Brooding with our brood

Accordingly, the report turns the church’s attention to that mission.
How we do mission together, and whether we can do mission together, is the key to our future. If we are able to unite in missional purpose, we have much to contribute to the future of the Kingdom; if we cannot, then our future is likely incessant, inward-focused pettiness.
The way forward isn’t easy, the report acknowledges.
Thus, developing plans for doing mission together simultaneously puts us in a position of great peril and opportunity. The peril of renewed dissension is obvious, but pursuit of the opportunity is essential. Only if we can unite around missional plans that employ our differing gifts in sacrifice and service to Kingdom priorities — only then does our church point toward a future that will inspire her people’s zeal and justify her God’s blessing.
Ring a bell? Well, these excerpts come from the Strategic Plan prepared by the 2009-10 Cooperative Ministries Committee for this year’s GA of the Presbyterian Church in America. Yes, that’s the PCA, not the PC(USA).
The report was prompted by the fact that the denomination, which broke away 37 years ago from us mainline, too-liberal Presbyterians, keeps perpetuating “an internal anti-denomination mentality.” They keep “… demonizing denominational leadership or movements to justify non-support of the larger church, or (are) simply making self-survival or self-fulfillment the consuming goal of local church ministry.” Result: “less than 20 percent” of the churches “give at the Partnership Share level” and “less than half of the churches of the PCA support any denominational agency or committee.”
They are addressing their problems, proposing, among other things that all governing bodies and ministers pay membership dues to headquarters.
Moreover, they are calling for a radical change of heart, waxing fearless in their self-critique:
In these respects we simply reflect the surrounding secular and religious culture where institutional and organizational commitments have been eroded by the demise of family systems and loss of community identity. These losses are exacerbated by economic and technological changes that simultaneously shrink our world and allow each of us to live in personal isolation or in shrinking, special-interest enclaves.
Their vision waxes prophetic:
However unique we may feel is our struggling to maintain historical distinctions, ministry continuity and generational cohesion, we actually echo struggles occurring in every major Evangelical denomination. The response of most has been to focus increasingly on their own security, not recognizing that (for denominations as well as local churches) allowing people to focus on themselves inevitably destroys the selflessness that is the church’s lifeblood. In order for those of us in the PCA to see beyond self-interests and to be willing to work cooperatively despite differences in our animating values, we must have a renewed sense of collective mission.
Amen.
Perhaps the commissioners and delegates to the PC(USA) GA might do some extra-credit preparation by reading this forty-page report (www.pcaac.org). Our brood’s self-study may provide a lens through which we can better discern the mission to which God is calling us.
—JHH