Welcome to the season of experimentation. Like medical researchers desperately searching for a cure, some Presbyterians are kicking around innovative ideas, sending up trial balloons, and contemplating taking strides ranging from baby steps to giant leaps. They are proposing new kinds of connectionalism.
The backlash to actions of the recent General Assembly continues unabated. The initial outcry against the GA’s responses to the reports of two theological task forces–one proposing steps for peace, unity, and purity of the church, and the other using some unfamiliar terms to lift up Trinitarian theology–has led to discussions and proposals for everything from redirecting funds, to operating as a shadow denomination, even to dividing the PC(USA) house.
How shall this faith community organize itself at such a time as this?
We do well to back up a step to ask how faith communities in general govern themselves. We do well to step way back to contemplate the whole notion of governance of the faith community, drawing our eyes to the dialectical opposites of freedom and accountability, and to their exaggerated extremes, anarchy and tyranny.
Our Presbyterian structure has always tried to connect those disconnected worlds. We proclaim with passion the freedom that comes by the free gift of God’s grace given us in Jesus Christ while at the same time we exhort one another to live lives of obedience to the high demands of holiness. We unleash the gifts of members as well as ministers yet we keep a short leash on every one of us who serves in any position of responsible leadership.
To put it differently, we live between Corinth and Galatia.
The Corinthians’ experience of the gospel led to a celebration of freedom that gushed to the point of lawlessness. They defied the authority of the Apostle who founded their fellowship. In the process, they proudly divided into factions, casting aspersions on each other.
The Galatians responded to the gospel by pursuing lives of holiness that overflowed to the point of legalism. In their earnestness they revived many behavioral requirements more typical of Jesus’ opponents, the Pharisees. In the process, they tried to “complete by the works of the law that which had begun by the Spirit.”
We can commend the Corinthian liberty and the Galatian earnestness; we must resist the Corinthian lawlessness and the Galatian legalism.
That’s why we Presbyterians find ourselves dwelling in the perplexing “both-and” world somewhere between the autonomy intrinsic to congregationalism and the authoritarian structures intrinsic to the episcopacy.
Living between such poles, trying to converge the best of both worlds, has made life very, very complicated for us.
What do you do when things get complicated? In the present context, the easiest solution is to trade one polarity to attain the other. It is tempting to dismantle, to shirk all denominational controls to enjoy our freedom. It is just as tempting to impose rigid rules to trim the wings of others’ freedom.
A better alternative is to resist those temptations and instead to embrace the complexity that lives between Corinth and Galatia, that proclaims freedom and holiness, that supports local church initiative and denominational oversight, that empowers ministries and holds accountable those leading those ministries, that promotes new ideas while holding on to the classical roots of faith and practice.
One might wish to dispense with the argument and debate that comes with a season of experimentation. Then again a discernment process–such as has been urged by the peace, unity, and purity task force–doesn’t usually work out neatly and easily. The task force struggled and experimented with lots of ideas, proposals, options, ideas, and trial balloons while contemplating taking strides ranging from baby steps to giant leaps just as the entire church does now.
May it be that, through this season, a greater good might emerge: the extension of grace and mercy, the cessation of hostility near and far, and a demonstration of the glory of God in, through, and beyond the people of God.
