Category Archives: commentary

Christmas is now over, what next? — Reflecting on the Twelve Days of Christmas

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Christmas Day is past.  All of my preparations, reflection, travel, hosting, worrying, church-hopping, family time, and a multitude of other things, focused on that one day out of the year, have met their deadline, ready or not.  Now what?

We are now in the “Twelve days of Christmas,”  the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany.  Usual notation seems to have Christmas as the first day, although I have seen cases where Epiphany is the twelfth day.

In the simplest sense, the Twelve Days of Christmas are just a part of the liturgical calendar — The days of Christmastide after Christmas and before we enter the season of Epiphany.

And yes, it has its own song (with a wild rendition on YouTube by the a capella group Straight No Chaser, although in my opinion a now removed version recorded about a decade ago was better done).  And Dave Walker has his vision of it over at CartoonChurch.com. 

I’m not suggesting that the materialistic chaos of the Christmas Day gift-giving and celebration be repeated another eleven days.  (Although there could be some wonderful ways of “sharing the Christmas season” with others that could happen during this time.)

But as a liturgical and devotional vehicle the days of Christmastide provide us a chance “clutch the baby Jesus” a few more days, as the preacher I heard the morning put it, and remind ourselves not to move on too quickly from this miraculous event where we celebrate God incarnate as a human being.  We need time for it to sink in that it is Emmanuel, “God with us.”

But this year the twelve days of Christmas seem more important to me than in the past.  It is probably the way in which the realities of this broken world have really intruded into my holiday season. 

Within my own family my father-in-law was hospitalized with pneumonia the second day after Christmas.  And while he is still in the hospital and making progress against this setback, this is only a piece in a larger set of health challenges that have permanently affected his lifestyle.

But it is also interesting how this year I am more aware of other peoples’ health challenges out there in the “Church Virtual,” the collection of brothers and sisters in Christ that I know mostly, if not entirely, in the on-line community.  I would especially lift up for prayer the Rev. David Wayne, AKA JollyBlogger, who was diagnosed with cancer just before Christmas and spent Christmas Eve day in the OR.  While I only know David as a faithful medium-term reader of his blog, this is the power of the on-line world that we do become Christian Community with each other through this Web 2.0 stuff.  Praying for you David and rejoicing that you came home today.

And speaking of Web 2.0, I am becoming a fan of Facebook status updates as a way of building and maintaining Christian Community.  (Twitter is a similar vehicle.)  Through this conduit I was aware of various challenges and obstacles that my friends encountered through the holiday season, and it quickly filled up my prayer list.  Again, even 134 character updates are a tool in the development and maintenance of covenant community.

So, I pray that you also may not pass over Christmas too quickly but continue to find ways of  “hanging onto” the season in these twelve days.

The Twists And Turns Of Pursuing A Pastoral Call

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I am a ruling elder, not a minister of word and sacrament, so I don’t have any of my own stories of pursuing a pastoral call as the candidate.  Having served on my presbytery’s committee on ministry, and been the COM liaison to several pastor nominating committees, I have stories from the other side.  But with the increase in blogging there are numerous first-hand accounts of candidacy and seeking a call.

Adam Copland is regularly writing about his experience in seminary and his progress towards a call and ordination in the PC(USA).  He has a monthly “Seminary Reflections” piece on Presbyterian Bloggers (Adam’s contributions from October, November, and December).  He usually also posts these on his own blog, A Wee Blether.  Beyond the Seminary Reflections series he has other posts on his blog regarding the process and situation, including a recent post about “The huge problem of the clergy shortage that doesn’t exist.”  In summary the PC(USA) has roughly twice as many clergy as churches and while the number of churches is declining, the number of clergy is stable.  For churches-seeking-clergy and clergy-seeking-churches, it is not really a pure supply/demand problem, but a distribution, affordability, and experience mis-match.  And don’t just read the article, keep reading the comments.

Another blogger who is just finishing seminary and has been keeping us updated on his journey is Benjamin Glaser who writes the blog Backwoods Presbyterian.  While his blog is usually very theologically oriented, there are good insights into his journey as a student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, also in Pittsburgh.  He is under care of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

I also enjoyed the account by “Danny” of her time as a probationer in the Church of Scotland and the task of “hunting a charge” in her blog “Rumors of Angels?”  There are more great stories in that blog than for any other candidate/inquirer/probationer I can think of.  One that I have bookmarked, and can totally see happening after my time on COM, is her story about doing a neutral pulpit at a church for one pastor search committee, and being a “small world,” another search committee that was considering her out caught word of it and showed up as well.  I can tell you a bunch of similar stories about confidentiality not being kept and news getting back to home churches and presbyteries before the candidate.  As Danny puts it:

I mentioned the difficulties with confidentiality previously … about
being discussed on the golf course… in shops… and via the ‘old
boy’s’ network. Well add the dentist to that list!

The church
where I was preaching (for reasons of confidentiality) did not know
until this morning that I would be preaching instead of their regular
minister, but one of their members overheard all the details of what
was going down last Tuesday while in the dentist’s waiting room… hey
ho! I felt quite sorry for the interim moderator who was doing it all
‘by the book’ and trying her best to look after the interests of ‘her’
nominating committee… meanwhile this second committee were discussing
me all over town.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well…
if nothing else you have to laugh… and so we did! For some reason the
thought of my being discussed in the dentist seems hilarious… surreal
even… when I go to the dentist I am too worried about potential pain
and discomfort… injections, drills and fillings… to talk to anyone.

