response to the ongoing reality of human sin in a body that is always in the process of being saved. Having read the Book of Order carefully and having talked at length with Rev. Allen Timm about some of the specific differences between UCC and PCUSA settings, I can confidently commit to following the Book of Order while serving in PCUSA settings.
Incarnation made God flesh in Jesus Christ.
My background in church polity necessarily begins with the congregational polity of the United Church of Christ, my home denomination. While congregational polity is different from Presbyterian polity in some ways, many of the underlying theological principles of the Reformed tradition are similar, among them the contention that Christ is the sole head of the Church, the role of gathered Christian community in discerning the will of God in a particular situation, and the right of Christians to select their leaders through processes of dialogue and voting. After having studied the PCUSA Book of Order, I appreciate some of the key differences, particularly the emphasis on shared leadership between pastor and Session (rather than congregationalism’s focus on a lay church council) and the ability of higher boards within the church to intervene in the work of lower boards. This latter strikes me as a particularly important institutional system of checking individual and group egos and fostering mutually accountable service, a sensible response to the ongoing reality of human sin in a body that is always in the process of being saved. Having read the Book of Order carefully and having talked at length with Rev. Allen Timm about some of the specific differences between UCC and PCUSA settings, I can confidently commit to following the Book of Order while serving in PCUSA settings.