Forty-five pastors published on Feb. 2 a letter* calling for transformation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Most signatories serve as heads-of-staff to some of the largest PC(USA) churches. Hence, the list includes zero women, elders or leaders of smaller churches, and almost zero non-Caucasians. It smacks of class and gender privilege. It hit some palates like a cheesy whine.
The letter and accompanying white paper generated scores of e-mailed letters* to this editor, some supportive but most hostile. It also prompted a gracious response* from General Assembly Moderator Cynthia Bolbach, Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons and GA Mission Council Director Linda Valentine.
The pastors deserve a hearing. Their churches that boomed in the 20th century have mostly suffered shrinkage in the 21st. From the faithfully departing has come the oft-heard refrain, “I love you as pastor. I love this congregation. But, I cannot abide being a part of a denomination that’s hellbent on promoting behaviors and beliefs that I oppose.” Also among those gone: the many who are sick of church fights altogether.
These pastors’ efforts to promote denominational faithfulness, as they understand it, have met with repeated legislative success. Yet every success has been followed by countervailing initiatives from those unwilling to accept the results.
When friends and colleagues urged these pastors through this past decade to search for greener denominational pastures, they refused to go where gender equality is not assured.
Yes, many of their churches have withheld or redirected denominational funding as an act of conscientious objection. Still, many have provided other kinds of support in presbytery work, like funding new church developments.
Yes, some of them can seem self-impressed. Most of them do aim to serve.
When these “tall steeple” pastors gather annually to compare notes, to share counsel, to pursue best practices — just like other invitation-only colleague groups (e.g., “Company of New Pastors,” “Moveable Feast”) — they hear from each other how their voices are dismissed in their own presbyteries. Scorned as the privileged elite, their efforts to engage the connectional process get shunned. They feel just as marginalized as every other minority group. (In PC(USA) politics, “mutual marginalization” is the size that fits all).
And so this colleague group publishes its gripes and hopes, aiming to spur some church-reinventing and mission-extending conversations. Few of their ideas are original. Many won’t work. Some sound threatening. But the journey they envision has not been mapped nor the destination determined. If they decide to leave, we all will suffer loss.
Our denominational leaders expressed a response that all of us do well to emulate. They acknowledged the need for transformation, and they outlined a spectrum of efforts under way to generate systemic change. They thanked “those who put before the church challenges, aspirations and ideas in commitment to God and to the church, for this will contribute to the conversations going on across the church.”
We do need transformation. We do need to change.
Face it. Most all of us have allowed our rhetoric of clarity and competition to dismiss the ambiguities and inconsistencies of fleshly existence into which our Lord folded the leaven of the Kingdom. And most of us have too easily forgotten that the Gospel’s best evidence comes not when we reorganize our structures or articulate our statements of faith, but when — amid such complexities — we love one another, as Jesus told his rather competitive, disagreeable and cheesy, whining disciples.
So, let the conversation begin anew, and let us listen for the Word of God, even amid the communication gaffes.
—JHH
*The pastors’ letter, white paper, denominational leaders’ response and letters to the editor can all be found at www.pres-outlook.org.
