Rex Espiritu - Pastor.Espiritu.net

the called, solitary flight... of the way, the truth, the life

...can perhaps be caught and held in a picture....

like a photograph of a bird in flight... Such is the solitary vocation. For, of all.... the solitary knows least where they are going, and yet more sure, for there is one thing they cannot doubt: they travel where God is leading them. That is precisely why the solitary doesn't know the way. And that too is why, to most others, the way is something of a scandal. (Thomas Merton)

The Solitary Vocation

...can perhaps be caught and held in a picture....

like a photograph of a bird in flight... Such is the solitary vocation. For, of all.... the solitary knows least where they are going, and yet more sure, for there is one thing they cannot doubt: they travel where God is leading them. That is precisely why the solitary doesn't know the way. And that too is why, to most others, the way is something of a scandal. (Thomas Merton)

On Violence [between Conservatives and Liberals] in the Church

[And] The Church’s Response (or the Lack Thereof) -- excerpts listed below from The Uprooted Church by The Rev. Dr. Jin S. Kim, Founding Pastor, The Church of All Nations in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and Chair, Advisory Board for the Cross Cultural Alliance of Ministries (CCAM) www.CCAMpcusa.org

I (Rex) attended this year's PCUSA Multicultural Ministry and inaugural Church Unbound conferences in San Antonio, Texas and Montreat, North Carolina, respectively, where Jin Kim spoke and led workshops toward congregational transformation, particularly with regard to multicultural issues in missional ministry. Jin and I had met several years ago while I was at Princeton Theological Seminary where I took a course on missional theology with Professor Darrell Guder. At the time Jin was serving as President of Presbyterians for Renewal (PFR), I was on the pastoral staff at a church in southern New Jersey whose senior pastor has served on PFR's Board of Directors. My sense of call in discerning the Lord's leading upon my life in pastoral, multicultural, and missional ministry has been admittedly influenced by Jin's sharing of his journey in faith. I recently read this piece written by him, entitled The Uprooted Church, from which the following excerpts challenged my own notions concerning the current state of the PCUSA. Much of what he writes here resonates with my wrestlings on this subject matter. Jin relates:

As a lifelong Presbyterian, I ask this question to my church: What is the Reformed tradition’s answer to the massive alienation experienced by modern peoples? In this globalized and postmodern world, is our intimate weddedness to rationalism also not our undoing? There’s nothing wrong with rationalism in and of itself – the church has always been rational from the beginning. But the early church was also deeply sacramental and mystical, maintaining the balance between mystery, spirituality and rationality. Unless the Reformed movement recovers in a significant way the sacramentality of the Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox Church, and the pentecostality of the African American and the global church, there is little hope for the future of mainline Protestantism. I see the healthy, sustainable church as one with the three legs of sacramentality, pentecostality and rationality...

What answer do the so called “Conservative/Evangelicals” and the “Liberal/Progressives” have to this dilemma of the Reformed church sitting on a one-legged stool? Are they even asking the right questions? The evidence is all around us that mainline Protestantism is collapsing in North America. And what is our response? To hurl vitriolic accusations that the other is unfaithful to the gospel. The ship has struck a massive iceberg and is about to go down, and we are arguing about who broke the china. The debate continues to get more and more caustic as both sides become more and more desperate for victory. Even if one side prevailed, is it not obvious that it will be a Pyrrhic victory at best?

http://www.ccampcusa.org/resources/The+Uprooted+Church+-Jin+S.+Kim+11-07-06.pdf