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More Judicial Attacks. One Pastor Responds - the Serial Litigation Must End |
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Friday, April 15 2005 @ 01:00 PM
Statement by Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch, his counsel Bear Ride, and the session of Northside Presbyterian Church
Paul Rolf Jensen has filed five sweeping accusations with the Presbytery of Detroit against the Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch, national board member of More Light Presbyterians and pastor of the More Light congregation
Northside Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, MI. A presbytery Investigating Committee (IC) was appointed and has been active since December 2005 in investigating these accusations. On March 30, Chuck and his counsel, Bear Ride, met with the Committee for the first time.
I am impressed with the leadership of this IC, Chuck said after his two-and-a-half hour hearing. I am not impressed with how our denomination at-large continues to allow Mr. Jensen, a serial litigator whom I have never met and with whom I have never even spoken, to simply mail in his broadsides and expect an investigation. Dozens of presbyteries have wasted and continue to waste extraordinary ministerial resources investigating his accusations because they feel constitutionally constrained to do so."In a day and age where more and more people are thirsting for the loving and public theology of Jesus a theology of hope we as a Church continue to imbibe the bitter and private prejudices of a few a theology of complaint. When someone in the Church has a complaint, Matthew 18 provides a clear template to all Christians for settling disputes directly. I am saddened though not surprised that Mr. Jensen chooses not to follow this path.
Chuck enjoys the unanimous support of his session as well as his congregation in this trying process.
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