While Danny has been successful, there are others who are not, and “Cavman” over at Cavman Considers has been between pastorates for a while and been giving us discrete glimpses of his search.  In a recent post he tabulates the churches that have rejected his application but are still without a pastor.  He concludes:

So, 5 churches think it’s better to not have a pastor than to have me
(and the other 50 applicants) as their pastor.  Interesting.

[With no judgment on Cavman’s situation, let me say that filling a pastoral position is not like filling a corporate position, it is a “God Thing,” a discernment process where both the search committee and the candidates are trying to sense the will of God and who He is calling to that position.  I can’t speak for any of Cavman’s rejections, but I have my own stories (from the other side) that I can and will share another time, about where I am certain God was, and was not, calling individuals to particular positions.]

And finally, if you think your candidates’ committee or denomination has unusual requirements, here is one that would keep a few pastors I know out of the pastorate.  I leave you with this:  A news item about the Mizoram Presbyterian Church‘s highest governing body, the Mizoram Synod.  In the meeting this week they have passed a requirement that:

“From now on someone who is tattooed will not be allowed to be ordained
as Probationary Pastors (of Mizoram Presbyterian Church).”

[For background, the Mizoram Presbyterian Church Synod is a constitutate member of the Presbyterian Church of India General Assembly.  Mizoram State is in the far northeast corner of India and through missionary work in the late 19th Century the population is predominantly Christian and the Presbyterian Church has a major influence.  Please keep praying for the violence in other parts of India where the Christians are a minority.]

Being Synod-cal

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Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,
and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith [Heb. 12:1,2a]

Or

“What a long, strange trip it’s been”

I
started this post just over two years ago and since that time have
returned to it and revised it three other times, not counting this final one.  Such is my faith journey and evolving
thinking on the place of synods in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). 
Well, my thinking is still not complete or fixed, but I figured that I
was at a milepost that probably needed an annotation.  So here it
goes…

Over a decade ago I had my first introduction to the
Synod of Southern California and Hawaii as a commissioner to its annual
Assembly.  At the time the Synod was working through some financial
challenges, especially with its camps and conferences program.  At that
meeting the Assembly concurred with the recommendation to sell a
conference center many considered the “crown jewel.”  (Think property
near Malibu.)  While that was clearly not the beginning of the decline,
since the program was becoming tight on cash and the objective was to raise some, in the Synod it is still
remembered as a major mile-marker in the history of the organization’s
slide.

Fast-forward to 2006 and I’m back at Assembly as a
commissioner.  The Synod is in the midst of a transition process and
there are concerns among many commissioners about the slow pace and nature
of the transition.  The office building is probably going to be put on
the market.  Mission giving has declined and per capita monies are dropping. 
The Synod is under stress and it is the view of many, correctly or
incorrectly, that the transition is simply reorganizing to do things
the way they have always been done.  (I stepped into this in progress
so do not personally have a good feel for what was actually happening in that transition work
but a couple of people I trust highly were not optimistic about the progress and direction.)  At the Assembly a substitute motion was adopted that
would hand the transition back to more direct input and control of the presbyteries for a series of
consultations and visioning meetings.  As the Moderator of my
Presbytery I was one of those to participate in the consultations.  All
of this is the background that got me thinking about the place and
future of synods as middle governing bodies of the PC(USA).  And based upon my past experience and the information I had received from others I entered the process with more than a little cynicism about the value of synods.

There are currently sixteen synods in the PC(USA) and as
many of you are probably aware, the place of synods in the denomination is
not just something that I am thinking about but is a topic of
discussion for the PC(USA) as a whole.  Over the last few years there
has been national activity to study, and possibly do away with synods. There was an overture to the 218th General Assembly.  Part of the national funding system for synod support will change, if not disappear.  And the Synod of the Southwest and two of its
presbyteries had serious issues resulting in a national consultation
in February 2007 about the nature and financial viability of the present Middle Governing
Body system.

It is interesting that in the midst of this there
are groups. principally Presbyterians for Renewal, that are looking at
a model for coexistence in the PC(USA) that would have like-minded groups move into a “Seventeenth Synod” that is national and parallel to
the present structure.  (Analysis by Pastor Lance at Full Court Presby)

On the one hand, there are several
strikes against synods in their traditional sense.  They are part of
the earliest structure of the American Presbyterian church, established
before the General Assembly.  But with the advent of faster
transportation and communications the need to have a regional governing
body to improve interaction and connectionalism has disappeared. 
Considering the number of observers that now attend General Assembly a
rough calculation would suggest that more people attend GA than all the
Synod Assemblies combined.  With the decrease in general mission giving
it seems that Synods are being squeezed out between the presbyteries’
and the national budgets.  In light of the lack of resources and
program, do synods still serve a purpose?

In thinking through
this question, working with the consultations, and closely watching our
Synod in operation, I have come to the following conclusion:  The Synod structure currently mandated in the PC(USA) Constitution is not specifically necessary, but there are desirable functions that should be done in “synod-like” entities.  Basically, I do see a need for certain things to be done on a scale above the presbytery but below the General Assembly.  If the synods were to go away these functions could be done by entities that are not individual middle governing bodies, but could be something like “super-presbyteries” or “General Assembly sub-regions.”  So what are these functions?

