Task force faces a daunting task; reporting process is questioned

“I believe the creation of this task force may prove to be the most important action of the 213th General Assembly,” Cliff Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, said in an e-mail interview. “We need respected Presbyterians, who represent the diversity of the church, to lead us in a process of discerning afresh the heart of what it means to be Presbyterians in the 21st century, and I believe this task force can and will do that.”

Whatever role it may ultimately play, the task force right now is not commanding nearly as much attention as the news of the day. Presbyterians say they’ve been distracted by other, more immediate debates and by the international conflict over terrorism.

Both conservatives and liberals are putting enormous effort right now into the campaigns over Amendment A, a proposed change to the PC(USA) Constitution that would remove a ban on ordaining sexually active gays and lesbians. “The Assembly, after having decided on this task force, . . . when it moved to put Amendment A before the church, pretty much stripped this task force of any opportunity it would have had to do anything productive this year,” said Carmen Fowler, a pastor from Rabun Gap, Ga., and co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition, which opposes Amendment A.

Once the results of that vote are known — when the church either embraces Amendment A or defeats it — then attention naturally will turn to what comes next, and that will include overtures to next year’s Assembly, cases pending in the PC(USA)’s church court system, and the work of the task force.

That’s one of the realities of this task force: while it’s busy trying to figure out some answers for the future, so is everyone else in the church. The task force has been given a four-year timeline and is required to make interim reports to each of the next three General Assemblies and a final report in 2005. That means it must try to assess a changing landscape. While it’s listening to the grassroots, interest groups within the church will be hard at work pushing their agendas; they’re not waiting around to see what the task force will do. And the task force has so much it could talk about — the Assembly gave it the job of listening to congregations and people across the denomination on “matters that united and divide us,” trying to get a sense of what Presbyterians believe and what they’re concerned about, trying to figure out how deep are the divisions and what’s at the bottom of the disagreements.

The task force is supposed to lead the denomination “in spiritual discernment of our Christian identity,” with a wide-ranging discussion that includes, but isn’t limited to, “issues of Christology, biblical authority and interpretation, ordination standards and power.”

A disagreement over reporting procedure

Already, though, there’s disagreement about how the process should work — and how the task force should report back its findings four years from now, in 2005.

During the Assembly’s discussion of the task force, a commissioner from North Carolina, Russ Ritchel, proposed an amendment that prevailed. Ritchel, pastor of First church, Winston-Salem, suggested adding language to say that the task force would make its final report “to presbyteries and sessions not later than the 217th General Assembly in 2005” — an amendment the Assembly approved by 339-176.

Now, the question has arisen about whether that language means that the task force should report only to presbyteries and sessions, or whether it should send its report to them and to the 217th General Assembly as well.

The Book of Order requires, in section G-9.0501a, that a committee “shall make a full report to the governing body that created it, and its recommendations shall require action by the governing body,” said Gradye Parsons of the Office of General Assembly. In polity terms, a task force is the same as a committee, and “it would be irregular for the Assembly to create a committee and then not have it report back to the Assembly,” said Mark Tammen, the PC(USA)’s director of constitutional services.

But Ritchel said it was his intention that the task force report only to the sessions and presbyteries — and then the presbyteries could decide, through the overture process, which pieces of the task force’s report it wanted to send to the General Assembly for possible action.

“The hurt and the suspicion and the anger on the local level has been made very much aware to all of us as we’ve come here,” Ritchel said during the debate at the Assembly. “This is a task force that rightly asks us to listen to the people at the grass roots. Often, though, when a task force comes and listens to the grass roots and then imposes a solution from the top down, it is resented. It is my recommendation that we return the report to the people. That we send the reports of this task force to the place where the church is hurting the most — at the grass roots. We can trust the church to respond to those recommendations, let things percolate up and engender ownership with them.”

In an interview, Ritchel said he’s discussed the issue in a series of e-mail exchanges with denominational staff members — and said “it looks to me like they’re trying to undo what the General Assembly did . . . I just think that’s crazy. You can make a motion on the floor of General Assembly; it can be passed; and people there [in Louisville] can say, ‘Nope, you can’t do this.’ “

What’s likely to happen, Parsons said, is that next year’s Assembly will be asked to clarify the issue by stating explicitly that the final report will be made to sessions, presbyteries and the 217th General Assembly.

No criticism of balance

So far, although the composition of the task force was closely monitored, there has not been public criticism of the balance struck in naming its members.

The task force was supposed to represent “the theological and cultural diversity” of the PC(USA), and to achieve that, three leaders of the PC(USA) sifted through more than 500 names submitted for consideration and expanded the size of the task force from 17 to 21. The decisions of who to pick were made by three people — Jack Rogers, moderator of the 213th General Assembly, and his two immediate predecessors as moderator, Syngman Rhee and Freda Gardner.

The group they named includes both lay people and ministers, and reflects some racial and geographical diversity. Some on the list are well-known in Presbyterian circles, including Elizabeth Achtemeier, a retired adjunct professor of Bible and homiletics from Union Seminary-PSCE, and Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Seminary. But others come from professions outside of churches or seminaries, including a research scientist at the University of Michigan Business School and a former high school science teacher.

At this early stage, no one is quite sure what to expect from this task force, although some people have their own wishes and dreams.

Jack Haberer, a former moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition and a task force member, said he sees the central issue as one of diagnosis — determining “Is the church as polarized in reality as it looks in the press? Are our differences as big as the anger that is being expressed by some in the church?”

Haberer said he has a theory that “our differences are not incompatible” — and that the differences that do exist sometimes can work for good, by pushing people to address issues they’d rather avoid and nudging the church as a whole into clearer and more faithful forms of ministry.

Bob Davis of the Presbyterian Forum, an evangelical group, is skeptical — he’s referred to the task force as a “Yugo commission” (a reference to the ill-fated Yugo car), saying that so many people have become “invested in the ordination standard issue” that the pressure will be great on task force members, however they feel about ordaining gays and lesbians, to “represent their constituencies.”

Davis has written that “These people are going to be asked to pull all that weight up a very, very steep mountain. That’s a recipe for overheating and breakdown.” Fowler, of the Coalition, said she hopes the task force “will shine a light on the division” within the PC(USA) on issues such as the authority of the Bible and what the church’s message should be about salvation to people who aren’t Christian, so the denomination’s national staff in Louisville “will finally see that division for what it is.”

Laird Stuart, a pastor from San Francisco, is co-moderator of the Covenant Network, which is working to open ordination to all people, regardless of sexual orientation. Stuart acknowledges that the task force isn’t much on people’s minds now — but says that in time, it may become “absolutely crucial to the binding together of the denomination” and give answers to “how we’re going to get through all this mess.”

Stuart said he’d encourage the group to stay away from polity issues at first — to not discuss possible changes to the church’s Constitution. Instead, he wants the task force “to dig beneath the political struggles” and find out “what’s going on underneath the fighting.”

And Stuart said it may be time for the church to explore again and reaffirm the basics of the Reformed tradition. “We’re being pushed now to adopt a very narrow view of Christology and ecclesiology,” Stuart said. But a group that’s distinct from the interest groups, which “could operate with more freedom and credibility, could help us re-identify what it means to be Reformed and what it means to be Presbyterian” and to see “how Christology has been politicized.”

Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk, has his own ideas. He wants the task force to “help us affirm together the common faith we share as Presbyterians,” to give perspective on “critical issues for Christian faithfulness,” and to “point us toward a new polity for the 21st century that is far more flexible but deeply rooted in our Reformed faith. What should the task force stay away from? “We don’t need another restructure” of the national staff, Kirpatrick responded.