Bourne says repeatedly in the film, “I don’t know who I am!”
And in the PC(USA), “we have developed a missional amnesia,” said Clark Cowden, executive presbyter of the Presbytery of San Diego.
For the third consecutive year, members of the General Assembly Council are meeting jointly with leaders of presbyteries and synods to talk about the future of the church and what’s working and what’s not in relations between the national church and middle governing bodies.
On the first evening, Sept. 28, the group heard from Darrell Guder, the dean of academic affairs and Henry Winters Luce Professor of Missional and Ecumenical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, describing the theology and history of the missional church.
Much of the second day was spent in small-group discussions – covering everything from mission funding dynamics to adaptive change. In one mission funding discussion, for example, people talked about the need for executive presbyters to become fundraisers, in the way that seminary presidents have taken on that role – without making direct appeals to church members that go around the pastors.
And a conversation on “Growing the Church Deep and Wide” included talk of whether some Presbyterians who’ve been in the same church for a long time and are comfortable there really want to reach out and forge new relationships, and about generational shifts in views of organizations.
Some time was spent educating these church leaders on changes within the PC(USA) – part of an effort to make the national church more flexible, more communicative, more able to adapt.
Linda Valentine, executive director of the General Assembly Council, told of using conference calls and e-mail updates to keep church leaders informed of the work her team is doing, and to learn from her end what’s happening in their regions.
Carol Adcock of Texas, chair of the General Assembly Council, said the council itself has been streamlined, dropping over time from 71 members to 40, half of whom are new to the council at this meeting. The joint meeting of the council and the middle governing body leaders will end Sept. 30; then, the council will begin meeting on its own through Oct. 3.
For the council, the changes have been helpful, while sometimes frustrating, with a shift in focus from micromanaging to strategic concerns, Adcock said.
In one presentation, Joyce Emery, transitional synod executive of the Synod of Alaska-Northwest, and Deborah Rundlett, general presbyter of Muskingum Valley Presbytery in Ohio, built on the nautical theme of this meeting: “Learning to Lead Together on the High Seas.”
They talked of safe harbors, of reading the waters of cultural context carefully, of heading straight into a frightening storm together, of following the North Star.
At times, “I pray for crisis, because I know how stuck we are,” Rundlett said. Sometimes “we need a crisis to move us,” to make us let go of things we hold onto because they’re comfortable and familiar, “even if they are killing us.”
