PGF Outbox

The Presbytery of San Diego Votes to Ordain an Evangelist

At its regular stated presbytery meeting on Tuesday, November 18, 2008, the Presbytery of San Diego examined Mr. Nate Landes for ordination as an evangelist, and approved him by a unanimous voice vote.

 Nate Landes is the former youth director at the First Presbyterian Church of San Diego.  He received his M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and is completing his Ph.D. in Global Ethics/Poverty at Claremont School of Theology.  About two years ago, Nate resigned his position at First Pres, and started a new ministry called the Urban Youth Collaborative (www.uycollaborative.org).  As a youth director at an urban church, God gave him a real burden for the teenagers of the city.  90% of teenagers in the city of San Diegodo not have a church home.  Many of them have never been to church, don’t know who Jesus Christ is, live in challenging and dangerous environments, and often go hungry.  Nate felt led by God to start a new ministry to reach this challenging group.

 The Urban Youth Collaborative now ministers to 700 students each week, on the campuses of 18 high school and junior high campuses around the city.  The UYC helps connect churches and youth directors to the young people and the schools.  The assist with student-led lunchtime Bible clubs, and have seen many young people commit their lives to Christ.  They give students Bibles, do leadership development, operate a food pantry, offer tutoring resources, and provide chaplains to some of the sports teams.  They help bring in speakers for all school assemblies, offer counseling, and take kids to summer camp at Forest Home and to an FCA camp in  Santa Barbara. 

It is a holistic ministry, ministering to spiritual, physical, and relational needs.

 Nate was under care of the Presbytery of San Diego.  He felt called into ministry, but as the ministry of UYC grew, he did not feel called to be a traditional pastor.  He wondered if he could be ordained as an evangelist, to minister to young people on their school campuses, and help connect them to churches in our area.  We did some research and found that Leighton Ford (brother-in-law to Billy Graham), was ordained as an evangelist in the Presbyterian Church about fifty years ago.  We discovered that the Book of Order allows us to ordain people as evangelists.  G-11.0103p says that one of the responsibilities of the presbytery is “to designate ministers to work as teachers, evangelists, administrators, chaplains, and in other forms of ministry recognized as appropriate by the presbytery.”

 Our presbytery has never ordained anyone as an evangelist before.  But the more we talked about it, the more it seemed to make sense.  It is “out of the box” from what we are used to, but it is a ministry that our city desperately needs.  As our COM discussed it, we talked about the importance of having Nate connected to one of our churches.  He talked to the session of the church where he is most active, and they decided to enter into a parish associate relationship.  Nate was examined for ordination, and spoke about how this Urban Youth ministry started.  He talked about the Muslim and Buddhist kids he encounters every week, and how he engages them in conversations about Jesus Christ.  He is a person of high energy and great faith, and he is helping our presbytery look at ministry through some new lenses. 

 His examination for ordination was one of the high points of our presbytery meeting.  It was another reminder that God is at work in our church, Christ is at work in our cities, and the Holy Spirit is doing some new things to bring the two together.  We are doing our best to be faithful, and to follow Christ down some roads we haven’t walked down before.  Please pray for us, and we’ll give God all the glory for everything good that happens.

 

A Textbook Case of Unmissionalized Thinking

At the last meeting of my presbytery, it was announced that the presbytery office would be phasing out the director position of a hunger ministry that became a permanent program of the presbytery in 1982. Once the director position expires, oversight of the hunger ministry will return to the its committee, which is a committee of the Outreach Ministry Team, which reports to the presbytery.

Understandably, this news was met with some dismay on the presbytery floor, with a proposal that the decision be postponed and fears that at the elimination of the position, “people will go hungry.” Attention was then cast toward the lack of funding for the position, and then to the per capita giving chart included in the handbook for the meeting.

This meeting was on a Saturday, and the most telling statement I heard during the discussion began with the following phrase: “Go back to your congregations tomorrow and tell them…” Can you guess the second half of the command? Was it:

A) “…that we need to recognize the hunger problems in our community and pick up the slack.”
B) “…to go volunteer at a local hunger ministry or find ways to give to hunger organizations.”
C) “…that Jesus is calling them to get personally involved in their community's needs, including hunger.”
D) “…to give more money to presbytery so people won’t go hungry.”

If you said (D), then you’re right…sadly. Because a vote on my ordination was up next on the docket, I kept my decently-and-in-order hat on and resisted the temptation to scream, “Christendom!  Modernity! Dependency on structures!”

Have we really conditioned people to respond to a mission opportunity by asking their congregation to give to presbytery? I don’t know why the presbytery created a full-time position to serve under a subcommittee of a committee, but I’m sure the intentions were good. It’s not as if Joe and Jane Layperson dumped the money on presbytery to absolve themselves of having to volunteer at a soup kitchen. People love to participate in mission! But if the first response to a cut in a presbytery’s hunger ministry is to give money to presbytery, that’s about as anti-missional a proposal as one could imagine.

This meeting occurred back in September, and October’s financial adventures suggest that presbyteries will be forced to cut many program director positions in the near future. My prayer is that pastors and lay leaders see the opportunity to exhort their fellow Christians into fuller participation Jesus’ mission in the world, rather than rally around bureaucratic dependency. They could start where I tried to: in the coffee break that followed that debate, where I quoted Luke 9:13 to everyone I knew:

“You give them something to eat.”