LOUISVILLE — Recognizing there is opposition to some of what it has proposed, but still confident that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) needs a more flexible form of government to navigate in a post-modern world, the Form of Government Task Force is recommending significant changes in the denomination’s constitution, but providing opportunities for amendment if the broader church disagrees.
The task force is recommending what its members think is best — doing what it thinks is right for the church after a year and a half of hard work. But it’s also providing options on some particularly sticky issues if the 2008 General Assembly comes to a different conclusion. It met Nov. 30 — Dec. 2 in Louisville.
Some of the issues on which the task force anticipates significant discussion involve who is eligible to be called as the installed pastor for a congregation when the pastor leaves. Currently the rules prohibit a congregation from calling either its interim pastor or associate pastor as the replacement, but the task force is recommending granting permission for that with a three-fourths “super-majority” vote of approval from the presbytery.
Another potential point of dispute is whether those in validated ministries should be required to regularly proclaim the Word and perform the sacraments as part of their work, something the task force is recommending.
And some want the PC(USA) to have more teeth in its efforts to provide diversity in positions of leadership. The task force would remove, among other committees, the Committee on Representation in presbyteries. But it’s also offering the assembly the option of proposing an amendment to say that “councils above the session may establish committees to advocate for diversity in leadership.”
On all of those issues, the task force has made revisions in the current requirements, but also provided alternate wording the assembly may want to consider. Its reports and recommendations are available on the PC(USA)’s Web site, including, for those who want to delve deeply, a side-by-side comparison of the current constitution and the proposed changes.
But on another point that has also provoked significant debate the task force voted on Dec. 1 not to offer an explicit choice. It is a proposal to replace the current first four chapters of the PC(USA)’s Book of Order with a new document called the “Foundations of Presbyterian Polity” –That decision came over the objection of task force member James H. Y. Kim, a pastor from Texas, who argued that evangelicals in the church have “strong feelings about the first four chapters” and do not generally favor the Foundations document offered by the task force, in part because of theological objections.
Given the level of distrust in the denomination, the task force should offer the assembly a clear choice: either to accept the Foundations document or keep the first four chapters, Kim said.
“We are going to acquiesce to the interim pastors” and offer a choice because “we recognize their ability to mess this up” by opposing that provision, Kim told his colleagues. “When we do that for these other particular constituencies in the life of the church, and you exclude the folks I’ve been advocating for, I think that’s not fair.”
But others on the task force said the assembly can make whatever changes to the task force’s report it wishes to, including voting down the Foundations document and keeping the first four chapters, and argued that the task force should stand behind the Foundations piece as offering something better for the church.
Paul K. Hooker, a task force member and executive presbyter of St. Augustine Presbytery, described the Foundations document as better organized than the first four chapters; easier to use, understand and teach; and offering a theological vision of the triune God as being the root from which all the church’s work in mission springs.
Kim, too, supports that change in vision. Earlier, he had spoken of the need for transformation of the church in a culture in which so many people have no connection to organized religion — the need to change from a regulatory, top-down model to one in which “it’s the congregation that does ministry.”
And Kim warned that “unless we make this ethos change, we will be totally irrelevant” in the years to come.
But he was also arguing, in light of the opposition that’s surfaced, to give the assembly a choice — a sign, in essence, that the task force has listened to the evangelical wing of the church.
Originally, on Nov. 30, Hooker had gone along with a plan hammered out late in one evening to offer the assembly a choice between the Foundations document and the first four chapters. But the next morning, after thinking about it overnight, Hooker offered a motion to reconsider, and his view ultimately prevailed on a 6-2 vote, with Paige M. McRight, executive presbyter of Central Florida Presbytery, voting with Kim.
To offer the assembly a choice on the Foundations document is to “start out by acknowledging the potential for defeat of the recommendation we think is most important to make,” Hooker said. Offering an explicit choice on that “is a serious mistake and amounts to waffling on our own report.”
And there were other areas — on language involving per capita payments and inactive members, for example — where the task force also decided not to offer definite choices.
It’s clear the task force report is on the church’s radar. It was instructed by the General Assembly in 2006 to report back next summer, at the 2008 assembly in San Jose. But already, Mississippi Presbytery has presented an overture to receive the task force report, but to delay voting on its recommendations during a two-year period of study.
“There is simply no need to rush the acceptance of what even the members of the Task Force recognize to be a radical change in our church’s governance,” the overture states. “A period of study and discernment of at least two years in length will cost us nothing, and will undoubtedly result in a stronger Form of Government that will serve the church well for years to come.”
Terry Schlossberg, executive director of the Presbyterian Coalition, has attended nearly all of the task force’s meetings and followed the debate closely.
Some evangelicals prefer the first four chapters of the Book of Order because they include “sort of age-dried, accepted language we’re familiar with and like,” she said. But “it’s more than familiarity, it’s a pretty deep issue of trust. There’s a certain audacity about rewriting the whole thing with a committee, especially in our environment” of distrust.
Some evangelicals have theological concerns about the new Foundations document, Schlossberg said — although a decision at the recent task force’s meeting to describe Jesus “alone as Lord and Savior” instead of just “Lord and Savior” should help, she said.
And “a lot of people aren’t the least bit convinced this is a missiological document,” Schlossberg said. “The label’s been applied, but is it?” In other words, does it achieve the kind of transformation to a mission-driven church that Kim is advocating?
Neal Lloyd, a pastor from Minnesota, said he hopes debate over that and other aspects of the task force’s work will drive the church towards a full theological discussion in the months before the assembly convenes.
The task force ended its work Dec. 2 with worship during which Sharon Youngs, communications director for the Office of the General Assembly, encouraged the task force members to understand that their work already has changed the denomination, no matter how the General Assembly votes. She gave each task force member a stone to hold for a while and then set in the center of the table, symbolizing that the time is near to let their report go into the hands of the broader church.
“This has felt like a heavy task,” said Diana Barber, an elder from the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, weighing the heft of her stone. .
“What we have done is say to the church, `It’s not about us;’ it’s about God’s use of us,” McRight said, laying her rock on the pile.
“I’m still a little ticked off,” Kim said, admitting the freshness of his unhappiness. But “this rock’s seen a lot of changes. It’s been around a long time.” Yet “there are some things that don’t change,” he said. “Jesus is the way. He is our hope. This is His church.”