One group of functions is the ecclesiastical duties, specifically including judicial process and records review.  And this group is recognized in the New Form of Government where the draft includes synods, but allows for “reduced function” to cover only these duties. (3.0404)

I think that the argument for a division of labor in the review of records is fairly straight forward.  At the present time the 16 synods review the records of the 173 presbyteries.  Eliminate the synods and a GA committee would be responsible for the review of all 173.

The concern with the judicial process is partly the same argument.  Eliminate the synod and the GAPJC hears appeals from all 173 presbytery permanent judicial commissions.  But with judicial cases there are some added complexities when you start looking at appeals.  To have a remedial case against a presbytery be heard first by the GAPJC means that it is the court of first impression and the details of having the case reviewed on appeal would need to be worked out.  In addition, to have cases coming from the presbytery PJC’s reviewed twice as appeals, once by the synod PJC and again possibly by the GAPJC, I think helps crystallize the thinking of the final GAPJC decision which can stand as Constitutional interpretation for the denomination.

The other group of functions the synods have is in the area of mission and ministry.  In reviewing what our synod does it struck me that it was a point of collaboration or catalysis for the really big stuff and the really small stuff.  The former are ministry projects that are large enough that they cross presbytery boundaries and having a central point of contact has been helpful.  It is clear from coalitions that have developed on their own that synod involvement is by no means required.  But a case could be made that having the synod as a point of contact makes them more efficient.  (And I can think of a couple of people who might argue that getting the synod involved would make them less efficient.)

Maybe the more important function is working with ministries that are small, a few members from churches scattered throughout the synod.  No church or presbytery has enough involvement to sustain it, but across the whole synod there are enough individuals that they can gather in a meaningful and vital way.  A similar function that I have seen is in matching experience to needs across presbytery lines.  It provides a place for connecting knowledgeable people to more distant points where they can be helpful.  Again, neither of these activities requires the synod — the connections for ministry could be made across presbytery lines without the existence of the synod.  But the hope is that the synod could make the connection more efficient.

Finally, in our connectional system I wonder if we can feel connectional if the governing bodies immediately jump from the presbytery to the General Assembly.  I commented on this a little while back when I asked if the PC(USA) is too big.  In that post my thinking was not specifically that a synod was needed to foster a feeling and understanding of connectionalism on a regional level, but a synod could serve that purpose.

The question that is behind this and must be answered is whether these functions, if they do continue, must be done by a “governing body.”  Could they be done by other affiliated entities?  Under our theory of church government records review and judicial process needs to be conducted by a governing body.  But this could be satisfied by a change to the constitution that would allow ecclesiastical functions to shift from synods to GA to be conducted by regional commissions that are administered by the Office of the General Assembly.  This would approximate the synod system while reducing administrative levels and creating cost savings with economies of scale.  And while we presently understand there to be one court per governing body this cold be structured and viewed as one court with different branches.

Ministry and mission on the synod level is not as closely tied in our polity to being conducted by a governing body so it could be shifted in a number of ways including back to the presbyteries, up to GAC, or to networks, collaborations, or coalitions of presbyteries.  The problem is that without oversight or facilitation will the mission be done or die on the vine?  The flip side is that it would put pressure for the fulfilling of G-9.0402b:

b. The administration of mission should be performed by the governing body that can most effectively and efficiently accomplish it at the level of jurisdiction nearest the congregation.

This is partly just a though exercise in how the system could be stream-lined if that is what it needs financially, administratively, or practically.  At the present time the GA has chosen not to make changes to the system.  The question that I can not answer at this point is whether for the other 15 synods this is what will need to happen.  For the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii it is not something that is required at this time.  But the thinking is necessary, because going forward even five years there could be the need for radical restructuring in multiple synods, possibly including mine.

So where does that leave me?  After two years of participating in consultations, visioning and redesign of our synod I have become convinced that synods can play an important part in our connectional system.  By no means does this mean they are indispensable — I am also convinced that given the apparent realities of the future in a decade the PC(USA) middle governing body structure will look different than today.  It will be seen how radically different the structure looks and that different structure may or may not include synods.

My personal journey with my synod has taken many twists and turns, both in my thinking and my activity.  As I outline above, I have revised my thinking somewhat and think that there is a place for synods at the present time, although there will have to be some serious evaluation in the near future for some of the synods and the denomination as a whole.  And this thinking and activity on my part will continue:  The redesign work I helped with created a radically reorganized ministry unit which I was then asked to chair and “get off the ground” in 2008.  One of the implications of this service is that in 2009 it means that I will serve the synod as the Moderator, a job I am truly looking forward to.  So my “long strange trip” continues.

As a programming note, don’t expect much more about my synod Moderatorial work here.  As usual, if polity items arise or I want to revisit the nature and necessity of synods, that will appear here.  But to help facilitate the communication within the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii I will also have a moderators blog — Everything in Moderation.  In a sense, this blog will continue in chronos time w
hile the other will focus on the kairos time of the Moderatorial year.  The journey of faith continues and it will probably be as interesting as the journey that got me here.

