3-D movies are all the rage.  But this May, don’t bring your 3-D glasses…come ready to look at some family movies from the point-of-view of the Bible.

This May, Friday nights at 7:00pm are movie nights at Mission Pres.

Join us and we’ll provide the popcorn, snacks and drinks.

More info in this flyer: May Family Movie Nights

A common feature of most of these proposals is some sort of de-coupling of byFaith magazine from the AC budget.  The various proposals recognize that byFaith takes up a large part of the budget and is arguably the sole reason for the budgetary shortfall each year.  On top of that, byFaith is seen as an unsuccessful effort at best – a waste of time and money at worst.

Nevertheless, I believe most in the PCA would love to have a good denominational magazine or publication of some sort.  For whatever reason – I’m not interested in exploring those reasons here – the magazine is not well received by the broader membership or leadership of the PCA.

I do believe the PCA can have a useful and successful publication.  So in the interests of offering a positive solution (after what probably seems to byFaith staff and supporters as round after round of negative criticism), and maybe even of jumpstarting a wider discussion of what we could do as a denomination, here’s a bit of brainstorming on a new approach, a sort of compilation of thoughts that have been rattling around in my head the last few days…

• I’m not good at names, but I’ll throw out as a working title PCA Connections.  It recognizes one of our chief goals and characteristics as Presbyterians – connectedness – while also referring to the primary platform that I’d propose for a new publication: the Internet.  Why a new name?  At this point, byFaith has too much baggage attached.  Also: fresh name = fresh start
• To begin with, PCA Connections would completely get rid of a print edition, at least to begin with.  Print is a radically changing, some have argued a dying, media.  It certainly isn’t helping the budgetary bottom line of byFaith to publish a slick looking (and it is very well put together, to give credit where it’s due) and expensive print edition that few people are willing to pay for.
• I’d begin by structuring PCA Connections along the lines of a web/internet aggregator.  Think of news or political web sites like Politico or Real Clear Politics, or even the Drudge Report.  These are successful examples of a web site dedicated to gathering articles and input from other sources.  There can even be some amount of original content as well.  In and around the PCA are all sorts of things being published on the Web on a daily basis.  There is plenty of good content out there in all sorts of places: seminary and college web sites; church web sites; PCA agencies; places like Reformation 21 or the White Horse Inn or Third Mill or Ligonier or Gospel Coalition or the Aquila Report, and so on; and a host of blogs.
• Yes, blogs.  For reasons I can’t fathom, the PCA bureaucracy seems to be anti-blog.  Folks, it’s time to embrace this resource.  Yes, there’s a lot of unseemly stuff written on blogs.  That would not be part of the content on PCA Connections.  But day in and day out there are a whole host of great things written.  These provide great fodder for debate and discussion.  If we want to promote the exchange of and interaction of diverse views on controversial topics we’re going to have to embrace the blogs.  Encourage good, healthy discussion by linking to the best of the blogs as part of PCA Connections.
• Provide updates on what’s happening in the presbyteries.  Get the stated clerks involved by including some kind of a summary of each presbytery’s meeting.
• Provide updates on what’s happening in the PCA agencies and committees.  At every meeting there should be someone able and willing to provide a short synopsis of what happened.  My own personal opinion is that there is a sort of leadership bubble developing in the PCA, and too much “official” discussion happens only within that small bubble of privileged folks who have the right connections, are in the right positions, and are therefore in the know.  I mean, how else did it occur that the Cooperative Ministries Committee voted unanimously for a plan that has been rejected so soundly by the presbyteries?  These folks are too isolated and most discussion takes place in a tiny little echo chamber.  We need broader access, a more horizontal approach, to get more TE’s and RE’s involved in the life of the broader PCA.
•  RUF updates from the various RUF web sites or through RUM.
•  Chaplaincy updates
•  Missions updates
•  Church planting updates
•  Link to, or re-publish (with permission) the writings of professors at the colleges and seminaries that have connections to the PCA.  These are gifted men who have great things to share with us, whether from our own Covenant College and Seminary, or from friends at the Westminsters, RTS, Greenville Sem, and others.
• I think it would be neat to also publish select papers by our men at seminary.  Have professors recommend the work of PCA men at their schools.  Wouldn’t it be nice to see what the men we’ve sent off to seminary are learning and how they are applying that knowledge?  Call me crazy, but I think it would be great.
• I’m forgetting some of the thoughts that have been running through my head in the last few days, but I think the above gives a good impression of how to begin a robust web site that would generate a lot of traffic.
• And lots of traffic means healthy ad revenue.  (Do you doubt this?  Look at all the booths at GA – each of those, and more, are potential advertisers!) And healthy ad revenue means profitability.  And profitability means that, maybe, down the road, a print edition could re-emerge that people would actually want to pay for.
• Oh – and I think this could all be done with a relatively small staff.  Maybe just a couple full time people.  And – get ready for the shock – they wouldn’t even have to be in or anywhere near Atlanta!  It would take effort to coordinate, but I think it could be done.  It would be fun, and it would be a great service to our denomination.

