Much of the discussion about that will be held in closed session, with those losing their jobs to get the word on Friday afternoon (May 14).
In the meantime, however, the council is pushing forward with other work – including voting on May 12 to confirm Roger A. Dermody Jr., who has been executive pastor at the 3,000-member Bel Air Church in Los Angeles, as the council’s new deputy executive director for mission.
Dermody told the council that he started his career as an architect, then went to Fuller Theological Seminary in California. When he was a child, his parents served for two years as short-term mission workers in Cameroon for the North American Baptist Convention – and Dermody went to seminary expecting to work in global and cross-cultural ministry.
Along the way, however, he began working at Bel Air in collegiate ministries and then stayed on, working his way through a series of positions and becoming executive pastor in 2001.
Dermody told the council that he comes to this new position with “a deep sense of call and a profound sense of humility.”
And Dermody said his dream is that the PC(USA) will become known as a “turnaround denomination” – of which people will say, “they got it right.”
The council’s executive committee began the day by touring the offices of the Presbyterian Foundation in southern Indiana, just across the Ohio River from Louisville.
Tom Taylor, formerly the council’s deputy executive director for mission – Dermody’s predecessor – is the foundation’s new president and chief executive officer, following the retirement of Robert Leech in June 2009 – so this was a reunion of sorts.
Linda Valentine, the council’s executive director, described what has become a much more cordial relationship between the council and the foundation. Two years ago, disagreements between the two entities over complex financial issues spilled over into public discord before a General Assembly committee.
In the time since then, representatives of the foundation and the council have begun meeting regularly – communicating more intensively about the foundation’s investments and the income they generate for the denomination.
“We are in such a different place with the foundation than we were two years ago,” Valentine told the executive committee, calling the foundation “crucial partners in ministry” and describing an “amazing turnaround” in the relationship.
The council also heard from J. Herbert Nelson II – the new director of public witness in the PC(USA)’s Washington Office. Nelson too spoke of his dreams: that the denomination better mobilize a base of people who want to work for justice, and that Presbyterians are reintroduced to the value of the Washington office’s work.
There was a time, he said – in the heyday of mainline denominations – when a Presbyterian leader could phone the White House and snag a spot on the president’s lunch calendar. Now, the Tea Party wins the headlines – and Presbyterians wanting to have an impact on public policy have to work harder.
Nelson wants to reconnect the church with the significance of having a voice in the nation’s public policy debates. He wants people to know, for example, the impact that globalization is having on justice issues. Nelson wants to broaden the work the office does with young adults – many of whom are already involved in social action and public witness, he said, although often “we are wearing everyone else’s shirts except our own” in doing humanitarian and justice work.
A third-generation Presbyterian minister, Nelson served most recently as pastor of Liberation Community Presbyterian Church, a new church development in urban Memphis that was chartered in 1999.
In speaking to the council, Nelson’s roots as a preacher became evident.
“We are called walk together,” he said, describing the importance of partnerships, “and not get weary.”
