Editor’s Note: Linda Valentine was elected executive director of the General Assembly Council at the 217th General Assembly, held in Birmingham, Ala., in June 2006. Outlook Editor Jack Haberer recently sat down with her to reflect on her first year in this leadership role.
JH: You’re coming up on your first anniversary in the role of executive director of the GAC. First the easy question: What have you enjoyed most about this new calling?
LV: The people. Just meeting people all around the church. Seeing the breadth and depth of mission activity that we’re engaged in. Truly you sense that this is bigger than any one congregation or any one presbytery.
JH: The obvious second question: What has been difficult or disappointing?
LV: There’s so much to do. There’s so much opportunity. Choosing the right ones to pursue. I continue to be disappointed, as so many of us are, with the … contentiousness in the denomination that is distracting. Some of it is important. But there’s so much positive going on that giving equal or more attention to that is a continual challenge.
JH: You have made many changes in the senior staff positions. Now that the team is mostly in place, what can we expect out of you all?
LV: This excites me tremendously, this team we’ve assembled. You remember that when I started back in July, the GAC had decided to eliminate three divisions, and the whole senior leadership team would leave on October 1st, and we were to regroup the programs and regroup the support services in some new fashion. So when I look at how far we’ve gotten in 10 months now, it’s a lot. This new team has the balance that we were seeking of experienced people and new people. There’s both a continuity and a freshness and new energy. And even the continuing people all have new responsibilities and new portfolios, so in a sense it’s new for everybody in the program side and the most senior leadership. I think we work very well together. There’s a lot of informal back and forth, exchanging of ideas, and building on each other’s enthusiasm, building on ideas, trying to find new ways to engage the church.
The fact that Tom and Rhashell and Eric come directly out of congregations and, of course, Karen and me, too, there’s sort of a renewed sense of perspective. So much of the mission, evangelism, and joining the fellowship of the church happens at the congregational level. And how we can help to support that and be part of that is certainly the mission on everybody’s mind.
JH: As you have been traveling around the church, you have met folks who love the PC(USA), and you’ve met folks who are unhappy with the denomination. Where there are happy feelings, what 2 or 3 things do you hear most? AND where there are complaints and disgruntlement, what are you hearing most there?
LV: Well, as I go around I’m forever amazed at the extent of mission, the amount of engagement, and a great enthusiasm for everything from international engagement in mission work, all these mission networks that we have, to Christian education. One of the most energetic meetings was the meeting of the Association of Christian Educators in Philadelphia, where we had 1,200 Christian educators together who were just full of creativity and wanting to exchange ideas and sharing enthusiasm and energy together. That was exciting.
We’ve had a number of seminary consultations. Cliff (Kirkpatrick) and I have been around meeting with the seminaries, discovering how each one of them has its own character and interest; and how much opportunity there is for us to engage … the seminaries in a lot of the work that is done thru the General Assembly Council and other aspects of the church. …
Marsha Meyers uses the term of the church as an ecosystem — this idea that there are so many points of connection for so many of these kinds of activities around the church. We’ve done a number of conference calls in which we gather 15, 20 people everywhere including presbytery execs, synod execs, committee on ministry people, seminary presidents, leaders, elders — just to share ideas about things going on around the church. With every one of these calls, I just come away with renewed enthusiasm as people are exchanging ideas on camps and conference centers, or youth ministries, or immigrant ministries, or working in the inner city, or engaging with the international mission networks or so on. They’re rich.
In terms of where people are not so happy, first of all, I’ve heard on some of these conference calls and in some of these conversations a real intentional effort — and I do think this is coming out of a lot of the conversations that were prompted by the Peace, Unity and Purity Task Force report as well as that whole topic of conversation — a number of examples where people have intentionally set up ongoing communications, getting together with people that they know they disagree with. Many presbyteries are redesigning their meetings to spend much more time in worship and discernment and openness. So even in the places where we know we have differences, I see a lot of very genuine efforts to build relationships and to build a genuine respect for each other.
One of the great things that happened was the visit to Sequoyah Hills Church [in Eastern Tennessee]. The pastor of Sequoyah Hills wrote a wonderful letter to the editor that you published in The Presbyterian Outlook. Alison Seed, Terry Newland, Steve Benz and I went and visited this church, and they wrote such a gracious note of thanks in the Outlook. There was a follow-up meeting. I don’t know if you know about that, but they brought about 12 or 15 people from their church to Louisville, spent a full day meeting with Cliff and Joe Small and Bill Simmons and Tom Taylor and a number of the people in Louisville, and they wrote back a letter which is astonishing. Can I read a little bit of it to you?
JH: Go ahead.
