The conference was one of 10 Presbyterian gatherings being held concurrently at part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s inaugural Big Tent event here June 11-13.
The conference kicked off June 12 with a presentation on what to look for in healthy churches, presbyteries and seminaries.
Goodman, an associate executive presbyter for Peaks Presbytery in Virginia, and Jill Hudson, coordinator for middle governing bodies with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), spoke during the opening session.
The healthy church is resilient, said Goodman. “It knows how to … keep on going forward.”
Such a church is “easy to lead, difficult to enslave, and a joy to govern,” he added. In it the pastor’s role is to teach and to equip the congregation.
A healthy presbytery, said Hudson, is clear about its mission and aligns its budget to that mission. It is not conflict-driven, but it is not conflict-averse either. It’s able to put things in perspective. Conflict doesn’t determine what it is about.
A healthy presbytery knows how to initiate and manage change, but does not institutionalize it. If something does not work three years down the line, the presbytery is not afraid to fix it. “Our 21st-century world will not allow” such inflexibility, said Hudson. The presbytery needs to be flexible in structure, to have permeable boundaries and not rigid walls.
And a healthy presbytery views all of its leaders as change agents, not just the executive or the stated clerk.
Turning to seminaries, Hudson said the church-seminary relationship is an “underdeveloped partnership” in which there needs to be constant dialogue.
As with the church and presbytery, a seminary needs to be clear in its mission, she said. Preparing ministers for parish service was that purpose in the past, but not any more. Now many seminaries offer training for urban or rural pastorates or special, non-pastoral ministries, or serve regional or other needs.
A healthy seminary prepares its students “for the church we are moving into, not the church that was,” said Hudson, adding that it is not an easy task. To emphasize that difficulty, she reported a conversation overheard after a rousing Big Tent worship service earlier in the day: “Wow, that was great conference worship, but I wouldn’t want an every-Sunday diet of it.”
The seminaries need to help their students implement in their churches the new skills they learn in class, she said. Older church members may not feel an e-mail contact is appropriate for “pastoral” concerns, but some younger member may prefer it, she noted.
Seminaries need to explore alternate ways to instructing students, said Hudson. “Fifty-minute lectures do not work with current students” whose attention spans are built on shorter messages. And seminaries need to instill within students a desire for lifelong learning, she said. The most recent books on their office shelves should not date from their graduation.
John Sniffen is associate editor of Presbyterians Today magazine. He is the former associate editor of The Presbyterian Outlook.
