The comments in the article are among the most painful things I’ve read. Though I have a few trusted friends who are part of the Board of Directors, with comments such as those by Elder Hamm, it is hard not to feel that our livelihoods are being managed by people who don’t make the same connection regarding life in the Body of Christ as I do. Elder Hamm’s statement: “We had no idea it would be our blood” strikes me as the worst kind of arrogance. If we are truly part of the same Body of Christ, shouldn’t there be a continual awareness that whenever one member of the body bleeds, we all bleed?

It is incredible to me that Elder Hamm, who lives in the tonier part of North Dallas in a nearly 5,000 square foot home, would make this statement. (NOTE: Directors’ addresses are publicly noted in Board documents and home sizes are easily found on Zillow.com) Even more incredible is that he would then follow with a description of his “secular” story, stating: “I have been covered by a health care plan for 43 years. If you look at the secular world, that $5,700 is a bargain.” I would like to invite him and his family to live for just a month as many of us who faithfully serve the majority of congregations in the PCUSA. While we lead Sessions and guide Sunday School teachers, we live in small homes and apartments, making do with three kids in one bedroom. While we put in a month’s worth of 50-60 hour weeks because three parishioners died and the boiler blew up, we also have to struggle with old cars that have to be sidelined until we can save enough to pay for the repairs. While we preach and teach and encourage our congregations to live into the call to do justice, we find ourselves in an unjust world where we can’t afford to send our children to college and where one major health problem means taking on years of debt just to pay off the lifetime deductibles.

The appropriate phrase isn’t: “There will be blood.” There already IS blood. Our young clergy families who are just getting started in staff positions and solo pastorates in underserved communities and others among us who for our entire ministry have understood God’s call to be that of service to small congregations are already stretched too far with extraordinary seminary loans and simple costs of everyday life with salaries that never come close to what a partner at Ernst and Young earns. If true comparisons are to be made, Elder Hamm might consider trying to live on the pension of a pastor who never made more than $50K a year and who spent the first decade or two of his/her career earning less than $35K. In churches which can only afford to pay these salaries, there is no question where the burden of the increased insurance costs will go. The families who need the most help will be the ones who will suffer.

Of all the battles we have engaged over ordination standards, women’s involvement in the leadership of the church and confessional interpretations, I have stayed true to the denomination that raised me and our theology which has filled me with hope. I have believed it is more important to seek unity in the midst of diversity and that our struggles have bound us more closely together in Christ’s Body. For the first time, I am beginning to wonder if that is true.

Rev. Debra Avery

To be fair, the Board of Pensions cannot be expected to keep providing and ever expanding array of services without expecting someone to pay for it. The question on the table is who. The reality is that we are a denomination of small to medium sized churches. The essential choice facing us is, “will we balance our budget on the backs of those least able to shoulder the burden, our ministers and their families? Or are we going to expect individual congregations to up the ante?”  Here’s an idea: Restructure per-capita payments to include healthcare costs; that is certain to widen the scope of the discussion.

Ultimately, this question goes to the heart of our understanding of what it means to be part of a covenant community. We have to protect our small churches. We have to protect our ministers and their families. This is what it means to be a connectional church.

Paul Masters

Well it is incumbent on us to be civil and seek solutions.
What the church is experiencing is across the board---government, business, teachers, policemen, etc. The cost of health care is out of control and we are not  addressing the real problems. In addition, we have millions who are uninsured and in peril if they get sick or have an accident. The Brill article in Time a few weeks ago addresses some of the problem.
In sum, we do need to move to a universal health care system, such as Medicare for everyone.
An anecdotal story. For two years I was fully retired and on Medicare. I had annual physicals and blood tests. My co-pay was less than 100 dollars per test and Dr. visit. I returned to full time work 6 months ago and went back on the Board plan. My co-pays have increased to more than five times that figure. The reason is Medicare negotiates costs and drug benefits, and the Board's insurer does not negotiate as well as Medicare. Obamacare is a beginning, but we still have a long way to go. It is still a problem that our nation spends 18 percent of GDP on health care, while most industrialized nations spend half that, and with better results.
I extend an apology to the BOP members who feel they have been abused. That is not good for the church or for the service they provide. We can do and should do better.

Art Seaman

I tried to post a comment here, but it became too long.  It's on my blog instead: http://www.improvisewip.wordpress.com

Rev. Debra Avery

So too, might we agree that benefit reduction possibilities should also be on the table?  Just as "real cost" needs to be a consideration so too should coverage content itself.  Let's make the plan workable all the way around.

