Category Archives: leadership

The Discussion of PC(USA) Identity And Musings On An “Ecclesiastical Hackathon”

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About a month ago the Moderator of the 221st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Heath Rada, issued a “Call to the Church” to rethink what the PC(USA) should look like and in doing so build trust within the church.  This started the wheels in motion for a discussion in the denomination about what the identity of the PC(USA) is now and what it should be. Specifically he said in his remarks:

It became apparent [within a small task force on mission funding] that we all believed a painful situation existed [in the PC(USA)] and for anything significant to be accomplished we must find ways for that trust to be restored. It was felt that our denomination needed to explore these matters in depth and that I should announce a CALL TO THE CHURCH to help in addressing them.

The statement goes on to list five areas of importance, from the church’s changing place in the wider culture to the theological institutions to the urgent need for action. And with that the statement outlines five steps to take but at multiple points emphasizing the need to involve all levels of the church.

In a follow-up article in the Presbyterian Outlook he updates us on the response he has gotten and what next steps might be. While some are a bit further off – specifically part of the preparation for the 222nd General Assembly – other steps were being implemented quickly. This past week we saw the first of those and that is a survey opened up by Research Services to gather input from the full breadth of the PC(USA). You are encouraged to “Join the Conversation” and you have until November 13 to respond on that survey.

Another step is the announcement of two Twitter chats with the Vice-Moderator of the 221st General Assembly, Larissa Kwong Abazia (@LarissaLKA). The first chat begins this afternoon at 6 PM EDT (3 PM PDT) and will use the hashtag #pcusaidentity. The second chat is on Thursday November 12 at 9 PM EST (7 PM MST).

In reading that follow-up article a few things jump out at me. One is that the responses include “groups…wanting to be part of the conversation.” So must a group come forward to be included? Another is that Office of the General Assembly and Research Services will be the ones surveying the church and figuring out how to initiate discussions. It struck me that groups and offices in the national church seem to be headlining what looks like an institutional response. This is no surprise since at one point in the initial Call Moderator Rada wrote:

Again let me state the obvious. Someone has to take a lead. I am asking that the denomination affirm and actively participate in the COGA process which is getting ready to be unveiled and which will undertake the massive task of assessing the church’s will (in accordance with God’s will) concerning who and what we need to be as a denomination.

An interesting article three weeks ago takes a very different approach…

The Presbyterian Outlook published an op-ed piece by Deborah Wright and Jim Kitchens titled “An Open Letter to Moderator Heath Rada: What if . . . we held an ecclesiastical hackathon?”

As Presbyterians you have to love the idea, but more on that in a moment.

Their idea is an open call and competition where people form teams of six individuals and come up with their ideas about what the PC(USA) should look like or be doing. As they say:

Game theorists radically believe that the solutions to tough social problems reside in the players. Adaptive Change theorists believe deep challenges of uncharted territories must find solutions in unknown corners. Positive Deviance theorists act on the notion that the village has the answers, if one only looks to the fringes. What if this once – instead of committees and task forces and hired expert consultants – what if . . . we bucked up our Reformed theology and went looking for our unheralded prophets out there, trusting God to provide!

The idea is that a set of “rules and tools” would be issued by the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board (PMAB) and any group of six members of the PC(USA) would have a few months to assemble a team and present a plan, solution, strategy, what ever was being asked for.

A number of theological and polity positives jump out at me here. As the authors emphasize, we are a priesthood of all believers. Why should we let the brains at OGA and PMAB have all the fun with this. The Reformed community should be the specialists at crowd sourcing as we believe decision making and the corresponding mission are to be done at the lowest applicable level and our structure is supposed to allow the most people and those with particular gifts for the situation to be involved.

It is arguable whether groups of six are theologically supported here – seven is a more spiritual number or we could just think of two groups of six making twelve. But in our church history it was the group of the “Six Johns“, led by John Knox, that over four days wrote the Scottish Confession of Faith of 1560. Not exactly a hackathon since they were the only group working on it but still a model of a group of six that worked quickly to produce a product that changed history.

