"Things have taken a turn for the surreal"
from Saving Private Ryan

I was skimming an article from today's LA Times and it suddenly dawned on me that with a bit of word substitution an interesting analogy could be developed.  It may just be the workings of my strange mind.  Or maybe there is real insight here.  So, from a story by Catherine Saillant in the January 13, 2009 edition of the LA Times, "California Fire Chiefs Debate Stay-And-Defend Program."   The original article begins:

Fire chiefs in tinder-dry Southern California, faced with lean budgets while more people squeeze into the region, are starting to rethink long-standing policies on ordering mass evacuations in a wildfire, debating whether it may be wiser in some situations to let residents stay and defend their homes.

(As you might imagine this is a very real issue in SoCal these days.)

So what if we now create a "derivative work" with the substitution of a few words in some select sentences it now might apply to the PC(USA).  Substituted and edited phrases and sections will be [in brackets].

[Congregational leaders] in tinder-dry [ PC(USA) ], faced with (pick your favorite problem), are starting to rethink long-standing policies on ordering mass evacuations [...], debating whether it may be wiser in some situations to let [members] stay and defend their [churches].

"We don't have enough resources to put a [lawyer (?), polity wonk (?), tall-steeple pastor(?)] at every [church] in harm's way," said [Pastor Brown]. "We figure, if people are going to stay, maybe they can become part of the solution."

[sections deleted]

[Pastor Brown] and [Elder Smith] are working to produce instructional materials — including a video that explains the Leave Early or Stay and Defend tactic — to educate the [laity] and [elders] statewide.

It will be up to individual [churches] to decide if they want to adopt stay-and-defend, [Pastor Brown] said. [remainder of paragraph deleted]

[Leaders] who haven't yet bought into the concept say they are waiting for more information, including research showing whether it saves lives. [remainder of paragraph deleted]

[Pastor Brown] acknowledges that building consensus for the program will be difficult and could take several years. But he hopes that eventually the entire [denomination] will follow stay-and-defend guidelines.

"This is a paradigm shift," he said. "We can't do it overnight."

[large section deleted for space, but I hope you get the idea]

But not everyone is convinced it will work.

[Elders] have voiced safety concerns, saying not all [church members] are physically or mentally strong enough to endure the rigors and trauma of a wildfire. A message that gives [church members] a choice on whether to stay or evacuate could be confusing, resulting in last-minute exoduses that clog streets, say representatives for [elders].

[large sections deleted]

"It's not a solution in every [church]," [Pastor Jones] said. "And where it is done, there has to be a lot of local support and education before it can be done."

[sections deleted]

"It's not a simple thing," [Pastor Garcia] said. "It takes a certain personality."

It sort of works, but I'm probably just being silly here and I really don't want to advocate an "us versus them" adversarial model.  After all, the objective is for all of us to be in partnership together for the Gospel, not debating flee of fight.  But acknowledging that there is a discussion in organizations like the New Wineskins Association of Churches about whether to remain or realign, this simple (and somewhat silly) exercise did strike me with the thought that for churches that chose to stay education and resolve are necessary if their objective is to reform the PC(USA) from within.