Holding all these meetings in one spot, and one that’s a little off the beaten path, will give those attending a chance to talk strategy and hopes, for those who’ve got the stamina, deep into the night.
And the meetings marathon comes at a particularly interesting time for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
On the one hand, Linda Valentine, executive director of the General Assembly Council, now has held her job for a little more than two years. She has assembled a team of hand-picked deputy directors, shepherded the drafting of a Mission Work Plan to prioritize work and funding, and begun articulating a vision for where she wants to lead the denomination.
The elected General Assembly Council, whose name the General Assembly changed this summer to General Assembly Mission Council, will meet for the first time starting Sept. 28 at its scaled-down level of about 40 elected members, with about half of those being brand-new on the job. The council’s chair, Carol Adcock of Texas, and vice-chair, Michael Kruse of Missouri, are new in their roles too.
So there’s new leadership all around, with Valentine’s team; the council itself; and with Gradye Parsons as the just-elected stated clerk for the PC(USA). The newness generates fresh enthusiasm centered on the idea of being a denomination that’s more missional in focus and more intentional about communication.
At the same time, however, the General Assembly dropped a bombshell in June by voting to recommend removing language in the PC(USA) constitution that restricts ordination to those who practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they’re single. The 173 presbyteries now must vote whether or not to approve that change, pushing to center stage once again the denomination’s reoccurring debate over homosexuality.
But gay ordination is not the only potentially divisive issue.
The General Assembly in June declined to adopt recommended changes to the PC(USA)’s form of government, a complex series of proposals intended to make the governance structure more streamlined and responsive to local needs. Instead of killing off the idea outright, however, the assembly opted to give the church more time to talk about what it wants to do and how. It authorized a new, reconfigured Form of Government task force and asked presbyteries to continue thinking and praying about what they do and do not want.
All of this, along with declining membership and financial stresses for synods and presbyteries, could make for a tense time in some parts of the country.
And “when people get angry with the General Assembly, they complain about ‘those people in Louisville,’ which is just this amorphous blob,” said Kruse, an elder, blogger and the council’s newly-elected vice chair. “We just don’t know what the impact will be.”
The dance-card at Snowbird also will include the third annual consultation between the General Assembly Mission Council, and middle governing bodies, or representatives of the denomination’s presbyteries and synods. Kruse said he expects there will be more talk about what it means to be “missional,” what people mean when they use that word.
Darrell Guder, dean of academic affairs at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Henry Winters Luce Professor of Missional and Ecumenical Theology and a noted author and scholar on the theology of the missional church, will lead discussions at that consulatation on the implications for governing bodies of being a missional church.
“It’s not about the institution, it’s about taking Christ out into the world, of being Christ’s church in the world,” Kruse said.
With all these changes, “it is kind of a weird time.” Lots of questions are being asked about how a “big tent” denomination should govern itself and how Presbyterians with ongoing divisions on significant issues can structure their life together in new yet faithful ways, said Michael Walker, formerly executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal and now theologian in residence at Highland Church in Dallas.
In talking about the missional church, “it’s not clear what we’re talking about” – or whether there’s a shared understanding of what that involves, Walker said.
“This is a conversation that’s been engaged in ad nauseam for the last 12 months or so. There has been so much buzz around the word ‘missional,’ and folks get really excited about it,” he said. “Then you take a step back and ask, ‘Are we all talking about the same thing?’ ”
From Walker’s perspective, “when liberals talk about a ‘missional vision,’ they tend to mean one set of things, and when conservatives talk about a ‘missional vision,’ they tend to mean another set of things. … If the missional vision for the church is understood as a comprehensive calling to exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world, then that will help us find a way forward that honors all aspects of our calling, and doesn’t choose to elevate some at the expense of others.”
Another buzzword in recent months has been “communication” — the need for the PC(USA) to communicate more clearly and effectively with the grassroots.
But how that can most effectively be done, for example, the sharing of “best practices,” is another subject for discussion. Increasingly, the denominational structure is using techniques such as blogs and DVDs to “tell the story” of PC(USA) mission work, or creating networks of communicators at the local level and sending letters from the leadership on controversial matters. to make that communication quicker and clearer.
But what works best in a Web-based world — yet with a population in the pews that skews older than average for the nation — is a complicated question.
All these topics, gay ordination, revising the form of government, new leadership, tight budgets, a shift to a more missional focus and the desire for better communication, leaves no shortage of things for Presbyterians to buzz about when they gather soon in Snowbird.