Now looking at this proposal I do cringe a little bit to see that the process is directed by the agencies at the top. They are the existing coordinating bodies after all and in a position to be able to do this so there is a solid rational for this. But let’s think a bit outside the box here.

What if we thought about this a bit more as a crowd sourced or grassroots project and tried to find another point to run this from. What if the responsibility were devolved to someplace in the church that is actively doing something like this, such as the 1001 New Worshiping Communities group? Or maybe an existing recognized affiliated body like the NEXT Church group or the Presbyterian Outlook board. Or maybe something completely different like a joint steering group made up of members of the Covenant Network and the Fellowship Community? Or a really radical thought: Just go for it!

The idea would be for groups that wanted to get involved to brainstorm changes and then send it to the next General Assembly from the bottom up. Get your group together and then take the idea to your two or three nearest presbyteries for endorsement as ascending overtures so they will be considered as business in Portland. If this hackathon concept is taken seriously maybe one of the commissioner committees at GA could have the responsibility for reviewing these and helping the Assembly to think in new ways. And remember, the deadline for proposed Book of Order changes is February 19, 2016, and for overtures with financial implications it is April 19, 2016.

So there you have my riff on the hackathon idea. I don’t think this is too far off from the ideas Landon Whitsitt discussed in his book Open Source Church. And remember, the hackathon – or whatever you want to call it – concept has two purposes: One is discussed above as a model for drawing more fully from the wisdom and knowledge of the whole group. The other is to involve more people in seriously visioning and thinking about the problem and empowering them to do something about it so they have ownership of situation. This is not answer a survey or participate in a guided discussion sort of thing. The idea is to empower any interested member to dive into the details, inner working and think about the problem at the deepest levels. Where it may go we don’t know so this certainly could be a “stay tuned” moment for the PC(USA).

Learn Eldership – A New Publication From The Church Of Scotland

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Eldership_coverMy copy of a new Church of Scotland publication arrived in the mail this week. Their new book for training elders as part of the Learn program is simply titled Learn Eldership and it has been a best seller with pre-orders selling out the first press run in three weeks.

The list price with St. Andrew Press, the publishing arm of the Kirk, is £10.00, but you can get it for £7.00, or less in volume, by going through the Resourcing Mission site. The publication date is this Tuesday, March 2, but these distribution channels shipped as soon as they had it in stock. However, the postage to ship it outside the UK could more than double the cost of the book if, like me, you live on the other side of the world. However, I see that Amazon is taking pre-orders for the release this coming Tuesday so that will mean lower-cost shipping for many of us.

There are very good reasons that this 75-page book quickly became a best seller — from a design and structure point of view it is one of the best books for training ruling elders that I have seen. The flow of the book is logical beginning with an Introduction (think of it as the “what am I getting myself into” talk), a section on the Fundamentals like the Bible, creeds and prayer (contextually like the PC(USA) has created the new Foundations section of the Book of Order), and it then talks about Understanding the Kirk and Serving the Kirk.

While it has this flow the articles in it are short, easily read, and written by a wide variety of experienced leaders. And each article is pretty much self-contained and they do not need to be read in any particular order. For example, here is the article on Pastoring the Parish:

Eldership_pageIt gives you a good feel for the contemporary design and length of article.

Now, I realize that the quality of a book on Eldership should not just be about the layout and typeface but about the content and relevance. Again, this struck me as a good resource from that perspective. For starters, while the articles are easy and short reads it is clear this is only a starting point. In the photo above you can see in the lower right corner two blocks. One is Questions for discussion (e.g. “In what ways can you develop pastoral care within your congregation?”). The other shown is Why not try…, in this case “Why not try… hosting a lunch for interested individuals in the congregation to discuss the pastoral care provision?”

While not shown in this example, most of the articles also have a Further Reading section as well and the checking of those that I have done show that frequently the listed readings are a mix of recognized academic titles (from such sources as Yale University Press and Blackwell) and ones from publishers of more popular titles (e.g. IV Press and Zondervan).

