A Pentecostal preacher's kid who embraced John Calvin and became a mentor to hundreds of pastors in the Presbyterian Church (USA) will be installed next month as the pastor to Pittsburgh Presbytery.

The Rev. Sheldon Sorge takes the job amid painful tensions in the church. Locally and nationally, some conservative congregations have left, citing concerns over what they see as the national church's ebbing adherence to the Bible on matters from mission to gay ordination.

Pittsburgh's new executive presbyter -- as the job is known elsewhere -- had letters of recommendation from leaders on all sides of the church's rifts.

"I respect deeply the passion that drives them," he said of both conservative and liberal activists. "I respect their integrity. I find myself drawn by the wisdom that I see on both sides of debates that are yet to be resolved."

Rev. Sorge, 56, started his duties Jan. 1. The pastor to presbytery isn't a bishop but has a critical role in carrying out directions from more than 200 clergy and elders who vote at presbytery meetings.

He came to Pittsburgh from denominational headquarters in Louisville, Ky., where he led a program to help pastors rediscover their call to ministry. His wife, the Rev. Tammy Wiens, oversees spiritual formation programs for the national church and will continue that work from Pittsburgh.

He was happy and wasn't looking to move. But when Pittsburgh's search committee sought him out, he felt as if his entire life experience led to a call to Pittsburgh, he said.

He grew up in Alberta, Canada, the son of a pastor in the Canadian version of the Assemblies of God. But he was drawn to what he calls "the historic churches."

When he first read Calvin, "it was a sense of homecoming. I appreciated the carefulness of his mind," he said, citing a need for faith rooted in intellect as well as experience.

His summary of Calvin's essentials of the Christian faith is that "God is one, Christ is God and God is merciful."

He earned a doctorate in theology from Duke University in 1987 and served on a church staff in Durham, N.C., prior to his 1993 ordination. He pastored churches in Marion, Va., and Elkins, W.Va. In 2000 he went to the Presbyterian Church (USA) Office of Theology and Worship. He mentored first-year pastors and later worked on programs to provide pastors with sabbaticals and other opportunities to renew their sense of call to ministry.

Pittsburgh, which is known as a theologically conservative presbytery, has had two large churches leave for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. It is a stressful time to be in denominational middle management. Rev. Sorge had great hesitation about even considering the call. But he decided that Pittsburgh wasn't a place of division but a potential source of healing, he said.

"Pittsburgh represents, in many ways, a microcosm of the church," he said.

"The balance point in the spectrum may be a little further to the right than it is in the national church, but not by much. We're closer to representing the whole body of the church and contesting those things that the whole church is contesting, than most presbyteries are. ... So there is an opportunity to be a part of addressing the questions that the whole church is wrestling with, to take some kind of a lead in that."

He was impressed that the presbytery has started new congregations for people who aren't drawn to traditional ones. He sees more positive than negative in a presbytery whose numbers have plummeted from 89,000 in 1980 to 40,000 today. Those who remain are highly committed, he said.

"The people in the presbytery today are giving substantially more than the people who were in the presbytery [at its height] did, and that's adjusted for inflation."

Part of his old job was to gather small groups of pastors from across the theological spectrum.

"We would sequester ourselves for two or three days and read some good books and have good conversations. We didn't try to hammer out compromises or resolutions to issues over which we were divided. We simply tried to find the depth of that which we had in common."

That work won endorsements from church leaders as diverse as the Rev. Paul Detterman, executive director of the evangelical Presbyterians for Renewal, and the Rev. Laird Stuart, a former moderator of the gay ordination advocacy group Covenant Network of Presbyterians.

He considers it impossible to predict whether more churches will leave, because every two years the church's General Assembly can make changes that rile people. But his goal is to hold the presbytery together. During college he attended an independent church that split.

"There was devastation for all parties. Nobody won. Everybody lost. It was a deeply formative experience for me," he said.

When church bodies split, there may be initial relief over an end to infighting, but he doesn't believe that lasts.

"There is temporary comfort in not having to do the hard work of holding hands with people who are pulling against us, but we lose so much in terms of being joined to people who ultimately belong to the cause of Christ. By being linked to them, we have a broader reach than we otherwise do," he said.

"I will consider myself to have done the angels' work if I can help people not to part company ... I want our life together to reflect the reality of the gospel. It says that in Christ, God reconciles the world -- reconciling us back to God but also reconciling us, by that very act, to one another."

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