Not now. Not Yet? Not Ever?

So it referred a controversial report on families (five years in the making) back for more work, with instructions that the theology underlying it be more clearly explained.

It asked the General Assembly Council to study a recommendation that the PC(USA) spend at least 7 percent of its unrestricted funds on mission personnel by 2005 and 10 percent by 2006, and that at least 20 percent of the denomination’s unrestricted budget go the Worldwide Ministries Division starting in 2005.

It chose a nuanced rather than an inflammatory statement on the war with Iraq.

It held back from a big brawl over whether Christ church in Burlington, Vt., has complied with the denomination’s Constitution or gone off the edge. The Constitution limits ordination to those who practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they’re not. But Christ church has come up with its own interpretation of compliance, saying that “chastity does not necessarily mean celibacy” and that people living in committed homosexual relationships can be ordained.

Some wanted the Assembly to instruct the Northeast Synod to conduct a review of Christ church’s compliance. But the Assembly didn’t do that directly. It left the ordination standards and existing interpretations of them exactly as they are, at least for now. And it elected as its moderator Susan Andrews, who acknowledged the pain of those who feel called to the ministry but can’t be ordained. She admitted this was not the year to try to push through change.

This Assembly also came at a downturn time, both nationally and in the church. The PC(USA) lost 41,812 members in 2002, a splash of cold water but also a continuation of more than two decades of membership decline. The denomination cut $3.1 million from its 2004 budget in April, eliminating 19 positions on its national staff — the second major budget cut in two years, and with hints already that more is on the way. Commissioners asked frequently about the financial implications of what was being proposed.

And fewer people turned out for this Assembly. While final figures weren’t immediately available, attendance by non-commissioners was down “noticeably but not dramatically,” perhaps a reflection of the economy and of the earlier-than-usual meeting date, according to Deborah Davies of the Office of General Assembly staff.

So the church is praying and waiting for the task force, and saying “Not now.”

What it’s not clear is whether “Not now” means “Not yet” or “Not ever.”

The Presbyterian Coalition responded to the Assembly’s decision not to vote up or down on the ordinations standards by reminding the task force that “fidelity and chastity” is “the most successfully defended paragraph in the Book of Order” — a signal that any change in the Constitution still would have to be voted on by the presbyteries, and that evangelicals definitely will fight to keep what’s there.

And for those who want “fidelity and chastity” thrown out, this was a frustrating Assembly. There was a publicly acknowledged split in strategy between Covenant Network, on whose board Andrews sat until she resigned after her election, and other progressive groups such as More Light Presbyterians and That All May Freely Serve, which want the ordination standards changed now and do not agree that this is a time to wait.

There is both tremendous hope for the theological task force, and a big question about what that group will actually do.

“If the expectation gets built up that this task force is going to solve all problems on this matter . . . then their proposals become almost a major battle ground, don’t they?” asked Jim Tony, an evangelical pastor from Illinois. “I think that’s an impossible job.”

Jack Haberer and Mary Ellen Lawson, both members of the task force, said during a news conference that they were pleased the Assembly had voted to wait for the task force. “The first times we met, we felt as though we were walking in molasses. It was a struggle,” said Lawson, stated clerk for Redstone Presbytery.

“But as we relaxed, and let the Holy Spirit work in and through us, we realized this is not a process that could be rushed. This is too important.”

And there was a sense at this Assembly that talking across lines of division does somehow matter — even though, as yet, it has not led to any resolution of the difficulties.

Some also say that if change does come to the PC(USA), it may come from the places where the church brushes up against the culture. For example, critics of the “Changing Families” report said it diminished the importance of traditional two-parent families and tried to elevate those involving same-sex couples or unmarried couples living together.

But during the Assembly’s debate on the report, commissioners lined up at the microphones to tell their own stories, from their lives and their congregations — of grandparents raising their grandchildren, of adoption and special-needs children, of single people and couples without children, of Presbyterians trying to do a good job despite divorce and drug abuse and just about everything else.

During a “speak out” session, one commissioner asked for prayers for her sister’s family. Last year, she said, her sister and brother-in-law were killed by their mentally ill son, who is now in prison; she asked for prayers for both the families and the young man.

In discussions on evangelism, commissioners talked about immigration and changing demographics — how the largely white PC(USA) is losing members, but still hasn’t figured out how to speak to the hearts of Hispanics and young people and those who don’t speak English. And to those for whom the phrase “decently and in order” isn’t familiar and comforting, but strange and unknown.

An evangelical pastor from Ohio said this is not the year to try to change the ordination standards. Just 20 years after the reunion of the so-called northern and southern branches of the church, Terry Lucarelli said, is not the time to be “ripping the denomination apart.” But he also spoke of his younger brother, Mark, who died in his arms of AIDS in 1993. Lucarelli said that when Mark first spoke of his homosexuality in the hospital (“Italian families don’t talk about those things”), what Mark wanted to hear from his evangelical pastor brother was, “Terry, you need to tell me you don’t think I’m going to hell.” And Terry said he promised Mark “to do everything I could to help our churches become welcoming and including flocks.”

So the Assembly, again this year, said “Not now.”

While it waits, the tides of change — sometimes welcome, sometimes unwanted — are rippling across the waters. The church is praying for guidance and discernment, for a sense of where it is being called.

At the General Assembly breakfast, former U.S. Senator Paul Simon challenged Presbyterians to live out their faith — somehow to “reach out to the poor and get acquainted with them,” to work for peace as well as to pray for it, to do more than the man with the lawnmower who prays for the lawn to get mowed but never steps off the porch. Simon spoke of his own father, a Lutheran pastor, saying “the great sermons he preached were not from the pulpit, but what he did.”

Is it not now?

Not yet?

Not ever?

“If we stand back and wait for something to happen, it will not,” James Foster Reese, one of the nominees for moderator, said in his remarks to the Assembly. “It has to start with a person who is willing to be open.”