LOUISVILLE — In what could be a preview of what to expect at next summer’s General Assembly, the General Assembly Council heard a summary of the recommendations of the Form of Government Task Force during its meeting Sept. 18-21. And, not surprisingly, the council members had both praise for the task force’s hard work — and some questions and concerns.
The Form of Government Task Force has been meeting for a little more than a year with a gargantuan task: to rewrite the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to make it more concise, more flexible, more theologically grounded.
The task force is posting its work online (www.pcusa.org/formofgovernment /), asking for comments and suggestions from Presbyterians while there’s still time to make revisions. And it’s offering video clips of task force members responding to frequently-asked questions.
Some of what the FOG task force is recommending may raise hackles. Co-moderator Sharon Davison, a lawyer from New York, said that plainly while presenting a summary of the recommendations to the council on Sept. 19.
For example, a recommendation that a congregation be allowed to install its interim pastor as the next installed pastor, with a “super-majority” vote of approval from the presbytery, is “very controversial, I know,” Davison said. But individual presbyteries have the option of deciding, as a matter of policy, not to allow interims to be installed in that way, she pointed out.
And some congregations do want that flexibility, she said.
Davison also acknowledged that some people like the Book of Order as it is now and don’t see the reasons for change. “Some in the church feel the present first four chapters cannot be touched” — that they’re powerful and vital just as they are, she said.
But the revision of those chapters into a proposed new section called the Foundations of Presbyterian Polity is an effort to bring more clarity and to more explicitly present the theological principles underlying Presbyterian polity, she said.
“For me, this is a long journey,” Davison said. “I don’t have a problem with the present Book of Order. I use the present Book of Order. I read the present Book of Order. … “
But Davison said she’s learned that “there are a lot of people for whom the Book of Order is a barrier,” standing in the way of them doing mission. “The fact of the matter is we need to help them do mission. That’s really what we are called to do.”
The FOG task force is “trying to be as transparent as possible,” Davison said. She described some other recommendations, in what admittedly is a complex reworking of the Book of Order.
Some have pleaded with the task force to ditch the terminology “governing bodies.” So in its report the term “committee” is generally being replaced with “council,” a reclaiming of historical precedent, Davison said, as there have been councils of the Christian church going back to Nicea and extending on to Vatican II.
But that would mean that many familiar church committees, for example, the committee on ministry in a presbytery or the General Assembly Committee on Representation, no longer would exist as such.
The FOG task force was instructed not to make any changes in certain sensitive parts of the Book of Order, particularly the much fought-over section requiring those being ordained to practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single. It also has created a side-by-side comparison — a map of sorts for anyone willing to wade through 170 pages — that shows the fate of each provision from the current Book of Order in the proposed revision.
The General Assembly Council was not asked to vote on the Form of Government recommendations in September; the FOG task force may make more changes when it meets again in November.
But after Davison’s presentation, council members did offer some reactions.
Regarding the proposal on interim pastors being allowed to stay on, “my gut kind of twists when I hear that,” said Gary Skinner of Seattle. While an interim has “a very important and critical” task to perform, it’s often not in the congregation’s best interest that that person stay on, he said.
Skinner said he also has mixed feelings about the wisdom of keeping synods in their current configurations.
The council’s leadership had asked Stephen Benz, a council member who is executive presbyter of East Tennessee Presbytery, to prepare a response.
Benz — stressing that he was speaking just for himself, not for the council or for executive presbyters — said he thinks the work of this task force is by and large brilliant and particularly likes the clarity and simplicity of the Foundations of Presbyterian Polity section.
But Benz said the report also raises questions for him, and he would like more time for the church to consider it. Benz said he has read the report several times, but is still trying to understand its implications.
With the General Assembly approaching, “my fear is that what they have done may get lost in some of the mistrust and rhetoric that engulfs us these days, and that we may wind up discarding this work because it is just too much to digest, too much too fast … “ Benz said.
Some will say, sneeringly, that the report will enhance “local option” or it was “generated out of the Office of the General Assembly,” he said.
So Benz is suggesting that perhaps the assembly should not be asked to vote the FOG report up or down, or to amend it piece by piece, but that it be distributed to the presbyteries for consideration, so they can weigh in. Then, a way might be found to present it to the General Assembly in 2010 or 2012, Benz said, with the “will of the denomination” already known.
