LOUISVILLE — Say “Form of Government” or “Hey, there’s a new task force working to revise the Book of Order,” and watch people’s eyes roll right back into their heads. It’s not exactly “Deal or No Deal.”
But “people are hungry for a simpler way to shape our life,” Joan Gray, the moderator of the 217th General Assembly, told the Form of Government Task Force recently. Presbyterians from the South remember when the Book of Order was a third of the size it is now, Gray said.
“If you come up with something that is useful and slim and flexible, it will be greeted with great rejoicing in the church,” she said. “I don’t think it will be a hard sell.”
Here’s the short version. In June 2006, the General Assembly voted to create a Form of Government Task Force, charged with revising and simplifying the Book of Order, except for two specific sections — one involving the property trust clause and the other the standard that limits ordination to those who practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they’re single. The task force will release its proposed changes by September 2007 and formally report back to the assembly in 2008.
The idea is to redraft things in a way that will allow presbyteries “sufficient authority and flexibility,” the assembly said, to help congregations focus better on mission and to deal with the many changes they’re facing in the world. .
That nine-member task force has now met twice — most recently in Kentucky Oct. 19-21 — and is preparing to put a draft of some of its early work on the Web site of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), so people across the church can read it and respond.
The task force has started by approving a revision of the first four chapters of the Book of Order — what’s being called “The Foundations of Presbyterian Polity” (link to document), which is a “close-to-final” draft, said task force co-moderator Sharon Davison, an elder from New York City Presbytery. It’s “a draft we are feeling confident to share with the church,” but which may still be revised as needed, said co-moderator Cindy Bolbach, an elder from National Capital Presbytery.
The task force also completed work on the draft of another section — what it is calling Chapter 1 (link to document) involving “Particular Congregations and Their Membership.”
And it’s released an outline (link to document) of how the members anticipate they might organize the revised Book of Order.
The task force made it clear it welcomes response from interested Presbyterians. They’ll do a presentation at the fall polity conference, for example, and are planning to communicate with leaders of the Presbyterian Renewal Network and the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, both lobbying groups within the denomination, to send the message: “We’re open to feedback.”
Right now, “very few people know we exist, who we are,” said James Kim, pastor of Trinity Church in Colony, Texas. “We are kind of flying under the radar,” and some might think that’s intentional, when it’s not, Kim said. “We’ve got to build trust.”
Gray, in her remarks to the task force, also stressed how significant trust is. She is a self-described “polity wonk” — the author, for example, of the often-used Presbyterian Polity for Church Officers. And Gray told the task force that “polity is about power. It’s about shaping our common life and who gets to make decisions about that.”
In the Southern branch of Presbyterianism, “we had a skinny Book of Order at one time and it worked just fine,” Gray said. But “that skinny Book of Order was built on a high level of knowing each other and on trust. …The less you know each other, the more you need rules.”
It is also clear, even in the task force’s early discussions, that there may well be constituencies for keeping certain parts of the Book of Order. “There are a lot of favorite cows,” said Steve Smith, stated clerk of Pacific Presbytery.
Some, for example, may be attached to the historic language used in the first four chapters of the book. Some may argue for or against changes to particular parts of the rules. Some may watch with eagle eyes to see what the revision says about ordination standards.
The idea is to make the book clearer, more streamlined, and flexible — but there are certain to be discussions about the merits of what stays, what goes, and how things get changed.
Historic language. The task force talked, for example, about whether to keep certain historic, theological language in the first four chapters — in what it’s calling “The Foundations of Presbyterian Polity.”
Should the language be made more “user-friendly” and perhaps more accessible?
And how far should the task force go with language that may not be “imminently accessible for people who have just come into the church,” but which is foundational theologically, asked Paul Hooker, executive presbyter of St. Augustine Presbytery and a member of the Advisory Committee on the Constitution.
Should they make it easy, or sometimes say, “This language is deliberately hard so you dumbos will learn theology,” Hooker quipped.
Foundations. Gray laid out what she sees as the theological basis of Presbyterian polity.
The sovereignty of God, the recognition that “all power belongs to God,” means that no human group is ever given absolute authority, and in all things “we have to look to the Lord and head of the church,” she said.
The unity of the church comes to bear, Gray said, in issues such as ecumenical relationships, in the insistence on having a diverse church and the concept — in dispute in some places in the PC(USA) — that property does not belong to individual congregations but is held in trust for the whole church.
And “Presbyterians believe in sin,” Gray said.
“Why do we need rules?” In part, because people are sinful, she said, and “we need boundaries, boundaries around our power. The older I get, the more I realize that power is the most seductive thing in the world, far beyond sex and money. Power is it.”
Gray also described Presbyterian polity as being representative, relational, and based on a constitution. “The constitution shows us where the lines are so we don’t trample all over each other in trying to live together.”
How much flexibility? Among the difficulties the task force will face are determining how much flexibility to give congregations and presbyteries in certain areas, and how much to have firm rules. And there also are questions of when the PC(USA)’s current rules should change — in other words, what’s in the Book of Order now that’s not working?
One early point of discussion, for example, involved whether someone called as an interim minister could then be called as the congregation’s installed pastor. The task force didn’t debate the merits of that, but raised it as the kind of issue on which there is tension between different points of view.
Paige McRight, executive presbyter of Central Florida Presbytery, said there are some parts of the country where congregations have a hard time finding ministers. A congregation might find a terrific interim minister, someone who’s willing to stay, but the Book of Order prohibits that person continuing on, she said.
And “that kind of stuff in the Book of Order cripples presbyteries,” McRight said.
But Gray, who’s specialized in recent years in interim ministry, made a specific plea for the rules not to be changed to allow a minister serving in an interim capacity to be called as the installed pastor for that congregation.
“I hear you loud and clear,” Gray told McRight.
But interim ministers are doing a job that is “antithetical to being a candidate for anything,” she said. “You go into a church that is fragile and vulnerable and wanting to love somebody.” Any interim who does even a “halfway good job” will have people saying, “Please stay and be our pastor. What they’re really saying is, `We want safety and security.’ “
And what’s better for the congregation, Gray said, is to go through the hard work of figuring out where it should go next — what it’s being called to be and do. Perhaps more flexibility can be provided to congregations having difficulty calling pastors not by changing the rules for interims, she said, but by such things as making better use of lay pastors or perhaps even — “can I even say this?” she asked — considering allowing people who haven’t attended to seminary to be ordained.
Where next? It’s clear from this early meeting that the task force still has many decisions ahead of it. Gray, in describing the foundations of Presbyterian polity, said to the group: “You all will be building the house … I helped appoint you and I know you’re going to do a good job.”
Asked what she sees as “sticking places” in the work, Gray named the concerns of small congregations and immigrant churches. For an immigrant fellowship, it can be difficult finding a pastor who speaks the language, has been to seminary, and can pass the ordination examinations, she said.
Kim asked what polity is best for a post-modern, post-denominational context.
The emerging church movement demonstrates that “the most important thing is what’s effective in doing mission in your location,” Gray said. “If you all could do a miracle,” and come up with a polity with both strong boundaries and flexibility “to take care of the hard places that people find themselves in, that would be a wonderful thing.”
In the end, the task force agreed to make some of the documents it has been working on available for public scrutiny — carefully marking them as “draft” documents, still subject to change.
McRight recommended openness, saying that making the drafts public will serve as a “windsock” for the task force, in its effort to streamline the Book of Order. As the reaction rolls in, she said, “It will be a measure of whether we’re moving in a direction that the market will bear.”
