LOUISVILLE — What’s around the corner for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)?
In this time of red-hot rhetoric, who knows? (Some would add: Who cares?)
But something different seems to be coming — and at the recent meeting of the General Assembly Council, Presbyterians thought out loud about what that might be.
Why a denomination?
“Why do we need a denomination?”
That’s the question Joan Gray, moderator of the 217th General Assembly, put straight to the council on Sept. 27 — in essence, asking leaders of the PC(USA) whether or not the denomination they serve is relevant anymore.
But Gray also spoke a word of hope — contending that “living into that scary, anxious question may be one of the ways that God opens us to the new thing that God wants to do among us, whatever it is.”
Gray said, “I am convinced that God is doing a new thing in our midst, and the sign of that for me is that the former things are passing away.” She doesn’t say this lightly — Gray is a Presbyterian minister who has written a well-regarded book on Presbyterian polity, a woman who has built her career in the church.
But still she asserted that the ways in which Presbyterians were trained and the realities to which they’re accustomed “are passing away. Some so slowly that I think we hardly recognize it, others very fast.”
And all over the PC(USA), people who are involved in direct mission are asking whether a centralized denomination is needed any more. Her first instinct is to answer yes — Gray said she can summon a long list of “substantial and positive” answers as to why the PC(USA) should continue to exist.
“My natural reaction to this is resistance and trying to rebuild the former things,” she said. “I think that’s human nature. But this is the very point at which the cross of Jesus Christ rises up both to confront me and to comfort me,” as she realizes that Christian faith is built on the understanding that “it is in dying that we are born to new life. It is in letting go that we receive.”
As the old passes away, “all will become new.”
Gray said she is coming to believe what Linda Valentine, the General Assembly Council’s new executive director, has recently been saying: that what matters is not the precise structure of Presbyterian life, but “things like transparency, accountability, listening, and listening, and listening. And acting out of faith, rather than fear.”
Gray encouraged all Presbyterians — every women’s Bible study, every men’s breakfast group, every pastor and session — to think of the 15th chapter of John’s gospel, the fifth verse.
“Jesus said, ‘Without me, you can do nothing.'” And Gray contended, “We need to live into nothing. We need to live into what it means to be able to do nothing before we will ever get to ‘Abide in me and you will bear much fruit.’ There has to be deconstruction before there can be new construction. I don’t have answers, I don’t have a plan.”
But Gray has a vision that God is doing a new thing with Presbyterians, “and that fills me with great joy.”
Gray ended by saying this: “It’s going to be a hell of a ride.”
A new structure
The council approved at this meeting the broad outlines of a plan restructuring the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — condensing things into six program areas.
The council also confirmed the appointment of Joey Bailey as the PC(USA)’s deputy director for shared services, responsible for information technology, finance, human resources and distribution.
While it considers how the denomination’s national staff should be organized and the impact of this year’s $9.1 million downsizing, the council also is being pushed to confront a hard reality at the regional level: that some of the 173 presbyteries and 16 synods are experiencing significant financial distress. Some say the denomination needs to look hard, and quickly, at the current system of middle governing bodies, to ask whether it’s feasible to continue the current configuration with funds in such short supply.
“I think this is one of the most important things we will do,” the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, Clifton Kirkpatrick, told the council, calling a reconfiguration of the middle governing body system “absolutely crucial.”
On Sept. 28, the council voted to create a task force to “explore the possibility of holding a consultation with presbyteries and synods to consider the issue of their future viability.”
But some contended that the PC(USA) can’t move that slowly — that it’s not enough to set up a task force to consider whether a consultation might some day be a good idea.
Conrad Rocha, a council member from New Mexico, proposed an amendment (which was voted down) to say that the consultation with middle governing bodies should take place within the next six months.
Two presbyteries from the Southwest — the presbyteries of Santa Fe and of Sierra Blanca — had sent a letter to the council asking it to “convene a consultation at an early opportunity in order to address the viability and stability of the synods and presbyteries of this denomination.”
Others share that sense of urgency.
Gary Skinner, from the Synod of Alaska-Northwest, said only three of the seven presbyteries in his synod currently have executives. Skinner said something must be done soon, unless the council is prepared in drafting the PC(USA)’s next budget “to maintain a life-support system” for presbyteries in places like the southwestern U.S., the Northwest and Puerto Rico.
But others cautioned that such a conversation needs to bubble up from presbyteries and synods, not be required by an order from the General Assembly Council.
Kirkpatrick said any significant changes in the current system likely would require amendments to the PC(USA) constitution — and that requires approval from the General Assembly. He suggested moving forward quickly enough so any changes could be presented to the assembly in 2008.
Imagining at the grassroots
Part of the meeting was spent in conversation between council members and representatives of presbyteries and synods. Here’s a question they considered. What could things look like in 2010, if Presbyterians could take a leap or three of faith and do things differently?
Now, “we go to GA (General Assembly) to solve our problems,” and when the assembly goes home, “we continue to talk about the problem,” Graham Hart, general presbyter for Peace River Presbytery in Florida, said during a Sept. 27 session.
Instead, Hart encouraged people to spend some time in “appreciative inquiry” — to imagine what could happen if Presbyterians focused on the positive, built on strengths, dared to take risks.
For example: “Meet more, eat more, talk less,” to build relationships.
Or “the work of the church is to get us outside and into the world.”
After a long stretch in which the participants brainstormed in groups of eight, representatives from those tables came to the microphones to share some of what the groups had discussed.
“We need to tell our good news and let our light shine,” and “not just be defending ourselves,” said General Assembly Council member Andrea Stokes.
“The denomination needs one single press secretary who speaks a clear, strong, unified message of what’s going on in the church,” said Clark Cowden, evangelist presbyter with San Joaquin Presbytery in California.
“We cannot always have negative content getting out there,” he said. And the most negative of all, Cowden said, is the General Assembly, which he said pushes people into opposing camps and creates conflict. Instead, “we need a week that pushes us to togetherness, to community,” Cowden said.
The 2008 General Assembly should conduct no business, but spend a week in prayer and discernment, suggested Edie Gause of the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii.
Tithe, pray, fast to seek God’s will.
“Stop tinkering with how it is” and consider something completely different, said Lorna Kuyk, executive presbyter of Ohio Valley Presbytery. Ask questions, such as, “What if there weren’t any offices in Louisville” or the presbyteries didn’t exist?
Corey Schlosser-Hall of North Puget Sound Presbytery recommended “reading from the book of the prophet Bono,” who has suggested that we stop asking God to bless our work “and start doing the work God has blessed.”
