The other cases, the exceptions to the rule, suggest a path for Presbyterians to consider as they look to the future of life in relationship with family members who believe “wrong” theology, abide by “twisted” ethics and vote with the “other” party.
In the early Christian centuries some church leaders yearned to serve God in ways that broke from typical parish duties. Some wished to enter into a more concerted, contemplative life, as in the desert fathers heading to monasteries; others wanted to become specialists in such fields as education, mission work or church administration. So they clustered together in what today are called religious institutes, such as orders, monastic congregations or clerical communities. Such institutes were (and continue to be) organized around an essential charter known as the “rule,” as in the Rule of St. Francis or the Rule of St. Benedict. They have flourished worldwide, with some – such as the largest group, the Jesuits – numbering thousands of ordained leaders serving on every continent.
But who should rule these institutes? No obvious answer emerged until, in A.D. 710, the Cluny monastic center in southwest France was organized by a wealthy man who, wanting the bishop to leave him alone, submitted the whole order directly to the pope. The investiture of the order’s abbot was granted directly by the pope and thereafter has continued for that order and all other orders and institutes. Altogether, the institutes were formed into a parallel universe, a structure operating separately from the hierarchical pyramid overseeing the parish ministries. To this day the institutes give account directly to the pope through the Sacred Congregation for the Affairs of the Religious, housed in the Vatican.
While these two universes find no comparable structure in Presbyterianism, they do point in directions that might suggest a way for disagreeing family groups to coexist.
For one thing, they highlight the need for multiplying our tracks for connecting and exercising accountability. In the PC(USA), leaders have been meeting informally in covenant groups, lectionary study groups and colleague groups of many shapes, including (with help from the Office of Theology and Worship) the Company of Pastors, the Company of Elders and the Company of New Pastors. There the members exercise some approaches to personal discipleship, mutual accountability and the pursuit of best practices that garner little attention in the presbytery structure.
Ministers, elders and other leaders have also gravitated into affinity organizations – focused either on ministry charisms and callings, like Association of Presbyterian Church Educators or Presbyterian Association of Musicians, or on matters of mutual ministry passion, e.g., Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Presbyterians Pro-Life or Presbyterian Global Fellowship. Denominational leaders generally look askance at such organizations (they operate “outside the loop”), but those groups’ energy eclipses that of governing bodies for the obvious reason: they’ve come together to pursue a passion, not to exercise governance.
Why not formalize those relationships, not as exclusive parallel universes but as overlapping sets of connectionalisms?
The presbyteries can continue to provide resources and checks-and-balances in the process of calling pastors and other leaders. They can coordinate shared mission projects, especially in local areas. They can continue to exercise discipline (affinity groups instinctively minimize members’ peccadilloes). They can also cross-filter multiple mindsets – one great value of being a part of a presbytery is that it puts all the region’s ministers into covenant accountability with folks they never would have chosen as friends.
Then again, compared to systems like presbyteries, the self-chosen, passion-driven and mutually adopted affinity groups can foster easier friendships and more broadly shared presuppositions and visions, and together they can generate more creative output and mutually accelerating momentum.
Governing bodies, by definition, seek stasis – they seek to keep things in line. Affinity groups – united as they are around a more focused, common mission and passion – break out of line.
Both kinds of groupings, both kinds of organizations are needed for the sake of the individuals themselves. They also are needed for the sake of the larger church. Both can contribute oxygen and nutrients to the larger body, the one by helping sustain its daily functioning, the other by introducing and promoting new elements – some creative, others contrarian, some prophetic, others foolish – but most productive in one way or the other.
Several decades ago, missiologist Ralph Winter proposed such overlapping parallel structures for the mobilization of world mission ministries. “How can a pluralistic church do mission in a pluralistic world if it insists on doing so from a central office?” Winter asked. He suggested that the harbinger of most denominational divisions has almost always been the formation of an alternative mission board to send our kinds of missionaries to do our kinds of mission. In 1961 he published an article calling his fellow Presbyterians to break out of such competition by following the Roman Catholic model, utilizing the terms coined by his professor, church historian Kenneth Scott Latourette: “modalities” (larger denominational organizations) and “sodalities” (smaller bodies, often aimed at renewing and reforming the church). Both groupings, he suggested, can be regulated by church standards, but as in the case of a Catholic institute, each sodality would be administered by its own leaders and funded by its own enthusiastic supporters. “If the Catholics have found the key to being a diverse, pluralistic church that nevertheless is one, why can’t we learn from them?” he mused in a phone conversation in 2000.
Richard Mouw once remarked to me, “Deep does not call to deep in legislative bodies.” We stand a better chance of plumbing the depths when gathered with missionally focused, prayerful fellowship gatherings. But wide can call to wide in legislative bodies, where a diversity of passions can provide the iron-sharpening-iron dynamics that prompt each of us to help the other grow.
Two parallel universes, overlapping. The modality universe is well organized. Perhaps this is the time to organize the sodality universe. O
Adapted with permission from “GodViews: The Convictions that Drive us and Divide Us,” (Geneva Press, 2010), Chapter 14, www.TheThoughtfulChristian.com. Watch upcoming issues of the Outlook for further analysis of the use of modalities and sodalities in church leadership.