LV: “Dear Friends,” this was written on April 13, 2007. “We are pleased to inform you that the Session of Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church, in a called meeting of March 25th, voted unanimously to restore all funding to the General Assembly per capita and to the GA operating budgets for 2007. The Session and congregation have been in an extensive time of discernment regarding Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church, our ministry, and mission in the PC(USA). The purpose of our action in withholding funds was to effect conversation with our denomination’s leadership. The response to our plea has been gracious, accommodating and overwhelming.” Then they describe the various meetings. “All of our exchanges have mirrored mutual respect and deep commitment to our denomination. This is a perilous time. The extent of mistrust, suspicion, and division throughout the PC(USA) is significant and troubling. There are still issues of strong disagreement. However, we are persuaded, as we regard one another as sisters and brothers Christ, genuinely valuing the dignity and worth of each person, praying together, listening to one another, and speaking the truth in love, that nothing, NOTHING,” that’s in capital letters, “can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. So we’re committed to continuing the conversation, seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in discerning what the Spirit is saying to the church. Based upon our unity in Christ, there is nothing on which we cannot talk together. Hallelujah. Let the conversation spread throughout the PC(USA).”
Signed by J. Vance Link, clerk, and William J. Barron, moderator. That gives me hope.
JH: This encounter with the Sequoyah Hills Church demonstrates effective communications can bring great results. What else is beginning to unfold that aims to strengthen our communications in the church?
LV: Several times I have made presentations that overview the mission of the church as done with the General Assembly Council, and even in audiences that should know better, you know, informed audiences, people on boards of other agencies and so on among them, many people come up afterwards saying, “I didn’t know that’s what the GAC does” or some say, “You should change your name; you’re the mission agency. Now I get it.”
So one is just building that awareness that [GAC] isn’t just a discreet and isolated agency. This is the mission of the church. So that’s one part. The other is I think these conference calls are just ways of getting people talking to each other. They’re not really for the purpose of speaking to me or to Cliff or to headquarters, or any sort, but really getting people to talk amongst each other. We have, as you know, a new deputy executive director for communications, and that’s just the acknowledgement that this is such an important topic. And it’s not just talking about what’s happening at the GAC, although that’s important, but really connecting what’s happening throughout the church regarding missions.
JH: Turn the clock ahead five years. How will the PC(USA) then be different from the PC(USA) of today?
LV: Obviously many people are pondering this. Gil Rendle reminded us of the construct that was done in that article by Dykstra and Mulder a few years ago in which they talk about the different eras of the church, starting with the constitutional confederacy, and then a corporate model, and then a regulatory model, and then he puts a question mark.
He says that a lot of people are talking about what is this new era, but there has not developed a consensus of what this new era is. … I do think it has something to do with the “flat” and networked, and new vehicles of communication. … I think it will be operating much more through what Hunter Ferrell calls “Mission initiators,” lots more points of mission initiation. I used this terminology in connection with the Christian educators network. I’ve said, “You’ve got 200 points of creativity as you have these representatives in the point network who are connected to each other and lifting up materials, or solutions or ideas that they have. …”
The value of our connectional system [is] it places value on our ability to connect. So I think we’ve got a head start on that desire and intention. Now with the kind of tools and technology and people getting used to operating this way in other realms, I think we’ll see people brought into the church. Maybe I’m not all that imaginative, because I’m just extrapolating from what we see happening already, but I do think we will see more and more of that.
JH: Specifically, what’s ahead this next year, your second year of the job?
LV: First of all, we’ll get our new team in place. Hunter Ferrell will begin the first of August, and Jill Hudson will join us in the beginning of October. We have one more position to fill, which is a director for relation development, and with that we have our full complement of leadership at the management level. With this team coming together, we have as operating principles to be collaborative — both among ourselves and with the church; to be accountable — that is, to be much more goal setting, why are we setting these goals? … And then delivering on that — to be responsive. There’s so much change happening in the church, the needs of the church are changing, how can we be responsive to that — and above all to be excellent. We know congregations have a lot of choices in organizations with which to do mission, or in ways to do mission, we’ve got to be as good as any of those. That’s a matter of stewardship and a matter of responsibility to the denomination.
So we’ll be working on all of those. The GAC — the council part of it — has reorganized. We had our first meeting last March in a whole new committee structure. And as we move into the September meeting, we’ll get further into that. That new committee structure … no longer follows the structure of the organization, because there was a concern that that was just perpetuating silos and people knowing only about a small slice of things. But rather it’s more thematic or more about the purpose of the work that we are doing, so it’s divided into evangelism and witness, and justice and compassion, and spirituality and discipleship, and leadership and vocation. So that’ll be interesting and creative — to be thinking about our work in those terms. And of course, we’ll be preparing for General Assembly, which will require a lot of time and attention as we move into 2008.
JH: What might we anticipate as key matters coming to the San Jose GA?
LV: We have a number of referrals and assigned issues for us to respond to. It will be interesting to see if overtures come out of all these discussions that are going on among the middle governing bodies. Nothing has emerged yet, but people certainly have their eye on the Assembly. The Form of Government Task Force has its draft in the works, and will be out in September for comment, and that will prompt quite a bit of interesting conversation, since it’s quite a different approach than the current Book of Order.
JH: By the way, whatever has happened to that big pledge of $150 million announced at the opening of the Birmingham GA?
LV: Well, as we said since July last year, a pledge was made. We’ve not received anything. We’re not making any plans or commitments at this stage.
