Martha Sadongei, a pastor from Arizona and a member of the Kiowa nation, read the stories and looked at the photographs of rows of white men in their suits and thought she’d never realized before “how white this church really is.”
There is, at the top levels of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a passion for tradition and a deep appreciation for polity and the way things work. People carry around dog-eared copies of Robert’s Rules of Order and huddle in the corners sharing the latest scoop on where to get reference books on John Calvin on CDs.
But the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity in the PC(USA) has begun to discuss the idea of doing things differently — to consider that other cultures have their own traditions, and that maybe the task force members have something to learn. For example, Lonnie Oliver, a pastor from Georgia, said he’d like the task force to think about something his congregation has considered: how African heritage and thinking have influenced the Reformed tradition.
Sometimes, “it’s like Calvin has become God,” Oliver told the task force. “God spoke to Calvin. God spoke to others. God spoke to others before he spoke to Calvin . . . What gifts did Africa and other traditions bring to the Reformed tradition?”
So the task force, which is scheduled to report its findings before the General Assembly meets in 2006, has begun to try to think in new ways — in part by considering ideas for reaching consensus by means other than strict parliamentary procedure and by bringing into their discussions ideas from other cultures and even from outside the Reformed Protestant tradition.
Vicky Curtiss, a pastor from Iowa who also has experience as a former presbytery executive and is trained in spiritual direction for organizations, has been encouraging the task force to consider alternate models for decision-making, methods that allow people to sort through options by means other than just voting things up and down. While the task force hasn’t decided yet which way to go, some in the group say they’re intrigued by what Curtiss is suggesting and the exercises she’s led them through.
Curtiss told, for example, of her experience with a small, inner-city congregation in Cleveland where she was the pastor early in her ministry — a small church that stayed in existence in part by spending from an endowment. Wanting to encourage greater stewardship, she introduced the idea that the congregation should stop relying on its endowment to meet the operating budget — an idea that was discussed and, when the session voted on it, came up with a 5-to-5 tie. Curtiss knew that under the rules, she had the power to break the tie, “but thank God, I didn’t.” Instead, she asked the session to think about things for another week and got a crash course from her presbytery on ways of building consensus. At the next meeting, after more discussion, the session reached a unanimous decision not to use the endowment anymore.
Curtiss said her decision not to cast a vote was built on a theological foundation: she sensed “there was some truth among all of us that had not yet fully emerged,” so she wanted to give the session more time to listen for where God was leading it. Curtiss said that after her session met the second time to talk about the endowment, people said, “I have never quite felt the power of the Spirit move through the group” as it did in that second discussion.
Sarah Sanderson-Doughty, a pastor from New York state and a recent graduate of McCormick Seminary, preached during one worship session that people can cultivate the practice of looking for God. Sanderson-Doughty said she spent time three years ago traveling the country interviewing women pastors, and will never forget what one told her — that she and the other pastor from her church practiced the intentional discipline of saying out loud each day, “There’s God again!” whenever they sensed God’s leading, seeing the presence of the divine in everything from the beauty of nature to the working through of problems to the surprises each day brings.
Among the ideas Curtiss presented for the task force to consider were:
The concept of “holy indifference” — of laying aside one’s own preconceived ideas of what should happen to consider how God might be at work. “I have a hard time imagining that I am ever going to change my views around ordination and homosexuality; I feel quite strongly about that,” Curtiss told the group. But that’s different, she said, from knowing what God wants to do with the church. “I am willing to empty myself enough,” she said, “to be open to what is this new thing that God wants to do.”
The idea of polarity management — that sometimes, instead of reaching a decision intended to resolve things, strategies are devised for continuing to manage ideas or approaches that are in tension with each other. Sometimes, Curtiss said, an organization doesn’t need just one approach or the other, but needs parts of both to be healthy — like breathing in and breathing out.
The idea of waiting to see if a course of action seems right — of making a preliminary decision, then giving some time for consideration before it becomes final, to see if it still feels right. Once some time has passed, “Do you have a sense of peace about it? Do you have a sense of energy about it?” Curtiss asked. Sometimes, she said, people are so eager to stop talking about a controversy that they make a decision quickly and then have second thoughts — sometimes “as early as in the parking lot after the meeting.”
Some task force members seemed intrigued by what Curtiss presented, although no decisions were made on how to proceed. There also was discussion of the possibility that, when the task force presents its report to the General Assembly in 2006, perhaps things could be considered differently there.
Gradye Parsons, who works in the Office of the General Assembly and is a staff liaison to the task force, visited the Uniting Churches in Australia assembly this summer — where the Australian assembly debated the question of ordaining homosexuals, using a consensus model of decision-making (although, ultimately, it did come down to a vote). Parsons raised the idea of perhaps having a plenary session in 2006 dedicated to an initial discussion of the task force recommendations — with no voting intended — before the commissioners are sent off to committees to discuss that and other business.
Barbara Wheeler, the president of Auburn Seminary, said “the possibility that Presbyterians might actually do business differently,” drawing from other Reformed bodies and perhaps even other places, had never before occurred to her. (“I just thought Robert’s Rules were handed down with the tablets on Sinai,” Wheeler joked.)
And task force members acknowledged the difficulty they face in communicating to the rest of the church their ideas — not just their conclusions, but the process they’re going through of building community and trust. “I think that we are going to be in for a time of suffering as a task force,” Curtiss said at one point, addressing the concern some task force members have that the church is expecting great things of it, but may not be willing to embrace what the task force has to say.
John Wilkinson, a pastor from Rochester, N.Y., said he keeps thinking of how well people need to know one another to reach the kind of trust and mutual respect this task force has achieved over the last two years.
How will it be possible for a General Assembly to do that, asked Mike Loudon, a pastor from Florida. After they make their report, “will we just fall back into business as usual, taking sides and picking up swords?”