Semi-Random Thoughts On Election 2008

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While I tend to stay away from secular politics, I will wade is a short way here but try to provide a connection back to how the events of yesterday resonate with me spiritually and polity-wise.

First, congratulations to President-elect Obama.  Your position on my daily prayer list has moved up a few notches.  (Bruce, Byron, and my pastor are still ahead of you however.)  It was an interesting campaign to watch and marks a milestone in American history — we as a people have taken one more step to being a color-blind nation.  In a couple of respects it was a troubling campaign to follow, but more on that in a minute.  But in spite of its failings, our democratic system does work, for the most part.

To Senator McCain, I highly respect your graciousness in defeat.  The speech you gave last night showed the depth of your character and why you are a great man, even if you will never hold the highest office in the land.  Regarding your moral failings, which all of us have, I always felt that you were direct and forthright about them.  I have the feeling that others in the political arena try to deny, spin, or minimize their own past mistakes.  And I greatly respect and appreciate the fact that you took the public funding route, still recognizing that there are other paths to raising and spending money in these campaigns.

That brings me to one major issue that disturbed me in this long, and sometimes bitter, multi-year run.  I always hope that our better nature will prevail, but when campaigns turn negative I remind myself that as a Reformed Christian I know of the pervasiveness of our sinful nature.

The other major issue is the money spent — the cost of these elections, particularly for Senator Obama who did not take the public funding and so could fund raise and spend at will.  How many dollars per vote were spent in this election?  Is it worth the cost?  What other uses could the money be spent on?  I won’t go into details but I would love to see the presidential campaign boil down to a couple of debates, a few televised speeches, and a published piece where each candidate could lay out their policy proposals in a form that was substantive but concise and then it also contained a critique by the other candidates.  This probably comes from my academic perspective.  The attack ads, sound bites, and infomercials drive me crazy and leave me basically cynical and feeling it is not worth my time.

Now, to be a real fatalist I refer you to the work of a colleague of mine who turned his earthquake prediction research to predicting presidential elections.  The method, published 27 years ago, has correctly predicted every U.S. Presidential election since then.  I asked him months ago who they predicted and he called it for the Democrat by a large margin.  This was before the specific candidate was even known.  It turns out the economy and the individual in office are the important factors, not the personalities, money spent, or campaign promises.  Now if it would only work as well for earthquakes.

Here on the Left Coast the state presidential outcome was not in question, but the fight over same-sex marriage was (and still is since the outcome is still too close to call this morning) the hot-button issue.  Much money was spent on Proposition 8, about $70 million total, almost equally divided between the two sides.  In the neighborhood I live in I know of no one with a Yes on 8 sign or bumper sticker that did not lose at least one to theft or vandalism.  There was a report the police tracked down a man who was paying teenagers $2 a sign to steal them.  The reverse was true in the neighborhood where I work where yesterday morning on election day No on 8 signs that were there the day before had been replaced with Yes on 8.  By the afternoon the No on 8 were back.  And in multiple locations in the state fist fights have broken out between supporters and opponents of the measure.  Again, it was not always civil discourse.

At least the PC(USA) has been a bit more restrained in the advocacy on each side, even if this and related issues still deeply divides us.  Currently the vote count is leaning in the direction that the PC(USA) General Assembly decided by a wide margin this past summer.  But everyone agrees that no matter the outcome on this vote it is by no means the end of the controversy, again, just like the PC(USA).

In an interesting linkage between the presidential vote and the Prop 8 vote there is the cautionary tale of not viewing all people as the same, and the law of unintended consequences.  In an unusual twist one reason that Proposition 8 may pass is because Senator Obama was on the ballot.  While the white democrat vote pretty reliably was against Prop 8, many of the black and Hispanic supporters of Mr. Obama are socially conservative and the potential margin of victory may lie in the record turn-out from those groups.  (There is a Wall Street Journal article that mentions this and by some accounts black voters supported Prop 8 by 70% to 30% and Hispanic voters by a small majority.)  Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

So my concluding thought is the reminder that in the church, as in the population at large, we are not a homogeneous group and the issues of one part of the demographic are not necessarily those of another part.  We need to ready to listen to all viewpoints and not paint with too wide a brush.

Reformaion Day 2008

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A little over twenty years ago my wife and I had the wonderful opportunity to travel on a church “study tour” to Germany and Switzerland.  It was great to see several of the architectural landmarks of the Reformation.  But a more important observation was how history is read, or presented, through various lenses.  The examples were numerous, both on my part and on the part of the places we visited and people we talked to.  A couple of examples:

At the time we visited Germany was still a divided country and visiting Erfort and Eisenach required crossing into East Germany, the DDR.  It was very interesting visiting the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach and seeing and hearing the official presentations about the castle under “godless communism.”  If you are not familiar with the Wartburg, it is the castle in which Martin Luther hid out and finished his translation of the Bible into German.  It is an impressive structure with a long history and wonderful architecture.  But when we visited, the information on Dr. Luther was almost devoid of religious significance.  It acknowledged the historical facts and the context of the Reformation, but the official view was that his pastoral and professorial duties were just his occupation.  The great achievement of translating the Bible into German was not getting Holy Scripture into the common tongue for all to read, but rather by translating an important work into German he established a linguistic and grammatical standard for the German language.  Oficially, what was translated was not important in itself, just that there was now a recognized and widely distributed book that would set the standard for the written language.  If you don’t need God, you don’t need God’s Word for its own sake.

