RE: Ministers who have lost their faith

[Bruce Mullan]

Dear me Charles, what are you trying to do in this email?  You probably are quite "out of bounds" here.    I really feel that this kind of wild generalization can only serve the purpose of being hurtful.  I also think that such aggressive pronouncements are really most unhelpful.   The scriptures encourage us to speak to one another in appropriate ways.  I would hope we might all speak to each other with gentleness, grace and humility.   Regards,   Bruce   Bruce Mullan Uniting Church in Australia Queensland Synod GPO Box 674 Brisbane    QLD      4001   61 7 3377 9801 0407 702 344   [EMAIL PROTECTED]     -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Charles Worthington Sent: Thursday, 24 June 2004 9:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: UTC: Ministers who have lost their faith   To My Dear Friends on the Insights List   I have been on this list for 2 years and mostly biting my tongue, spoke out once and got hammered down. I know we are well trained here not to play out of bounds, but for goodness sakes this is a chat site frequented by ministers - most of us are adults and can speak the truth, and someone should be brave enough to speak out. I really think that someone has to come out and say it.   We seem to have a whole generation of Uniting Church Ministers who are agnostics. Ministers who will give complex rationalisation, or hint that they could, for why they don't really believe Jesus was a real historical figure, or Jesus really died, or Jesus underwent a physical resurrection, or that in fact salvation is available to people thorugh the death and resurrection of Jesus.   The Uniting Theological College is largely (entirely?) to blame, one can not hold it against these ministers, they were lambs to the slaughter, presumably went in with Christian beliefes but came out with educated agnosticism. Though a natural reaction is to protest that observation, it is patently obvious after a weeks of reading emails on this site, not to mention being involved in the Uniting Church. I know a few ministers who deliberately chose not to train at UTC, for this very reason. I also chose not to train at UTC, for the same reason, but I only trained as a missionary and was not ordained.   We have a wonderful denomnation in terms of social responsibility, but really for a church to survive, it needs more than just agnostic social workers as its ministers.   Sorry, everyone knows this but someone had to play out of bounds and say it.   Shalom   Charles   _________________________________________________________________ Get a Credit Card - 60 sec online response:   http://ad.au.doubleclick.net/clk;8097459;9106288;b?http://www.anz.com/aus/promo/qantas5000ninemsn    [AU only]   ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------