You barely have a chance to say farewell to Jim Andrews, and you have to say farewell to Bill Thompson, too. As the final stated clerks of the southern and northern streams, Jim and Bill together helped engineer the reunion–at the cost of one’s continued ecclesiastical employment. Two decades later, their entry into the church triumphant just a few weeks apart assures that the former counterparts are both employed again, partnering in the promotion of God’s reign through the cosmos.
Their legacies of leadership challenge their successors of today and tomorrow to excel.
One of those possible successors has just walked onto the stage. Linda Valentine has been nominated to succeed retiring GAC Executive Director John Detterick. While that role has often been less visible than that of stated clerk, it oversees the larger part of our denomination’s staff, including all our missions personnel. What might we hope for this new staff person?
Certainly, we hope the whole church will give Linda a good chance to learn her role. As a lawyer, corporate executive, and church elder from Chicago, she comes in as an outsider to the systems and structures of her office. We hope she will find within that staff, and among the denomination’s executives, ministers, elders, deacons, and members a readiness to welcome her leadership, to rally in her support, and to pray for her wisdom, her stamina, her courage, and her morale. We also dare hope and pray that she can give some particular kinds of leadership–the kinds that qualify as “both-ands.”
We hope Linda will be able to revive Presbyterians’ appreciation for the connectional church, while applauding the distinct mission initiatives of local congregations and presbyteries. The digital age is providing an unprecedented opportunity for local pew Presbyterians to engage in global mission, via Internet communications and short-term international mission trips. Let all the people shout, “Amen,” in celebration of the significant mission being extended from local front lines to foreign front lines. At the same time, the digital age fosters disconnectedness, where many congregations eschew the accountabilities of being in a connectional denomination. How refreshing it would be for the new GAC director to elevate our enthusiasm for being in covenant accountability with people we never would have chosen as friends.
We hope Linda will be able to wrap her arms around the diversity that is growing in our churches both by valuing the differences of the disconnected and disenfranchised and by promoting the common faith and values that unite us. We come together around the cross of Christ, around the baptismal font and communion table, around the pulpit with its Holy Scriptures. May the GAC director keep reminding us of the magnetic power of the Trinitarian faith, drawing all together in the force of its truth.
We hope she will urge the church to be change agents for evangelism, justice, and the promotion of social righteousness. May she and her resident specialists reverse the old pattern of making pronouncements as a club of experts sitting in a think tank. Rather, let them be mission partners, facilitators, and resource persons helping all the church to develop informed consciences in doing such outreach.
We hope that Linda will bring with her fresh eyes the courage to change systems with a quick creativity that matches the most innovative of corporations, cutting edge mission ministries, and those booming two-thirds world churches.
We in the independent church press hope that Linda will work well with us. May she be accessible to us and to the whole church, as have her predecessors. We also hope she will take to task any of us who misrepresent or misconstrue anything that she, her staff, or her council members do or say. Those folks deserve to be supported and defended. We deserve to be held accountable.
The two former stated clerks gave such leadership. If the GAC and the GA choose to approve and confirm her appointment as GAC director, may Linda Valentine give such leadership, too.