On the other end of the spectrum was visiting with local pastors from both East and West Germany.  In West Germany, the Evangelish (Lutheran) Church was effectively a national church and we saw school children, as part of their classes, coming to church.  A parish did not need to directly support their pastor since support came through their taxes.  The church was a pivotal point in the community.  In the East, we were told it was a rare exception to be the pastor of a single church.  The general trend was to minister to three congregations: “To serve less would be an offense to the people and to serve more would be an offense to God.”  But you could tell that the pastor we spent the evening talking to was dedicated to his work serving God and he loved the people.

A friend of mine had a similar experience when he visited the communist bloc with a church youth group a few years before our visit.  At one stop a local came up to him and quietly introduced himself as another Christian.  My friend expressed concern for the man because it must be hard to be a Christian in that country.  The man reversed the comment to my friend, expressing his concern for the Americans because being a Christian was too easy, before slipping away into the crowd.

A lot is being said right now about how we have entered a Post-Christendom era (for example the recent  Trinity University Consultation on Post-Christendom Spiritualities) and people are concerned about the decline of the U.S.A. as a “Christian nation.”  Elsewhere, the British Parliment is considering the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland is discussing if it should be a national church.  And from many sides people are suggesting that we may be in the midst of a “New Reformation.”

I am not convinced that this is a totally negative turn of events.  As products of Christendom how do we live our lives?  Do we remember that one of the earliest names for the Covenant Community was “The People of The Way?”  Our faith is not just an hour and some coffee on Sunday morning but a lifestyle choice.  Are we too embarresed by our churches to invite our friends and neighbors to join us on Sunday morning?  Do we take our faith too lightly?  Do we recognize and give thanks for the freedom we have to practice our religion?  Maybe, like Christians throughout history, including those I met in the communist bloc, some challange, rejection, or even oppression would help to focus our faith on living according to “The Way.”  Is there a cost of discipleship?  In the face of conflict do we need to stand up and announce what we believe?  Sometimes we do need to declare “Here I stand.  I can do no other. May God help me. Amen!”

Happy Reformation Day!

Taking Time To Be A Moderator

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The reality of taking time to be a Moderator of a Presbyterian governing body has been on my mind the last couple of weeks as I struggle to find the time to work on finishing up business items for next week’s Synod meeting and try to figure out how to juggle my professional and family schedule to make these church things happen.  (So if I have so much else to do why am I blogging?  Think of it as a brief diversion to help relax and focus the mind.)

But over the last few years I have been tracking the time and implications of being the moderator of the General Assembly.

With the GA season over and the GA cycle beginning anew this month it is first appropriate to congratulate and offer up our prayers for the Rev. Douglas MacKeddie, pastor of Maryburgh and Killearnan Free Church, who was named the Moderator designate of the Free Church of Scotland earlier this month.  Mr. MacKeddie is a second career minister who has served his current church his whole 26 year pastoral career.  There is a nice article from the Ross-shire Journal about Pastor MacKeddie.

In other news, the selection process for the Moderator designate of the Church of Scotland is now at a list of three nominees: The Reverend John P Chalmers is the Pastoral Adviser and Associate Secretary for Ministries Support and Development for the Church of Scotland. The Reverend William C Hewitt is the pastor of Westburn, Greenock. And finally an elder, an uncommon designate in the Church of Scotland, Professor Herbert A Kerrigan, Q.C., (professional profile, the “QC” is a lawyers’ professional status of “Queen’s Counsel“) who is an Elder and Reader at Greyfriars Tolbooth and Highland Kirk in Edinburgh. ( I would also note that the Rev. Hewitt is a colleague and friend of Liz, the author of one of my favorite blogs journalling. )

As I hint at above, in some Presbyterian branches only ministers are selected as Moderator of a General Assembly under the polity of that branch.  In some branches, like the Church of Scotland, the position is open to either ministers or elders, but a minister is almost always chosen.  In most American branches elders are more frequently selected, and in the Presbyterian Church in America the position explicitly alternates between Teaching Elders (ministers) and Ruling Elders.

What is the role of the Moderator?  The first duty is to run the meeting but beyond that the Moderator becomes the representative and public face of that governing body for their term in office.  I have my own extensive discussion of what the Moderator is and for the PC(USA) Bruce Reyes-Chow and Byron Wade (Part 1, Part 2) have posted their own descriptions as well as Byron’s interesting post on what it takes to run the meeting.  Over at the Church of Scotland the Moderator Right Rev. David Lunan blogs his activities and travels and the church has posted his schedule.  And some of the denominations, like the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, have their own descriptions posted.

Being a Moderator, especially the Moderator of the General Assembly, takes time and requires travel. For the PC(USA) and the Church of Scotland the travel can be extensive.  Looking at the travel schedules for Bruce and Byron it is clear that there are significant demands.  For example, Bruce lists seven days of travel in September, eighteen in October, and eleven in November.  That’s about 36 days out of 90 or a bit over 1/3.  Back before he was elected Bruce said that his limit was to travel three out of every eight weeks so he is pretty close to that target, if you average over three months.  (For October alone he will be gone more than half the days.  And I should also say that this is his complete travel schedule and it may include other professional travel aside from the Moderator stuff.)

