LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will train clergy to help church members learn to talk about their faith.
The program will launch in 2003, according to the Presbyterian News Service. The training is intended to help Presbyterians relate to people of other faiths, said the Rev. Margaret Thomas. Thomas is interim coordinator for the denomination's Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) office of interfaith relations.
"They find themselves unable to speak on anything that has to do with their faith experience," Thomas said. "As a consequence, they become very relativistic, anything-goes kind of people, or become very rigid and retreat to churchy language that they parrot. It is the hope of this effort to find ways to get beyond this.
"This is about witness, about all the broad ways in which we share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ," she said.
The program is coordinated by the WMD and the Committee on Theological Education (COTE) of the Congregational Ministries Division.
