LOUISVILLE — For the first time, the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is meeting in the spring — and the next General Assembly isn’t roaring directly outside the door, demanding to be let in.
So these denominational leaders are using the time, that extra little bit of breathing room, to think big-picture, to talk about how some of the strategic initiatives it’s set in play — efforts to look comprehensively at denominational funding and governance, for example — are working out.
The council, meeting in Louisville March 30-April 2, also is talking about its mission work plan — an ongoing effort to make decisions about what the PC(USA) funds and emphasizes based on four particular mission goals. “We’re learning to work differently,” John Detterick, the council’s executive director, told the executive committee in its opening session.
Part of the first day’s discussion focused on the goal of spirituality and discipleship — including a session led by Steve Doughty, the former executive presbyter of Lake Michigan presbytery, and the author of “To Walk in Integrity: Living and Leading in Times of Crisis,” about integrity and leadership and the mystery of God, about simplicity and prophetic living and grace.
How, for example, is the PC(USA) being called by God to grow?
Council members talked in small groups about people of integrity they’ve known and been influenced by, and about how God’s mystery has been revealed to them. Manley Olson from Minnesota told of helping to pull together a fundraising concert for tsunami victims, “songs of lamentation and hope.” A woman spoke of “loving people when it’s not so convenient to be loving,” because sometimes God speaks through those we might at first be prejudiced against. Another man spoke of being part of a Friday morning Bible study where he learns from the perspectives of those who think differently than he does, “just by paying attention.”
Some other parts of the meeting were more immediate — more directly connected to the denomination’s current ups-and-downs.
Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216th General Assembly, spoke about how he’s doing some reinvention of the moderator’s role — with the switch to every-other-year General Assemblies, he’s the first to serve a two-year stint as moderator, and people are watching him to figure out how that will work.
Ufford-Chase told the council’s executive committee that some things are going well. He’s trying to focus his work more by region, rather than constantly criss-crossing the country. “We’ve said `No’ to a huge stack of invitations,” including many from congregations having significant anniversaries, and probably hurting some feelings along the way, Ufford-Chase said. He’s gone to only one presbytery meeting in the past nine months, and that only for a half-hour.
But he has visited 13 of the 16 synods for intensive conversations, staying in each for at least a week.
He’s visited 21 college campuses and six seminaries — insisting on meeting with students as well as professors and administrators.
He goes flat-out 20 days a month, but has managed to keep his commitment to his family and spend the other 10 at home.
And “I’m gaining confidence at a time when most moderators are winding down,” Ufford-Chase said.
He also said that his interest is turning more and more to consensus building — to finding ways to “get beyond the divisiveness and polarization that have characterized us as a denomination.”
Ufford-Chase told the whole council, in its opening session, that he’s looking for ways to match the energy and excitement he finds in local congregation with the expertise of the PC(USA)’s national staff.
“The more we can let go and find ways to partner across the denomination,” to follow the energy of the Holy Spirit people are discovering in their own congregations, “the more exciting this denomination will become,” Ufford-Chase said.
There also were quiet references (and there may be some louder ones later in the meeting) to continuing difficulties the PC(USA) faces — particularly, the fallout from the General Assembly’s decision last summer to begin a process of selective, phased divestment in some companies doing business in Israel, and the departures last fall of two national staff members after the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy traveled to the Middle East and met with representatives of Hezbollah, which the U.S. State Department has listed as a terrorist organization.
The council received letters from the sessions of three large congregations — Fourth Presbyterian in Chicago, Brick Presbyterian in New York and Bradley Hills in Bethesda, Maryland — raising concerns about divestment and its impact on Presbyterian-Jewish relations.
The council’s executive committee will hold a retreat in July — and one thing on the agenda will be a discussion of broader issues raised by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy’s trip, after which Kathy Lueckert, the council’s deputy executive director, and Peter Sulyok, staff liaison to the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, both lost their jobs. Some of those issues were raised in a memo from the executive committee’s personnel sub-committee.
For example, what kind of public witness is made on these Presbyterian trips? The memo states that “the Advisory Committee for Social Witness Policy did not publicly and explicitly express the policies of the General Assembly related to peace and non-violence and Middle East relationships.”
The memo says “there was little clarity regarding the specific roles and responsibilities” of PC(USA) staff members who went on the trip, and of the elected advisory committee members who went — including questions such as who planned the trip, who were the trip’s leaders and who was responsible for talking to the media about it. The delegation’s trip made international news when comments from the delegation were broadcast on Arab television following the meeting with Hezbollah.
What are the distinctions between advisory committees and advocacy committees in the Presbyterian system?
What kind of review and accountability exists for the work of groups connected to the ministry of the PC(USA) — groups such as Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship or the Outreach Foundation — that are involved with Presbyterian mission, but also stand somewhat outside the PC(USA) administrative structure?
When PC(USA)-sponsored trips are taken, who decides what the trip’s purpose is? What’s the difference between an “official” trip and an “information-gathering” one? After the trip, does a written report have to be submitted giving a full accounting of expenses?
None of these questions was answered March 30 — but Nancy Kahaian, an Indiana pastor who’s the GAC’s chair, made it clear she considered these important questions that need to be addressed.