Now let me ask this question:  Do we demand too much from the PC(USA) Moderator of the GA, or at least too much for typical elders to be able to devote the time?  This came up in the election of the Moderator at this year’s GA when the candidates were asked how their churches will get along without them.  The three ministers all said that their sessions or boards had agreed to them not being around as much while the elder replied that “I don’t have a church” and that being retired he had the time for the position.  The reality of serving as the Moderator pretty much demands that you be involved in a church or ministry where the position is seen as part of your service to the church and you are given the flexibility to serve.  If you are an elder you pretty much need to be retired, self-employed, or involved in church ministry like Rick Ufford-Chase.  Just my presbytery and synod work has taxed my vacation, and the patience of my family and employer.  If Mr. Kerrigan is named the moderator designate of the Church of Scotland I will be interested to see how he balances professional and ecclesiastical demands.

Should we be concerned about elders being able to serve as Moderator of the General Assembly of the PC(USA)?  We claim that it is joint leadership of clergy and elders.  But for the record for the 218th GA there were three clergy and one elder running for Moderator, for the 217th there were four clergy, and for the 216th there was one elder and two clergy.  Back when the term of office was one year it was not really any better, there were three clergy for the 215th and the 214th and an even two clergy and two elders for the 213th.

Right off hand I’m not sure if this is a problem, but as an elder it does strike me as an imbalance in our system.  As I mentioned above, the PCA has a mechanism to enforce balance, but  I’m not sure that is the way to go.  I bring this up as something to think about and to keep in mind as we work within our polity.

Connectedness in the Covenant Community: Part 2 — Ready For Your Close-up?

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In Part 1 of this discussion I asked the question of how a denomination with a large number of members and connectional but institutional structure can not just operate in a connectional manner, but feel connectional as well.  That was the big picture and my friend Karen in her comment pointing out the younger generations don’t care about the church as an institution she anticipated this Part 2 about our connectional nature on the local level.  Now this is not connectional in the polity sense, but connectional in the relational sense within the congregation.

So once again I want to ask an uncomfortable question about our connectedness.  While this one may not be heretical, it is a bit different than much of the “emergent” church discussion I have seen.

Are we not so much losing the younger generation as we are losing the family?

I have started asking myself this question because recently I have been playing back in my mind almost five decades, but I can probably only reliably speak for four, of involvement in the church.  And while this is highly unscientific, I think that I see a couple things in congregational dynamics related to this.

First, I appreciate the current emphasis on young adults, doing church differently, being interactive and relational, all the new technology, terminology and thinking.  I think this is important and critical for church growth.  But as I look at my friends going back several decades I have started asking the question whether those that we are trying to attract to the church are young adults that were involved in the church and have left, or whether they were never involved in the church because it was their parents that left the church.  In running through my list, unscientifically, it seem to be as much if not more the latter than the former.  Many of the “unchurched” peers that my children interact with are not unchurched because of a direct choice they made, but they have never attended church because their parents, who are my age, made the choice.  (You could probably extend this argument back even one more generation to when the decline in mainline membership began, but in the white, middle-class suburb I grew up in all of my close friends were in church-going families.)

Now, fast-forward to the present time and ask which churches have the strongest programs for the pre-college age crowd.  Across denomination, and non-denomination, boundaries in my corner of Los Angeles it is not churches that have good youth programs per se, but good family programs including all ages.  I am not aware of a local church that has success with their youth group while not bringing in the parents as well for more than Sunday morning.

A few qualifiers:  One is that my second comment does not necessarily pertain to the college age/young adult ministry.  They are on their own, may have rejected the church, and have no direct parental structure to add value to church participation.  Here is where the “emergent” church work probably applies most strongly.  A second condition is that for the present youth groups I can not make any claim or denial of retention into college or young adulthood.  There is probably a scientific study out there that does answer this, but I lose contact with many of my kids peers at this point so my unscientific observations break down here.

From these observations I see a couple of implications:
One is that if you want church growth going forward the focus of the church today should be on the family.  We need to think bigger than just the youth group.  And Carrol Howard Merritt’s “Quick Fix” post about there being no quick fix but the need to develop relationships applies here as well.

The other, and this I have seen discussed elsewhere, is that bringing young adults back to church can be different for those that have left and those that never attended.  While the relationship angle is important, the two groups can come with very different questions, fears, and expectations or lack there-of.

Finally, as I kept saying these are not scientific observations but what I see around me and my family and in my life history.  Seeing as how so much in church growth has been studied I am probably not breaking new ground here.  But for what it is worth these are trends and implications I have noticed and I welcome corresponding or conflicting observations from others.  But it seems to me that in the end connectionalism in the smallest sense depends on the place of the family in Covenant Community.

Connectedness in the Covenant Community: Part 1 — The Big Picture

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This is a two-parter where I will ask and reflect on a couple of uncomfortable questions related to the Covenant Community of the church.  (And with a little luck I’ll get both parts written in the next 36 hours.)

In this part I want to ask a question that might just get me labeled a heretic; there is a bit of that going around at the moment.

