In a bit of social media commentary recently, I pled with the Presbyterian Mission Agency board to consider making formal theological education a prerequisite for the next occupants — either interim or permanent — of the executive director’s chair. I based that plea on the fact that there has not appeared to be any coherent ecclesiology — any theologically informed view of what it means to be the church — guiding the decision-making in either the grant process of 1001 New Worshipping Communities initiative or the handling of the misappropriations debacle in that program that resulted in the dismissal of four senior PMA staff. Instead, what has been visible to the public is a corporate management style of operations, closed-door meetings, unpublished investigative reports and dismissals. The differences in decision-making style between the PMA offices and the corporate offices of General Motors are not immediately apparent.
I received moderate reaction to my social media plea – some of it in agreement, but some pointing out that those who have been held responsible for the misappropriation were, for the most part, teaching elders with theological educations, one of which was obtained at the very institution at which I now teach. These objections rightly point to a reality: A theological education is no guarantee that one will make theologically well-grounded decisions.
So let me be a bit more precise. I urge the PMA board, in its interviews with applicants for either the interim or the permanent executive director, to ensure that candidates articulate a clear Reformed ecclesiology and will keep that ecclesiology uppermost in the decision-making processes employed in PMA. Let us no longer see market-driven analysis, brand defense or consumer-oriented communication strategies as substitutes for solid thinking about what it means to be the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) at the General Assembly level.
What makes for a clear, Reformed ecclesiology at the General Assembly level? There are, of course, more answers than one to that question. But let me offer what G-3.0501 says about the work of the General Assembly:
The General Assembly constitutes the bond of union, community, and mission among all its congregations and councils, to the end that the whole church becomes a community of faith, hope, love, and witness. As it leads and guides the witness of the whole church, it shall keep before it the marks of the Church (F-1.0302), the notes by which Presbyterian and Reformed communities have identified themselves through history (F-1.0303) and the six Great Ends of the Church (F-1.0304).
This paragraph points back to F-1.03, the section of the Foundations of Presbyterian Polity titled, “The Calling of the Church.” There, the polity draws on four classic statements about the nature and work of the church: Paul’s imagery of the Church as the body of Christ (F-1.0301), the Nicene Marks of the Church (“one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” F-1.0302), the Reformation notes from the Scots Confession (Proclamation, Sacraments, Ecclesiastical Discipline, F-1.0303) and the Great Ends of the Church. It calls on the GA — and therefore, I would argue, all its entities and leaders — constantly to keep these ideas before it as it lives out its calling to be the “bond of union, community, and mission among all its congregations and councils….”
At the most basic level, I would hope that the next executive director of PMA would subject every decision about every program, initiative, employment or entity to this question: In what way does what we propose to do embody these callings?
I’ve been accused of advocating an “aspirational” polity — one that says more about what we hope to be than what we really are. Guilty as charged. I stoutly defend the idea that, in the sturm und drang of ecclesiastical life, the most important thing we can do is to cling to the noble hopes and godly visions that summon us to be the church. If we lose sight of them, we can no longer claim the title or the calling. That, I fear, is precisely what happens too often in the administrative life of this church at every conciliar level, from the session to the GA. The further from the pulpit, font and table we get, the easier it is to think corporately instead of ecclesially. Now is the time for us to reverse this trend and identify leadership that can think, speak and act in a manner congruent with the hopes and visions that make us the church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
PAUL HOOKER is a teaching elder member of New Covenant Presbytery and associate dean for ministerial formation and advanced studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