Glen Hallead

Is there no option for or even statistics on what the elimination of a maximum effective salary (cap) might accomplish?  Why should the highly paid be assessed at a lower level (reduced percentage of actual effective salary)?  Does this not create something a a regressive participation structure?

Glen Hallead

So too, might we agree that benefit reduction possibilities should also be on the table.  Just as "real cost" needs to be a consideration so too should coverage content itself.  Let's make the plan workable all the way around.

Glen Hallead

Option B, would be a huge financial burden for any struggling middle class family.

Carlos Malave

I think that the criticism is as much about the process as it was about the actual proposal. Speaking as a mother of three, I find it hard to believe that we cannot brainstorm more/better ideas. I know that is what is now taking place, but I get the feeling that without the outcry more options would not have been considered, and I find that to be bad customer service.

Katy Stenta

I am sorry Mr. Hamm and others felt personally attacked. However, when one launches a scud missile such as the October proposal, without consultation with plan members or congregations, one has to expect blow-back. In many ways, the Board does not seem to have an understanding of minimally compensated ministers and congregations struggling for survival. I do appreciate the difficult position of the Board and appreciate the Board's effort to maintain a workable healthcare system. I will be anxious to see what proposal(s) come out of this meeting.

Wayne Yost

The BOP/PCUSA try as it does, still finds itself in a demographic/member cohort box.  The relative age, health, and status of its members will not change over time to bend the cost curve. In fact those metrics only get worse from a insurance/actuarial perspective going forward.  Too many oldens, not enough young'ins. As long as the BOP remains in that  box its options are limited and few. And quite frankly health care costs and risk as a pass-though down to the individual has been a trend in the private and public sector for decades.

  But that does not absolve the BOP from seeking any and all options.  One breaks out of the box by either seeking economies of scale through merger or acquisition of other similar health care plans. One breaks out of the box by tapping new sources of membership across allied professions and positions, one breaks out of that box by seeking all options in the health care sectors to bend the curve. Those points expanded have been covered in others posts on this issue.

  The BOP and in essence the PCUSA comes down to this.  The requirement of the employing church to pay into the system regardless of the state or situation of the employee. Options 1 though 723 will always assume church A will continue to remit funds to the BOP regardless of the means or place one gets health care.  I call this the iron chain that more or less keeps the entire system afloat.  If placed against a wall an employing church or entity, or individual, will always act according to their perceived best self-interest, to the expense of the larger institutional entity.  Example A is of course the entire issue of per capita and property held in trust.  If  the final options become so onerous, inflexible, or just plain over bearing to the employing organization then some, many, who knows,  will simply quit paying dues period and seek other options.  As I have applied the logic to the matter of per capita and property the same applies here, it is a Constitution, not a suicide pact.

  If at the end of the day BOP options on health care either stop or no longer enables church A to hire a pastor or force church B to choose between clergy health care for a pastor of fix a roof, or forces the pastor who seeks to church the church to dive in the social-welfare pool (state run health-cafe exchanges/Obamacare post 2014) My response remains, shame, shame, shame. 

Peter Gregory

Rev. Masters:
I respectfully suggest that you should find a copy of Rev. Atwood's book and read it all the way through before you angrily denounce him, accusing of carrying a log in his eye, and especially before you accuse him of hate speech. The book is nothing of the sort. I am in the middle of reading it right now, and I have never read anything before that speaks so powerfully of the grieving heart of the Prince of Peace before our violence-loving culture the way that Atwood's book does. One thing you accuse him of, based merely on this review, is his accusing others of idolatry. He does no such thing. It seems to me that he's very respectful toward individual gun owners, being a gun owner himself. What he does do is demonstrate how our American gun culture at its core is idolatrous. To me, that is so obvious I wonder that someone had to write a book to point it out. In my view, only willful denial and/or refusal to consider the evidence that the Gun Empire is engaged in a form of idolatrous religion could allow anyone to think otherwise. But regardless of whether you end up agreeing with Atwood or not, you really should read the book before lashing out at him the way you have done here.

Don Plummer

By publishing the article on throwing out the Confessions you opened another hornets’ nest as demonstrated in the February 4^th letter by James C. Goodloe IV.  And now in this issue you yourself editorialize on the “Resurrection Generation.”  In all three cases misunderstanding reigns supreme.  These pieces evidence a serious lack of consciousness, still in 2013, of the major error that the church confronts today:  destructive attacks are no longer acceptable dialogue.  For a very long time they were part and parcel of human dialogue. They can no longer be accepted as legitimate critique.  We say that we believe in the Holy Spirit operating in the human arena.  Each of us on all sides of controversy sees that guidance.  The Outlook should clean up its act promptly and permanently.

