Category Archives: commentary

PC(USA) Headlines

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Things have been busy the last couple of days for me, and there is no way I’m getting away with writing a long entry at home this evening, so here are a couple of highlights from the Presbyterian News Service, with quick comments done on my lunch hour.

General Assembly Highlights:  The Presbyterian News Service has an article today about the preliminary list of issues facing the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  The list includes some of the widely anticipated items:  Form of Government Task Force, a wide array of actions related to the PUP report, justice and peacemaking issues, and the moderator and stated clerk elections.  (I found it interesting that on a top 10 list these were listed together.)  Other items that may not be on observers’ radars yet:  Action on “a wide variety of ecumenical concerns,” starting the process to add the Belhar Confession to the Book of Confessions, an evaluation and possible modifications to the ordination exams, and two committees of commissioners working on “A church for future generations.”  Interestingly, no mention of the Heidelberg Catechism overture and a lot is getting lumped in the justice and peacemaking issues.  If you want another perspective on this list by James Berkley you can read his discussion of Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick’s comments to ACSWP on the Institute on Religion and Democracy web site.  While the News Service article is about Rev. Kirkpatrick’s comments to the joint meeting of the General Assembly Council Executive Committee and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly, much of the same territory was covered.

New General Assembly Council Officers:  Congratulations to Elder Carol J. Adcock and Elder Michael W. Kruse who, according to the announcement, were unanimously elected the new Chair and Vice-chair of General Assembly Council.  This appears to be the same Michael Kruse who writes the blog the Kruse Kronicle. He even admitted to being at GAC.  (This Blogger Lounge at GA may have the problem that more bloggers are on the floor than in the lounge.) I am heartened to see the election of elders since I was a little bummed to see that the outgoing chair of ACSWP and both the new co-chairs were clergy.  It is admittedly the statistics of small numbers and we trust that across the board and over time the leadership evens out to an equitable balance of elder and clergy.

Well that is it for today.  May you all have a good Feast of Saint Valentine.

The Church and New Technology — The Thrill and the Threat

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Today I had an interesting synergy of several items that got me thinking and reading about technology and the church.  In my web surfing today over lunch I read or found:

All of this got me going on my comments on the Church in a Web 2.0 world.

Bruce and Shawn have some great points about what churches are (should be?) doing in the new technological environment and how it fits with our past concepts.  I’ve got a few extensions:

First, as Reformed churches, we are a people of community.  Our religious life and government are completely about community.  Web 2.0 is also about community, but about a community that is not necessarily all in the same geographical place but in the same virtual place.  But since the gathering is virtual, does this still reflect the new covenant community that we are called to be?  Maybe, maybe not.  I’ll save that for another time, but note now that the question is there.

Second, in my coverage of Presbyterianism globally on this blog, I think I can say that many Presbyterian branches have nice web sites, the new EPC site being an example, but the best Web 2.0 interactive site I can think of is the Free Church of Scotland Online Forum.  The PC(USA) now has some limited blogging, such as Linda Valentine‘s which does get interaction in the comments.  But at what level should we expect the online community to be built or gathered?  If it is indeed “viral” (spread by non-standard communication) we would expect to see the communities organized around affinity groups or distributed across several nodes (blogs?).  Don’t expect things to be the way they used to be.  But this is fully compatible with ministry being carried out at the most practical level closest to the congregation and with being a missional church.

Finally, a brief comment on bringing in a younger audience.  While I fully acknowledge that Web 2.0 will get the attention of a younger generation, and it might get them in the door of a church, will it actually have an impact on the age of those involved in Presbyterian government?  I would note that Bruce and Shawn are both ministers.  They do church as a profession.  For elders, it is a vocation, and we usually have to have jobs to pay the bills.  I was fortunate that I have a wonderful family that is supportive of this crazy Presbyterian government stuff, and I have been blessed by an employer and supervisor who have provided me with the flexibility and generous vacation days to actually follow this calling.  It is the unfortunate situation that many younger Presbyterians, while they might serve on their church sessions, and follow all this Web 2.0 stuff, are too busy with a young family and young career to have the time necessary to serve on a Presbytery committee, to say nothing of taking over a week’s vacation to be a commissioner to GA.  Yes, elders of any age must make a choice about being active in the government of the church, but once we are older, we have accumulated the necessary vacation, and our career is more stable, then we have a greater comfort level being active, especially being GA commissioners.

For the last 15 years I have frequently been the youngest elder in the room at governing body meetings and committees.  I have taken it as a part of my calling to encourage younger elders to become active in church government above the session.  And to encourage governing bodies to modify the way they do things so that younger elders are able to participate around their jobs.  A couple of presbytery committees have moved their meetings later for me and others, much to the dismay of some respected ministers who wanted to get it out of the way early in the day.  But if you want younger elders, you must compromise for them.  You can expect them to compromise some as well if you make the effort to show you are serious.

Anyway, my contribution to the discussion for now.  I think this one has legs and will continue for a long time to come.  As I look at this post I think I raised more questions than I answered.  And about all this new technology…  Way back in 1997, as an elder commissioner to the 209th General Assembly, I believe that I was the first GA commissioner to post my comments and pictures daily to a web site for my presbytery to read.  I have it archived and I’ll find a place to repost it some day.  Ya, I was always this geeky.

