Kirkpatrick calls for ‘culture of respect’ for and revamping of the church’s Constitution

Using the illustration of two engineers who came to blows when their trains ended up facing one another on a single track, Kirkpatrick said the church is “a train wreck in the making if we all continue on our present path.”

He noted:

• The Book of Order has been transformed from a “very slim document of essential principle, into a detailed manual” for regulating the life of the church;

• A growing number of churches stating open defiance to the Constitution;

• Sessions and groups threatening to withhold funds or to withdraw, or demanding “adherence to specific tenets not outlined in our Constitution”;

• Presbyteries circumventing Book of Order provisions regarding pastors for immigrant congregations or succession of pastors;

• A rash of complaints filed by one individual against Presbyterians and churches nationwide;

• More than 100 remedial cases filed in Hanmi Presbytery (Southern California) in the past three years.

“Our Constitution is simply not designed to handle these kinds of behaviors well. . . . . we are heading toward a Œtrain wreck’ if we can’t find our way to a new track as we seek to uphold the Constitution in the life of the church,” said Kirkpatrick.

In calling for “a culture of respect” for the Constitution, Kirkpatrick said this means at least:

• Upholding Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the essential tenets of the Reformed faith,

• Abiding by the provisions of our Constitution (including G-6.0106b), even if seeking to change them,

• Seeking correction, first through pastoral approaches (see Matthew 18) and conciliation and mediation,

• Honoring the processes of our Constitution for seeking change or for seeking discipline or remediation.

Acknowledging his responsibility to “preserve and defend the Constitution,” Kirkpatrick said his office will “be diligent in making the Constitution widely available, in interpreting its meaning for the life of the church, in calling for compliance to its provisions, in serving as Œclerk’ to the General Assembly’s Permanent Judicial Commission, in training fellow stated clerks and clerks of session in their constitutional responsibilities, and in lifting up its grand theological vision of Reformed faith and order.” He added, however, that his office “will not serve as prosecutors or Œenforcers’ of the Constitution,” but will “enable the church’s judicial and legislative processes to move forward with integrity.”

Kirkpatrick then outlined his vision for a revamped Constitution “for the new missionary situation in which we find ourselves in 21st century America. Citing Donald Miller’s book, Reinventing American Protestantism, he said Miller “calls for our churches to recover their missionary character in the 21st century, to be crystal clear about their shared faith and their sense of covenant community,and then ‹ and only then ‹ to set their people and churches free to be bearers of the Good News in a post-Christian America.”

He set as a first priority in that direction for the PC(USA) as reclaiming the Book of Confessions as “the first and most important book in our Constitution.”

Second, he said the church needs to “find a way to differentiate the core values for our covenant community from the manual of operations for our governing bodies .” He recommended “lifting up” the first four chapters of the Book of Order “and their core commitments as a foundational covenant document for the church:

• That Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church and the Word of God;

• That the Great Ends of the Church are our common calling;

• That we uphold a generous orthodoxy growing out of scripture and the confessions that affirms the great themes of the Reformed faith;

• That we hold to an ecclesiology built on covenant community and a commitment to Christian unity.

Third, Kirkpatrick said the Book of Order needs to be smaller and more flexible. Past calls for this kind of change have been derailed by “the climate of distrust in our church,” he said.

Instead of “a rush to more constitutional amendments,” he recommended “a churchwide discernment process that enables us together to identify those key principles of Reformed polity and distinguish them from all of the rules and procedures that may be valuable, but are not of constitutional character.”

The stated clerk also recommended granting “much greater freedom to presbyteries and sessions to order the ministry of the church in ways that enable them to respond to the diverse and multi-faceted missionary challenges of 21st century America.”

He concluded by saying that the church should view its Constitution through John Calvin’s “third use of the law,” which would make it “a source of inspiration and a moral compass for the redeemed to support us in righteous and faithful living as disciples of Jesus Christ.” In Geneva, this allowed Christians “to proclaim and live the gospel rather than be absorbed in their sinfulness or having the law serve as a Œstraight jacket’ to restrain them from one another.”