                For half a century we have battled the myopic residue of the early 20^th century.  Then our Western culture was in the middle of a great transition in historical understanding that left many unanswered questions.  But the one which captured the conservative mind was the failure to understand the turnaround in scientific understanding which put Galileo not in the seat of defending the Truth but of re-understanding the then elementary science as method rather than as “findings” which seemed to be consistent with the very nature of creation.  In the 19^th century, around 200 years ago, the transition from the Newtonian mechanistic worldview began in earnest and in the 20^th century, many Americans had little understanding of what had been happening for 100 years in the Western world.  These insisted on an already scientifically disqualified view, in spite of the 19^th century church struggle with Old School-New School issues.  The New Learning that is the real character of the Enlightenment was that the human mind thinks.  It does not simply mimic the past, past ideas, past entrapments in obsolete commitments, past language.  The New Learning energized John Wyclif and Jan Hus and soon Luther and Calvin moved the Christian Church into the split still maintained by autocratic opposition to Protestantism.

                Wherever opposition to a movement occurs it sets in motion a self-imposed conflict.  And so in the 1920’s the controversy of Fundamentalism forced the Presbyterian Church to energize the thoughtful people in its membership to produce a movement to correct that gross error.  I maintain that God brings good even out of evil and that is true of this error.  The church entered the mid-century with a refreshing theological vigor that energized the latent Social Gospel and brought about social changes in the United States that were long overdue.  Unfortunately, our present understanding as reactive (of now antiquated attack controversy) was not generally understood for another half century ahead.

                Unfortunately, instead of recognizing the processes available to undertake their sense of needed corrections, conservatives at the mid-century brought into the antagonism epitomized in an oil-magnate’s publication that spread fundamental error in the church.  Moreover, that counter-counter movement forced vituperation into the church’s operating language and that vicious demagoguery has poisoned the entire country in ensuing decades.

                The way to change is to put our shoulders to the wheel and enter the dialogue on change constructively.  I had thought you were moving well in that direction until this outburst of nonsense.  Your current judgment on the past half-century is sadly mistaken.  Your mistaken outmoded bias against your own generation, spreading words of error and disrespect for hundreds if not thousands of conscientious, faithful fellow Presbyterians is hardly the way forward.  Your work as editor previously suggests that something unbecoming to you triggered this outburst.  I think that you had exhibited rather good insight into the necessity for constructive language, that is, language which shows decency and respect for others.  In this cause it seems you have degraded many by the neglect evident in these three pieces.  But we are not to fall into the traps of animosity which are all too convenient.  To use more familiar language, Jesus said “Love your enemies…pray for those who despitefully use you.”  That is the King James with which I grew up and love but no longer use.  So it is with the Confessions; the Book of Confessions keeps before us our invaluable heritage, but we must not be trapped by it.  You needn’t agree with me, but it is no longer fit for Christians of all people to muddy the water.  These three unfortunate pieces in Presbyterian Outlook are inexcusable in 2013.

                I recommend my own book to you, self-published last year (see Amazon).  Out of the Cocoon will give you a thoroughly different account of the twentieth century, optimistic, pointing out the persistent work of the Holy Spirit throughout history.  I have no doubt that you will try to understand what I am trying to say here.  I am convinced from a lifetime of study and reflection that Christianity will continue to flourish.

Yours in Christ,

John Kuckuk, HR

Much like their more local cousins, the NCC, the WCC is an organization searching for meaning and purpose. Designed by purpose with a Eurocentric/western mindset it stands helpless by the move of global Christianity south and east. The center of the faith now, today is more San Paulo or Lagos, then Geneva or New York. Today, 70% of all non-RC/Orthodox Christians, globally,  are either holiness/pentecostal, unaffiliated or Morman. Movements and groups the WCC, NCC can neither comprehend or understand.  History has passed them by, much like their progressive protestant american patrons.

  As with any Papal encyclical, these documents are years in the making and will be read eventually by 7 people. At least its not in Latin.