Part of what got me thinking about this is that “PresbyFest,” as Michael Kruse has labeled it, is going on in Snowbird, Utah, with back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings of the “PC(USA) Establishment” including the annual polity conference, Association of Executive Presbyters Meeting, joint Middle Governing Body and General Assembly Council meeting, and GAC alone.  That is a lot of meetings for relatively few people for a denomination of about 2.2 million people.

This in part got me wondering…

Is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) too big?

Let me ask this question another way: How can we be effectively connected in a denomination this large?

The “Presbyterian” answer of course is that

the congregation’s connected to the session,
the session’s connected to the presbytery,
the presbytery’s connected to the synod,
the synod’s connected to the General Assembly…

But how does this play out in reality?  In the past I have commented on what I saw as the disconnect between the “people in the pews” and “the folks in Louisville.”  And this past General Assembly has raised a lot of questions and uncertainty based on what I hear when I talk with churches and groups about what the General Assembly did, or did not do.  Is the PC(USA) too big to be a truly connectional church?

And when I use the term “big,” I do mean our size both in terms of total numbers and in terms of the institution and its many branches, offices, and agencies.  Most of the people in the pews have never heard of ACSWP or MRTI, to say nothing of being able to tell you where the scope of one group’s work ends and the other’s begins.

In his 1994 book, The Body, Charles Colson tells the story of a church, a story that has stuck in my mind for almost 15 years now.  He tells of talking to a pastor who, with some reticence, admitted that he and his board of elders were trying to shrink the church.  This was not for physical or logistical reasons, but they felt God was calling them to reduce their congregational membership to those individuals who were committed to the church’s vision for mission.  The elders faithfully prayed and membership dropped.  But once the core group was left the church started growing again and with their unity of vision the mission of the church was strengthened.  Do we take our Book of Order seriously when we say “The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its own life.”

Another way that our size may get in the way of our connectedness is the small sampling represented at General Assembly.  With about 750 commissioners for 10,000 churches that is less than one commissioner per ten churches.  For medium and small Presbyterian branches every pastor is a commissioner to GA and every church gets to send a ruling elder.  It seems that this would improve the knowledge of GA actions and increase the “buy-in” of congregations in denominational actions.  I am not sure we could fund or organize a 20,000+ person GA, but there may be a lesson in it.  (And yes, I am aware that doing this does not eliminate the doctrinal disagreements, but it does seem to have them handled more smoothly.)

Please do not take this as an argument strictly in favor of the continued decline in the PC(USA) and the realignment of churches with other Presbyterian branches, but  I will admit that an interpretation like that is within what I have said here.

But, what I am mostly thinking about is how the large denomination can “feel” better connected, can feel smaller to the membership.  Sending four commissioners to GA or the Executive to Snowbird is a start, but only represents a small sample of the churches in the denomination.  Lines of communication need to be opened in new ways and the blogging by officials is a start.  But does even Bruce have 10,000 readers, one from each church?  The PC(USA) fan site on Facebook only has around 2,500 fans.

How can we better connect?  Should we consider regional gatherings that each church is required, or highly encouraged, to send representatives to.  It would need to be worthwhile for it to get the audience that would connect each congregation to the wider church and to the other churches in a region larger than a presbytery.  Do we have events that blur presbytery borders, where neighboring churches get together irregardless of the presbyteries they are in?  In a dense area like Southern California could neighboring presbyteries hold joint meetings once a year?  Or are we meetinged out and want to stick with the status quo?

In this case size is not just a membership or institutional measurement but a “people” measurement as well.  We are too big if we lose sight of each other across the table.  We need to find ways and be intentional about our connectionalism so we are truly connected on many different scales.

Next time, connectedness in the congregation: Are we too small?

Words Have Meaning — Until They Have Too Many Meanings

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My feed reader today brought me an interesting coincidence of two widely (overused?) terms that have effectively lost their technical definitions because they have become “generic” terms and the original meaning has become blurred.

The first is the term “evangelical,” a term that I have regularly mused upon what it truly means.  (January 2007, June 2008)  Today one of my regular reads, GetReligion, has a post “Who’s calling who an evangelical?”  The article is an analysis of a news article from the Associated Press about the overnight raid on the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries headquarters in Arkansas.  In the AP article the organization is referred to as “evangelical” to which Danial Pulliam, the author of the GetReligion article comments:

There are many more effective and accurate ways to define this group
and “evangelical” is probably not near the top of anyone’s list.
However, considering that the term evangelical can mean pretty much
anything these days, it is hard to say that the article is in error.
Rather, it just continues the unfortunate abuse and use of the term
destroying any meaning that used to be attached to it.

You may have heard that the Bible Society (the full name is The British and Foreign Bible Society) has recently released a Bible Style Guide to give journalists in our increasingly Bible illiterate society more background when they cover religious, particularly Christian, news stories.  I find it interesting that the Style Guide stays clear of defining “evangelical” but rather under “evangelist” (and the associated term evangelism) simply clarifies that “These terms are often confused with being ‘Evangelical’, which means belonging to a particular form of Christianity.” What that “form of Christianity” is the Style Guide appears to avoid.  The approach seems to be to use these categories of Christians like “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” in the guide without defining them.

