Rev. Jin S. Kim, the pastor of Church of All Nations Presbyterian in Columbia Heights and also the Moderator of the PTCA for 2009-10 shared his report to the Presbytery at the September 12 Presbytery meeting at First Presbyterian in Shakopee.  The report follows:

• Evaluations from the July 2009 presbytery meeting were very positive. Our elder commissioners gave a 4.3 out of 5.0 overall and our ministers gave a 4.7 out of 5.0. We are making progress, and will continue to find ways to make the presbytery meetings a more rewarding and redemptive experience for all.

• We should consider an omnibus consent agenda that includes the motions of every committee and task force. This will allow us to make space for serious decision making and the work of genuine discernment about our life together.
• The Office of Theology and Worship of the GAMC has launched an “Ecclesiology Project” to think through what it means to be church in the fast changing ecclesial landscape of this new century, a project I am participating in. Part of what I envision is for our presbytery as a whole to take stock of the Reformed tradition after 500 years and to discern together the outlines of what Time Magazine has recently called a “New Calvinism,” as one of the most important emerging ideas of the 21st century, and its implications on our congregational and specialized ministries.
• The ecumenical movement needs more serious attention. I currently serve as one of our denomination’s delegates to the National Council of Churches, which incidentally, will hold its annual General Assembly right here in Minneapolis Nov. 10-12 (I appreciate Richard Buller and Valley Community Church for hosting the NCC dinner for our Presbyterian delegation, which unfortunately conflicts with our next presbytery meeting). At the NCC, we recently celebrated 100 years as a movement in America, and there have been tremendous advances. On the other hand, our ecclesial divisions are just as painfully apparent now as they were a century ago, but the PCUSA remains committed to healing those divisions as our Book of Order states. Yesterday, I was at the Greater Minnesota Association of Evangelicals annual board retreat, and our board is revisiting the idea of bridging the denominational divisions within the evangelical world. If the work of reconciling Presbyterian and Baptist remains, if the Lord’s Supper is still not shared between Catholics, Mainliners and Pentecostals, can we allow the disagreements between conservatives and liberals in our little denomination to truly divide us?
• I serve on the GA Special Committee on the Belhar Confession, and we will have our second meeting Sept. 20-22 in Louisville. I commend “A Study of the Belhar Confession,” a wonderful and incisive workbook produced by our denomination’s Office of Theology and Worship, for study among our congregations and ministers. Belhar was published in 1986 at the height of apartheid in South Africa, and has powerful implications for our radicalized country and church here in America. If adopted, it will be the first non-Western confession in our Book of Confessions.