Peter Gregory

Generational theory as applied to the church states that the typical church should have 4, to 5 different generational cohorts. Builders/WW2 to Y. Each can be thought of as a tribe, with their own vested self-interest and tendencies. Outside of the multi-staff mega church with narrow-foucs specific programming for each tribe, most coexist in small to medium churches with a single pastor, if any, and generic programming. The oldest Boomer is now 68 in 2013, with many of their parents still alive in their 90s. The church based clergy needs to be careful not to fall into the trap of being a "chaplain" to the older set, whose job it is to visit great aunt Minnie in the managed care facility weekly or spend time with uncle Ted at his kids home.  There are people called Deacons, as well as good lay programs, Christ Care, for example that should be active in this ministry to older adults.

    Again, the core job of the church is not to keep seniors or anybody else  "happy" or entertained, or content,  but to enable all to walk with Christ in a better way. Did I mention most churches have Deacons and there  are good lay programs out there to address the issues of senior care in the church.

Peter Gregory

Stories like this baffle me.  Apparently 600 smart, well-educated, sophisticated people gathered to reflect on the future of church seemingly oblivious to the fact that NEXT churches exist all around them.  Thirty years ago a new generation of creative innovators recognized that the old ways of doing church in the 19th and 20th centuries don't work any longer.  Brimming with new ideas for re-engineering church for the 21st century, they started churches in living rooms which today sit on 100-acre campuses with weekly attendance in the thousands.  Here's a suggestion for the organizers of next year's NEXT conference.  Instead of another annual exercise in insular provincialism, invite the founders and pastors of vibrant, high impact, non-oldline churches to address the conference and see what you can learn from them.  

Jim Caraher

I am putting PPL back on my "like" list because of this Christian perspective.

Mary Waddell

One of the more worse ministry and program tendency Boomers invented to cater to their views of the world has been the Balkanization of programming into various special focus groups and the general reduction of God into a much smaller god who fits easily into the consumption and consumerism of the age.  As the older mainline church continues its slow motion death process one conclusion is that their god is not too big, but that God is too small to deal with the contradictions of complexities of the rampant secularism, paganism  of the age. Lets hope Next is up to the challenge and the poor legacy we have left them.

Peter Gregory

It's certainly true, as Tom points out, that our culture, including the public media, tends to view sin and grace almost solely as "individual and personal," i.e., as "Saturday-Night" sins--favorite and safe targets of popular, shrill preachers here in East Tennessee and elsewhere--and redemption from them in the same terms.  But the profound truth that sin is far more than this is the very reason why I voted FOR 12-B. Our "struggle" is, indeed, against "cosmic powers . . ., spiritual forces of evil" (Ephesians 6:12), entrenched, demonic, often international cartels that brutalize humanity.  And yet we must admit that these same evil forces include our own tendencies, as teaching and ruling elders, to take ourselves too seriously and to lord over rather than to serve others.  
To be sure, 12-B was obviously intended by some as a clever red herring, the defeat of which would amount to a smoking gun resoundingly proving alleged PCUSA amorality.  And yet continuous acknowledgement of our proneness to stray from God's will remains a necessary characteristic for ordered ministry--and it's fully in keeping with Reformed theology, including the "Christian realism" of, for example, Reinhold Niebuhr.  It is an honest and meaningful gesture of humility before God and the Church, as is the kneeling posture of the candidate during the laying on of hands.  After the First Vatican Council, in 1870, declared that the pope, speaking ex cathedra, was infallible, the appalled English Roman Catholic Lord Acton declared, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Although no denomination is perfect, including its confessions and polity, our Reformed tradition at its best clearly comprehends this--and summons us at all times to humility and confession, along with bold words and actions in Christ's name.

Dwyn Mounger

Jack Haberer,
Great article on Dale Brubaker. To bad the Good Lord didn't create a dozen like him. Sadly, afterwards He broke the mold. My wife Bev and I have known Dale for a long,long time. Bev, since 1948, me since 1950. Bev was a member of his youth group in Waltham. I met him (and Bev Small) during church camp at Lake Geneva. If Dale hadn't brought Bev there, I may never have known her. When Dale was Exec Presbyter, he appointed me to the Stronghold Ministries. Bev and I are aware of some of his achievements you mentioned in your "Inventor of the Camp" tribute, but many are new and enlightening. I used some of them when making a case that he receive the University of Dubuque's Alumni Achievement Award, an honor he did not seek, but was given.

We frequently visit Dale in his Arizona digs the old-fashioned way, via a phone call

Jack,  I recently wrote a story for our local newspaper, relating to Dale's fondness for an iconic old barn in these parts. I think you'd enjoy reading it. Please give me your email address, and it will be sent you.

Dick Shouer