Response to Diane Eaton's comment: In *We Need to Create New Wineskins*, I had written about PCC clergy being able to recover Biblical marriage within the context of a new “wineskin.” Creating a new wineskin is not foreign to the PCC. It was done in 1875 and in 1925 when there was a resetting of ... Read more
Author: James Statham
We Need to Create New Wineskins
It’s time for the church to issue its own marriage licences. This writer is old enough to remember the burning of draft cards to protest the Vietnam war and bras being burned to somehow advance a feminist agenda. Similarly, as both a protest and affirmation, he would have no difficulty shredding his government-issued marriage licence ... Read more
A Year in the Life
I retired four years ago after 39 years as a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC). This naturally put me out of the loop for a while with much of what goes on nationally in our church. But my vantage point has improved due to a year of frequent online meetings with more … Continue reading A Year in the Life
A Lesson for the Teacher
Sweating profusely after the hot midday hike along a winding road, I carefully eased myself into the crowded and dilapidated Toyota minivan. The minibus was made for eight and had seen its better years in Southeast Asia as a taxi, but, like Abraham and Sarah, new life was being wrung out of it. Two nursing mothers and several preoccupied Muslims were my nearby companions. For the next hour, 18-20 of us lurched along the potholed highway, occasionally stopping at tattered villages to … Read More
Last Chance For New Courage?
In January of 2012, I attended one of a series of roundtable discussions that Gordon Haynes conducted across the country on the issues facing the church in the next 10 years. What impacted me the most was the introductory comment by Gordon indicating that there are already on file precisely 16 similar reports to the national church dating from 1964 on, indicating that change needs to happen in the Presbyterian Church in Canada to reverse our declining membership … Read More