Although things could change – from the start, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a crash-course in switching directions – for now the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) does not plan to hold in-person meetings for the rest of 2021.
Kathy Lueckert, president of the PC(USA), A Corporation, told the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) in a Zoom meeting April 15 that leaders from PC(USA) agencies met in early March and created a phased plan for gradually re-opening the denomination’s national office building in Louisville and allowing staff to travel, with permission from supervisors.
If some staff members decided to continue working from home, work spaces at the national offices might be consolidated on fewer floors, giving the PC(USA) an opportunity to lease more of the space to tenants, Lueckert said.
But, the group decided there would be no in-person meetings in 2021 for the Office of the General Assembly, the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Administrative Services Group, the Presbyterian Foundation, the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, the Investment and Loan Program and Presbyterian Women, Lueckert said.
“We’ve all learned that things can change pretty quickly, but that’s where we are right now,” Lueckert said. The situation could be re-evaluated should the situation change, but “I don’t think we can ever assume that a meeting would only be face to face anymore,” she said. “It will always be hybrid.”
Some COGA members pushed back on the ban on in-person meetings through the rest of the year — a reflection of the conversations and sometimes arguments taking place in congregations around the country about when and how to safely resume in-person worship and meetings.
Wilson Kennedy, a COGA member and pastor from Virginia, made a motion asking the PC(USA) agency leaders who made that decision to reconsider the ban on in-person meetings — to consider the possibility of resuming in-person meetings in the fall. And Stephanie Anthony, COGA’s moderator, asked what the metrics are governing the decision, saying perhaps the PC(USA) could follow the advice of the Centers for Disease Control regarding travel for people who have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19.
“We still need to be cautious,” said J. Herbert Nelson, the PC(USA)’s stated clerk. While some people love working from home, others feel cooped up and “need to get out of the house.” Some people are fully vaccinated; some refuse the vaccine. “We’re still dealing with a kind of renegade mentality in some places,” Nelson said. “Right now, there is really not a way of measuring how people’s behavior is going to be.”
Elona Street-Stewart, co-moderator with Gregory Bentley of the 2020 General Assembly, said there’s a big difference between people traveling by car to meetings and flying in, and also variances in the rates of infection, hospitalization and death in geographic communities and demographic groups. “I’m just constantly aware of what this would mean for the full diversity of our people traveling,” Street-Stewart said. “We’re bringing people from places where the risks aren’t equitable. … The risk is still too high for certain portions of our populations.”
Congregations too are struggling with what seems safe when it comes to re-opening.
Lynn Hargrove, a COGA member and presbytery leader from Texas, wrote in the Zoom chat: “We have congregations here in New Covenant that have gone back in person – and some that have never stopped.”
Lueckert said the session of her congregation met earlier this week, and “nobody could agree on what the right metrics are, which is part of the problem.”
Leon Lovell-Martin, a professor from Florida, said if he were to travel to a COGA meeting, “I’m not leaving my house and then popping right through the sky to Louisville” — he’d have to pass through multiple airports. “I don’t know with whom I am making contact” along the way, he said. “I’m very uncomfortable with this.”
Luis J. Ocasio Torres, a pastor from Florida, said, “It’s a burden, in a way, that I carry every week,” as his congregation in Havana, Florida, has begun in-person worship. “I have taken as many precautions as it is possible to take,” he said. “I have been called many not-churchy things” by those who disagreed with the precautions he wanted to take. “We have no way of knowing” what the pandemic will look like in the fall.
COGA member Leanne Masters, a pastor from Nebraska, said she has been able to work from home during the pandemic, but her husband has not. “How do we keep in perspective the variety of perspectives and the variety of experiences?” Masters asked.
“Part of the problem is that, in reality, it will never be safe,” COGA member Robin Pugh, an educator from California, wrote in the chat. “What we are really talking about is what level of risk we are comfortable with. And the response to that is different for everyone.”
Ultimately, COGA member Andy James, a presbytery executive from North Carolina, made a motion to postpone indefinitely the motion that Kennedy had made to reconsider in-person meetings — and COGA supported that approach. “We don’t need to say yes or no to this,” James said. “There’s enough controversy.”
Expectations and procedures
COGA discussed – but did not vote on – a draft of a document one of its work groups has created outlining expectations for those serving as commissioners or advisory delegates to the 2022 General Assembly. That document lays out time commitments – telling potential commissioners to plan to block out all the time from June 17 to July 9, 2022, until exact travel dates are determined, and to devote 12 hours every day to the work (with some breaks). And they are to pray and to serve “with independent judgment, free of inappropriate influences.”
The draft expectations document can be found here: C-02a – Commissioner Expectations GA225
COGA also approved several proposals for conducting public hearings at the assembly; preparing commissioners’ resolutions; and for creating online educational spaces for commissioners before the assembly begins. More details can be found here: C-02 – Process-Discernment April 2021
The General Assembly in 2024
COGA also discussed the need to make some decisions about the 2024 General Assembly, which is currently scheduled to be held in Salt Lake City. The PC(USA) currently has contracts with the convention center and two hotels there, said Kerry Rice, deputy stated clerk. The fees for cancelling those contracts would be $500,000 if a decision were made by the end of June; the cancellation fees would go up another $164,000 if no decision were made by July 1.
COGA has decided the 2022 General Assembly will be a hybrid model, with committee meetings held in person in Louisville and most plenaries conducted online. What’s under discussion is whether to use that same model in 2024; whether the committee meetings that year should be in Louisville or Salt Lake City; and whether, in years after that, the hybrid General Assembly should rotate to sites around the country.
Another factor in the considerations: the estimated $1 million in renovations planned at the PC(USA) offices in downtown Louisville in preparation for the 2022 General Assembly, to create a production studio and space for four committees to meet simultaneously.
While COGA has needed to make some immediate decisions – for example, deciding to hold the 2020 General Assembly entirely online because of the pandemic – as it looks at future assemblies, the “the church needs to make this decision together,” James said. “The whole church at the General Assembly needs to have a say in that.”
COGA plans to discuss the issue again at its next meeting in May.