What do you think?

So in leading up to Easter Sunday I thought it would be worthwhile to go back and take a look in turn at these titles for Jesus that Peter uses.  So here is the expected outline of how we’ll proceed in the coming weeks.  Let your friends, neighbors, family know.  Invite them to come.  Come yourself!

Who Is This Jesus?

• March 13 – Jesus of Nazareth
• March 20 – Author of Life
• March 27 – Offspring of Abraham
• April 3 – Prophet Like Moses
• April 10 – Holy and Righteous One
• April 17 – God’s Servant
• April 24 – Lord and Christ

Something new at Mission: Celebration Cafe!

On March 12 at 7pm we’re hosting local musician AJ Harbison, who will be sharing his gift of music with us, friends, family, neighbors – anyone! 

We want to support Christian musicians who seek to use the gifts God has given them by giving them a place to share their talent with others.  Come on by and check it out!

Here’s the flyer: Celebration Cafe.

If you’d like to join us, we begin with dinner at 7:00pm on Christmas Eve, tamales and enchiladas and more, followed by the attached reading, then singing Christmas carols by request from our hymnal.

It’s a wonderful time spent with each other and our families and friends.  Join us!

Thank you, David!

And to add a silly note: love the middle initial!

And so Red Buttons would have no cause to complain.  If he could pronounce “festschrift.”  If he knew Dr. W. Robert Godfrey.

Yes, the good doctor has a book dedicated to him, and well done, too, by all appearances.  Check it out at the WSCal bookstore.  Also check out Dr. R. Scott Clark’s post that has more info.

Dr. Godfrey is a great teacher, an insightful and thoughtful theologian and historian.  He’s a quick wit, too.  Students would try to match wits with him, but I never saw one of them get the best of him.  Not professors, either.  I’m better for having taken classes from him, read what he’s written, and hearing him speak.  I’m also really looking forward to reading this book put together in his honor.

Huzzah!

PS – What is it with Reformed theologians and their initials?  “W” Robert Godfrey.  “R” Scott Clark.  “J” Gresham Machen.  “R C” Sproul.  Even my old pastor “J” Murray Marshall.  “M” Scott Horton…oh, wait, never mind…

Others have written against the tax and given reasons to vote against the BCO changes.  What I would like to do here is offer an alternative funding plan that, I hope, gives further reason to vote down the BCO changes.

I believe there is a funding plan for the AC that can maintain the voluntary nature of how the PCA funds its agencies.  And since it would be voluntary, no amendments to the BCO would be required.  The primary features of this funding plan are:

• Slightly modified, voluntary, fee payment table from the one presented and approved at GA.  Each congregation decides, completely on its own, whether or not to pay this amount. The amounts continue to be based on tithes and offerings received, but are slightly higher.  The higher fee is closer to the 2010 ministry askings of $7 per member for the AC.  Every church that contributes according to the modified table may send its BCO permitted compliment of commissioners to GA without further registration fees or charges.
• A GA registration fee of $2,000 per commissioner for Teaching Elders and Ruling Elders whose churches do not contribute to the AC.  This high fee is deliberate.  Smaller churches will be encouraged to contribute to the AC since that contribution will be significantly less than the commissioner registration fee.  However, some larger churches will decide to pay the commissioner fee instead, which will provide additional income to the AC from those large churches that do not regularly give to the AC.
• A registration fee of $200 per commissioner for Teaching Elders without call, retired, serving out of bounds, serving as missionaries, chaplains or campus ministers.  I would recommend some sort of hardship would qualify for this lower fee as well.
• No presbytery fee.
• Any changes to the fee structure to be approved by General Assembly and a two-thirds majority of presbyteries.
• Take byFaith magazine out of the AC budget, making the magazine a self-supporting work.

This fee structure and funding plan is based on detailed analysis of statistics that are published in the 2010 Yearbook of the PCA.  I made certain assumptions based on the data in the Yearbook, which led to an AC budget for 2011 that produces $1,699,583 in revenue and $1,683,260 in expenses, with a net surplus of $16,323.

For the detail behind these assumptions and the proposed fee table and 2011 AC budget, see this pdf file.

Suggestions and comments are welcome, as well as expertise on how to properly form this suggestion into a viable overture to next year’s General Assembly.  We have almost a year, and it would be best to get it right.

Come by and see our booth at the La Habra Corn Festival this weekend.  We’ll be there Friday night and all day Saturday.

We’ll be giving away copies of the Shorter Catechism, Catechism for Kids, Calvin’s Golden Booklet on the True Christian Life, New Testaments and other resources.

Pray with us that through this we’ll get to know our community better, and they’ll know us better as well.  Pray that we’ll meet people who are in need of a church like Mission PCA.