The Responses

Of the six panelists chosen to respond, the most critical was Jerry Andrews, an evangelical pastor from Glen Ellyn,Ill., representing the Presbyterian Coalition. He noted that the smaller, pocket-sized Book of Order from the early 1900s represented “a time in the church when there was a consensus of faith wrapped around the Westminster standards . . . and the trust in the doctrinal integrity of the church permitted a broadness in behavior based mainly on that coherence in doctrine”

“There was a time when our consensus of faith was greater, the coherence of the body was tighter, and the trust in our membership deeper, so rules in our common life were fewer”

The church’s task now, said Andrews, is to restore trust. “It will not come, I believe, by merely calling for it, as good as that call is. There is another side to that call that should accompany it, a call for trustworthiness. This is not a call from the right to the left. That would be inappropriate and misguided, however tempting for some of us. It should also be a call from each of us to others to have a trustworthy faith.”

The Constitution has two parts, he said, “ordered precisely because faith leads to practice and truth to duty. We have agreed on this.”

Andrews also took Kirkpatrick’s “train wreck” story and noted that in the end, it was railroad officials who came out and enforced order. “This railroad [the church] has an officer,” he said in reference to Kirkpatrick.

He then renewed an earlier request from the coalition for Kirkpatrick to investigate and report regarding how churches, presbyteries and synods were complying with past judicial commission decisions. “Compliance does not make us fundamentalists; it makes us honest in our common life,” said Andrews.

Kirkpatrick should also regard himself as the church’s chief theological officer, said Andrews, adding that if the first four chapters of the Book of Order are “lifted up,” the rest should not be approached “shallowly.”

Andrews’ counterpart on the panel, Covenant Network of Presbyterians director Pam Byers, agreed with Kirkpatrick’s call for a culture of respect for the Constitution and a streamlined Book of Order.

She noted that while the network continues to work for the eventual removal of the “fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness” provision for church officers, the network’s executive committee had recently asked those who choose to go on record as opposing G-6.0106b to “do so in a way that honors the church’s Constitution as they interpret and apply it in examining candidates for office.”

Also, they are urging those considering judicial action ‹ so far primarily supporters of the ordination standards ‹ instead “to seek reconciliation with their brothers and sisters in Christ.”

Jill Oglesby-Evans ‹ a minister member at-large of Greater Atlanta Presbytery who offered one of the few lighter moments when she referred to the proposed smaller Book of Order as the “Clif’s Notes” version ‹ said the proposed project is “dicey,” but added that the process of attempting a change might be good in itself for the church.

Also in agreement with Kirkpatrick was Jim Choomack, executive presbyter of Cherokee Presbytery. “When you’re in the mission field . . . constitutional turmoil is more than an inconvenience. It’s a drain on our spiritual energy, our material resources. I believe it is a sinful squandering of the stewardship Christ has given us.”

He added, however, that a change will not occur because the General Assembly declares it, but only with “a deeply seeded revival of the Holy Spirit, which must begin as we repent. To become joined won’t begin in the heart where Jesus lives; nor in the head, where we find strategy and arguments; and certainly not in the hip, because we shoot from the hip.”

David Wallace, dean of Johnson C. Smith Seminary, noted a concern regarding how reducing the Book of Order might affect past guidelines for building an inclusive church. He also expressed concern that the church not “make the mistake” of affirming local mission over global mission. “What happens in one part of the world effects us all,” he said.

Cam Murchison, dean of faculty at Columbia Seminary, offered the opinion that it may not be easy to just “lift up” chapters 1-4 of the Book of Order as being “special.” Other chapters, especially 5 and 6, might qualify. He noted there would need to be a process of discernment for deciding where the church makes the transition from “core values” to “day-to-day operations.”