CDM Archive

Discipleship Ministries of the PCA

Church Leadership

Trying the Book Case

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Losing once is not reason to quit. Ask Thomas 0. Kotouc, a lawyer who represented Mobile school authorities and the state of Alabama in the prayer case that went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest tribunal told the Alabama schools that they couldn’t pray – even silently.

Now, the Montgomery attorney and PCA ruling elder is back in court with another aspect of the same issue. If no religion can be tolerated in state schools, then why should approved textbooks prefer the “religion” of humanism? That’s the question that Kotouc and his partner, Thomas F. Parker IV, have pursued in federal court in Mobile. Associated with them in the case is Mobile lawyer Bob Sherling, a PCA eider. The lead plaintiff is Doug Smith, a Montgomery teacher and one of Kotouc’s fellow members at Eastwood Church there. With permission of the court, it is a class action suit in which the attorneys represent more than 600 parents and teachers listed on the original docu

Planters Pick New ‘Paris’

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Most North Americans have heard of Timbuktu, but even if they think it’s more real than legendary they usually can’t find it on the map. Fewer are likely to be able to tell how to find Abidjan, where the newest Mission to the World church planting team is being established.

The names may be equally mysterious, but MTW has determined that Abidjan has much greater potential as the site of new work. It is a strate

Making Missions ‘Norm’ for Youth

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Every young person goes through certain “rites of passage” before reaching maturity. If Mission to the World realizes a goal it has just set, every PCA young person will have some kind of missions exposure before “growing up and settling down.”

Next summer, MTW will sponsor its first summer missions trip for church youth groups. Plans are being made to send 250 high schoolers to work for a week or two, either overseas or in a North American inner city congregation or a church planting sit

Quiet, Dependable

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Elevators, by design, are supposed to be quiet, dependable, and efficient. They attract little attention until they fail to perform as expected. Richard H. Ellingsworth doesn’t attract much attention, and those who know him well describe him as quiet, dependable, and efficient. That’s appropriate for the board chairman of the General Elevator Company of Bal