But what I found most attractive about this book is that while it covers the essentials of church governance about the place of the session and the other courts of the church, it really seems to put the main focus on the spiritual and pastoral duties of a ruling elder. Sections about hospital visits, caring for the bereaved, and missional thinking are examples of the nice variety of material that deals with practical ministry aspects of being a ruling elder.

In some ways the attraction of the book is also its greatest weakness. The articles are so bite-sized that for some of the articles I found myself wanting just a wee bit more, but not enough that I would want to go to the trouble of seeking out the additional resources to beg, borrow or buy. But this is probably a product of the target for the book of using it in the Learn program. It is designed to be used in a group setting so it is not as much a handbook as a companion piece and conversation starter and the speaker or group can help fill in the details.

The one section that I wish was in there would be one specifically on the elder tending to his or her own spiritual development. Yes, there are suggestions in the section under the Bible and prayer, as well as mentioned as part of the work of the session. But I think it is an important enough aspect of the work of the elder to deserve more focused discussion. My opinion – your mileage may vary.

And finally, it must be mentioned that the book does reflect the theological circumstances that the Church of Scotland finds itself in at the moment. This is probably best encapsulated in the section on the Westminster Confession where it talks about it being a subordinate standard but only on points regarding “the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Faith.” But an attempt to bring greater clarity to that in the past did not make significant progress and so there is not agreement on those points. It acknowledges that within the Kirk are those that see the Westminster Confession setting a “definitive expression of the faith of the Kirk,” for others it is a “significant document in the development of Reformed theology, and one worthy of ongoing reception,” and finally those that see the document as “highly anachronistic and/or simply erroneous in its theological views.” The good news is that while the doctrinal and the few polity sections must navigate this maze, the many pastoral and ministry sections usually do not impinge on these debates. It is left as an exercise for the reader to keep this situation in mind regarding sections that might have been influenced by these circumstances and sections that might also have been omitted.

So in the pantheon of elder training material where does this one fit? It deals more with spiritual shepherding and much less with governance than The Presbyterian Ruling Elder: An Essential Guide. And it has a clearly different focus than Presbyterian Polity for Church Leaders and Blood on Every Page. For many the standard is the 19th century classic by David Dickson, The Elder and His Work, (recently reissued). That is a great source of practical advice in a conversational style and while some may suggest that the style of visitation coached in that book is a relic of a bygone era, I would suggest that there may still be something to it – but I digress. This present work under consideration is a broader and less focused work than that. I do believe that this work comes close to my favorite, the Equipping Elders material from the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Equipping Elders is not as graphically appealing but I have found it to be a great mix of the theoretical and practical and is therefore packed with more information than Learn Eldership. And the electronic version is a free download so you can’t be the price.

Bottom line for Learn Eldership: Easy reading and practical material in good short pieces. A ruling elder with soon want more on these topics – be it reading or coaching – but it makes a good starting point and a wonderful overview of the responsibilities an active elder.

An Interesting Comment On The Battle Of Gettysburg

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On this 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg I read a number of articles and a quote from one in particular from CBS News jumped out at me. I will give you the extended passage from the article and not comment but simply suggest that readers might think about what implications this suggests for leadership and organizations.

With momentum on his side, Robert E. Lee launched a dramatic march
around the south end of the Union position along Cemetery Ridge. Under
the direction of James Longstreet, Confederate forces advanced to the
heart of the Union line on Cemetery Hill, catching Union generals off
guard.

Allen Guelzo,
author of “Gettysburg: The Last Invasion,” says the surprise attack
would have worked if not for a flurry of desperate actions by low-level
Union soldiers who kept the Confederates at bay. Those acts of heroism
included a last-minute bayonet charge by the 20th Maine volunteers to
hold Little Round Top; a suicidal charge by the 1st Minnesota volunteers
that thwarted two Confederate brigades; and a last-minute rush by a
brigade of Ohioans, Indianans and West Virginia volunteers that saved
Cemetery Hill.

“That’s the real story of the July 2nd
fighting and, in some senses, the real story of Gettysburg itself,”
Guelzo said. “The (second day of battle) was decided not by the genius
of great generals but by the initiative of some very ordinary but some
extraordinarily well positioned individuals who on their own initiative
did the right thing.”