(In defense of the Style Guide (sort of) it is put forward as a Bible style guide and so concepts not directly related to the Bible would not be expected to be covered.  However, the term “denomination” is in the dictionary section and the term “Pentecostal” is defined in the context of “Pentecost.”)

The second term which is getting coverage today is “emergent.”  (A term that, as far as I can tell, never appears in the Style Guide.)  The current buzz around the use of emergent is occasioned by an article on the blog Out of Ur titled R.I.P. Emerging Church.  The article says “Now comes word from recognized leaders and voices within the emerging
church movement that the term has become so polluted that it is being
dropped.”

The article cites two of the prominent voices, Dan Kimball and Andrew Jones.  The Out of Ur article points to a post on Dan Kimball’s blog Vintage Faith where he talks about the history of the term.  In particular he says:

I suppose by the very nature of the word “emerging” it naturally would
be expected grow, morph, develop and change. But what it has grown into
(in my perspective), is different in its focus than what it was when I
first was drawn into it all. Although I will still be talking about
“the emerging church” and still using the terms when I speak at
conferences (if it is the topic of discussion), I will be using it more
retrospectively than futuristically.

It is interesting that he also says “I am using “missional” more these days, although that term has
different meanings too and knowing human tendencies that will prpbably
[sic] go through definition changes.” (In my watching the term it seems to be almost at the point now where there are as many different ideas and nuances associated with “missional” as “evangelical” and “emergent.”)

The Out of Ur article also talks about Andrew Jones and a poll and article he has on his Tall Skinny Kiwi blog titled “Emerging Church: You Say Dump It.”  Andrew’s readers that responded favored dumping the “emerging church” terminology by a 60/40 ratio.  He gives several personal examples of why the term should be dumped because of differences in understanding, to put it mildly, about the meaning of the term.  He also cites some examples where it may be too deeply entrenched.  Going forward, he says that it will disappear from his direct ministries, but he will continue to support the concept and others that are still using the term.

The Out of Ur article concludes with this:

They appear to have learned from the emerging church’s mistake—define
purpose and doctrine early so your identity doesn’t get hijacked.

In reading through these posts about the “emerging” church it struck me how much energy and intellectual capital are currently invested in that term that is suddenly being sidelined, if not abandoned.  These efforts include the PresbyMergent group and the soon-to-be-released book by Phyllis Tickle The Great Emergence.  But that is also the way of human language, for words and phrases to evolve and take on different meanings.  Just ask my son who is learning his lines of Shakespeare for the fall play.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose
it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

[Lewis Carroll – Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6]

Some Odds and Ends – September 2008

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I’ve set a couple of these aside to see if they would go anywhere, and seeing that they did not I decided to consolidate them into one post of Odds and Ends…

Football on Sunday:  No this is not a continuation of the watching the NFL on Sunday discussion, but this is about what we Americans call soccer.  It turns out that for the first time a professional football match was played in Northern Ireland on Sunday.  So, as the home team Glentoran struggled to a one-nil victory over Bangor in East Belfast, there were about fifty members of the Free Presbyterian Church outside the stadium peacefully protesting the match.  According to the BBC article this was not a sectarian dispute but rather found the Protestants on both sides of the turnstile.  The BBC also says that Glentoran striker Michael Halliday is “not comfortable” with the idea of playing on Sunday, but that for this mid-afternoon game he was able to attend worship in the morning.  The article also mentions that at least one fan passing the Free Church members questioned them if protesting was a violation of the Lord’s Day.

You have to believe in something:  Mollie Ziegler Hemingway has a very interesting op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today available on their web site.  Titled “Look Who’s Irrational Now” she looks at a new study from the Baylor University Institute for the Studies of Religion, What Americans Really Believe by Rodney Stark.  She reports that the study found an inverse relationship between Christian faith and believing in the paranormal.

While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these
things [paranormal events], only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once
a week did.

And they broke it down by denomination:

Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those
belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama’s former
denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of
those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin’s former
denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the
respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the
possibility of communicating with people who are dead.

And finally, at least to an academaniac like me, Ms. Hemingway throws in this is particularly interesting tidbit:

Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a
conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal
beliefs, higher education doesn’t. Two years ago two professors
published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less
than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general
belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted
houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped
to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.

(It may be important to note that among the paranormal beliefs listed, demonic possession can be compatible with Christian beliefs.)

So for those who consider “religion is the opiate of the masses” and that atheists are the rational ones, better look a bit more deeply.  People want to believe in something.

The clock is ticking: PC(USA) leaders who have not started fortifying themselves already had better start now — In four to six years a new Presbyterian hymnal is going to be ready and your church will have to figure out 1) if your members can accept it and 2) if you can afford it.  OK, seriously, the Hymnal Project took another step forward this week with the naming of the committee to compile it.  Best wishes to Presbyterian blogger Adam Copeland who landed on the committee.  But I figure this won’t be taking much time if a Presbyterian Seminary President can make room in her schedule to serve on the committee.  (Or maybe that says something about how much time it takes to be a seminary president?)

Congratulations:  Finally, congratulations and best wishes to the Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church as they look forward to their chartering celebration service next Sunday, September 28.  While any new church chartering is a cause for celebration, this one caught my attention since the approval of this joint ELCA/PC(USA) union church was one of the items of business at the 218th General Assembly of the PC(USA).  May God richly bless your ministry.