ST. LOUIS – Representatives of the Way Forward Commission and the All Agency Review Committee made the case June 18 that a dysfunctional institutional culture at the Presbyterian Mission Agency makes change in the national structure imperative — even raising the possibility that the assembly might consider setting up an administrative commission to take charge of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board.
Mark Hostetter, moderator of the Way Forward Commission created by the 2016 assembly, responded to a question a Way Forward Committee (the entity of this 2018 assembly) member for this assembly raised last week: “What has the Presbyterian Mission Agency done to tick people off?”
He cited the past two reviews of the agency, including one from 2016, which described an “unhealthy institutional culture” at the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA) that persists, and which “must change in our view for the church to thrive and move forward.”
And he pointed to administrative action the commission took June 12 regarding trust and transparency in the church – which describes a lack of transparency in providing financial information and describes an “unhealthy institutional culture in our denomination at the staff and board levels of fear and intimidation with respect to limitations on free speech, freedom of conscience, and disclosure of information, unwarranted suspicion and claims of disloyalty, and noncompliance with the spirit of our denomination’s open meeting policies.”
Hostetter made it clear that the institutional culture is at the heart of the problem, not “bad actors” or people who aren’t faithful. That sense of dysfunction motivated the 2016 General Assembly to create the Way Forward Commission, he said.
And he told the committee that if the assembly determines that that the problems are so pervasive or permeating the assembly might determine “that you need to assume primary jurisdiction” of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board, perhaps through an administrative commission.
The Way Forward Committee has not yet begun its deliberations, and the Governance Task Force of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board (PMAB) will address the committee later in the day. The PMAB has presented its own proposal, and disagreements over what’s best have flooded the top levels of the church in recent months. The conversation seems to have reached a new level of candor.
Jo Stewart, a member of the Way Forward Commission who served as the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board’s appointee to the commission, spoke during an open hearing June 17 – saying the commission missed an opportunity to do what the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) really needs.
“I believe we missed the opportunity to bring forward a new structure,” and a chance to bring true transformation, Stewart said. “We did not imagine a national structure that fits the world we live in today,” but opted for incremental changes that merely add complexity.
“I believe we started this work with the best of intentions,” Stewart said, but the Way Forward Commission recommendations “fall short of what the church needs today” and don’t meet the commission’s mandate from the 2016 General Assembly that it study and identify a vision for the structure and function of the General Assembly agencies of the PC(USA).”
She encouraged the committee to “try to block out all of the rhetoric” and ask whether the commission’s recommendations really are transformational, or not.
Jan DeVries, general presbyter of Grace Presbytery in Texas, encouraged the committee to put off taking action now in order to give the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, J. Herbert Nelson, and the new executive director and president of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, Diane Moffett, two years to work together for change.
Ellen Pearre Cason, who is just ending a term on the PMAB, contended during the open hearing that the proposals from the Way Forward Commission and the All Agency Review Committee could have “unintended consequences.” Cason argued that the 2018 assembly should not create a Moving Forward Implementation Commission, to shepherd whatever changes this assembly might implement, saying: “Another administrative commission is not the next step. It’s time for the agencies themselves to take the next step.”
Kris Schondelmeyer, a PC(USA) minister from Pennsylvania who was sexually abused as a teenager by a chaperone at a national Presbyterian youth event, argued during the hearing for changes in the composition of governance of the PC(USA), A Corporation, to give less control to the denomination’s lawyers. “It’s time for our denomination to take sexual abuse seriously and to respond with compassion and truth-telling,” Schondelmeyer said. For more about the #MeToo policy changes he’s seeking at this assembly, read here.
There clearly are disagreements about what’s working well, what’s not, and what to do about all that. Committee members also expressed considerable confusion about definitions of what’s being discussed — asking questions such as: What’s a deliverance? What’s the PC(USA), A Corporation?
During the presentations, Jim Wilson from the All Agency Review Committee said that “we are not getting transparent financial reporting as denomination and we’re not doing a good job with shared services.”
And Sam Bonner, of the Way Forward Commission, told the committee: “You have the power of this body. … What you say goes. There is a fierce urgency now to do things. … That fierce urgency is driving our church to move, to change. … The spirit lies with you.”
Next up: a time for questions and answers with the Way Forward Commission and All Agency Review Committee. Then a presentation from the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Governance Task Force, whose views on these matters are, to put it mildly, much different.