How in the world can you remake a GA?
Cliff Kirkpatrick tried. The former stated clerk trimmed the evening meeting schedule to preclude the need to carry out commissioners on gurneys (as happened three times in the 1993 Orlando GA). He encouraged our move from annual to biennial meetings, to give longer breaks between our seasons of conflict. He urged us to simplify our Book of Order to slow the pace of law writing. He transformed the commissioner orientation process from being passive to interactive. He helped move from paper to digital.
With encouragement from his ultimate successor he promoted efforts to use discernment processes rather than simply using winner-take-all parliamentary votes.
Now that that successor, Gradye Parsons, has been installed as stated clerk, he hopes to put his stamp on the process. He wants to empower committees to make decisions for themselves. He aims to develop more commissioner-orientation resources, so the decision-makers arrive ready for the task. He will continue to improve the PC-Biz intra-net system until it works without a hitch. He already has convened a group of presbytery and synod leaders to seek their input to improve the whole process.
The heart of being Presbyterian, he told the Outlook, “is for ministers and elders to discern the mind of Christ. That’s what’s most important.”
Unfortunately, best intentions have generated unintended consequences. As the number of commissioners has increased, the number of proposed actions has multiplied, the volume of required reading has mushroomed, and the ability of the commissioners and delegates to grasp the issues has shrunk.
Speaking of delegates, the utilization and proliferation of non-ordained advisory delegates — youth/young adult (YAADs), missionary (MADs), ecumenical (EADs), and theological student (TSADs), who have voice in all deliberations and vote in committees, often providing the swing votes on critical matters — has compromised that core value cited by Parsons: the practice of having ministers and elders discerning God’s will for the church.
The desire to hear such voices is unimpeachable: help the church build a future that will reach out to the often-absent generation, and empower fresh voices to share in shaping our mission and ministry.
We can meet those objectives in a better way.
Why not ask every presbytery to elect one commissioner under the age of 27? Such a commissioner would have been nominated and elected by his/her own congregation and entrusted with leadership in that particular church. He would have been examined by the Session and been ordained into office. She would have voted on church school curriculum, on receiving members, and sorting through the costs of building maintenance. After serving at the GA, this young adult commissioner would give an account to that same local body of leaders.
In addition, why not ask our ordained mission co-workers to elect several of their number to represent them as commissioners, too?
The process of sending TSADs and EADs could remain as is.
Does a presbytery lack younger members to send? This structure would give a tangible incentive to local churches to elect and ordain young adults to Session. The number of teenage and twenty-something elders could multiply quickly, cutting a crack or two into the old-guard domination of many congregations’ leadership. And instead of 173 young adults merely entering into a one-week hothouse experience of ecclesiastical deliberations, thousands of young adults could really be shaping church life on the front lines, the local church.
What’s not to like about this?
The existing process backed into the raising up of young leaders in the church. Let’s charge fully into such an effort.Let’s be discerning together the mind of Christ with fully empowered ministers and elders across the generations.
— JHH