Committed Christians “Dissatisfied” with the Church

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As my family was visiting with our extended family over Christmas and New Years the topic in one conversation came around to the Willow Creek Community Church and the Willow Creek leadership’s discovery that their programs were not developing their members spiritually, at least according to the measurements in a study they had released over the summer.  When I indicated that I had not yet heard about this I was roundly greeted by a “where have you been?” from nearly everyone else in the room.  While this was a big topic in Evangelical circles it was not major news in Reformed and Presbyterian circles.  (And if any of the blogs I regularly read had picked this up and I somehow missed it I apologize.)  It turns out that a quick Google search showed that it was still big news and even today as I write this there are blogs still commenting on it.  For example you can check out the blog 9Marks which has been writing about it in January, or a recent article in the National Catholic Reporter Online.  I only want to concentrate on one specific aspect, so if you, like me, missed the initial push on this and you are interested in more info there is a lot out there.

Having missed the boat on this major religious news story I decided to go straight to the source and added the book that come out of the study, REVEAL: Where are you?, by Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, to my holiday reading list.  Short book, lots of graphics, pretty quick read.

So to make a short book even shorter, the team at Willow Creek surveyed members of their congregations and six other congregations across the country and found that “Involvement in church activities does not predict or drive long-term spiritual growth.”  (There is a Denver Post article about how Richard Foster figured this out 30 years ago.)

OK, now some details…

The study’s working definition of spiritual growth was “An increasing love for God and for other people.” It may not be everything that a Reformed theologian would want, but I have to give them credit for grounding it in scripture and the Two Great Commandments: “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” and “Love your neighbor are yourself” from Matthew 22:37-39.  In this study the authors grouped the respondents into one of four different groups based upon their increasing level of spiritual development:

Exploring Christianity: Believe in God, not sure about Christ.  Faith not important part of daily life
Growing in Christ: Believe in Jesus, working on what it means to get to know him
Close to Christ: Feel really close to Christ, depend on Him daily for guidance
Christ-centered: God is all I need, Everything I do is a reflection of Christ

To give a very brief summary of the results:  Church program is only really important to spiritual growth in the first two groups and the church needs to train people to be “self-feeders” to develop at the two higher stages.

I’ll leave the basic findings at that but there is plenty more in the blogosphere about the study.  A particularly notable series of posts is by Prof. Bradley Wright, a faculty member in the Sociology Department at the University of Connecticut who studies sociology of Christianity.  He approaches the REVEAL study from a professional academic viewpoint and many of the measurement problems that jumped out to me as a research scientist he is able to describe and dissect more meaningfully.  You can start at the beginning with his first post or just jump to number 11 for the summary.  One of the things that he and I agree on is that in many cases the study over-interprets the results.

From a theological viewpoint, the book is not written from a Reformed perspective.  One of the things that jumped out at me was the usage of the word “church.”  While I did not see it explicitly defined in the book, in my reading it seemed to carry the implicit meaning of the institution not the community.  For example, one of their observations is “The research strongly suggests that the church declines in influence as people grow spiritually.”  While this and most references to “church” could be interpreted as the community, lacking a specific declaration it seemed to me that the institution was a more likely reading than the community.

A more direct example of theological viewpoint is shown in another of their observations:  “The human spirit is wired by God to search for him, just like birds are wired to fly south for the winter.”  Not withstanding Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you,” Reformed theology agrees that before the fall the human heart was wired to seek God, but in the fall that wiring got short-circuited so that now God must search for us.

Now, with that build-up, I want to move on to what I found the most interesting within this study.  The study found two more groups of people contained within the four classes that are outlined above.  First within the middle two groups they found that 16% of all respondents were “stalled.”  These are Christians who have some basic level of belief but are not really active or spiritually developing.  They found that this could be due to a number of reasons ranging from addictions, to personal issues, to not prioritizing their spiritual life.

The second group they found was the “dissatisfied” segment.  These were Christians at the highest level, actively involved in the church and in serving others, who found worship services were not fulfilling, who wanted more in-depth Bible teaching, and among them 63% were considering leaving the church.  This dissatisfied group comprised about 10% of the respondents.  In other words, some of the heaviest consumers have some of the least brand loyalty.  The study found that this group felt the church was not keeping them on track or helping them find spiritual mentors.  This group wanted to be challenged and helped to develop further and to be held accountable.

The REVEAL study draws the conclusion that this group, and the stalled as well, has not been taught that they have a large responsibility for their own spiritual growth at this level.  The church needs to be a better “parent” in preparing members to develop on their own.

I think that is part of it, but this finding struck me because it quantifies something that I have observed in my time in leadership in the Presbyterian church and which (confession time) my wife and I sometimes feel.  But, from my experience I would add other, more complex, factors into the reasons that this dissatisfaction occurs.  I do not dispute that there are cases where the church is not good at helping Christians learn to “feed themselves.”  But I have seen at least three other factors are in play here.

First, most churches are smaller and have limited time and resources.  Preaching and teaching need to be targeted at the “median believer”, if you will, and the church member that is more spiritually mature misses out.  But I would not say that the believer must feed him or herself alone.  They and the church must make a point of gathering these mature Christians together so that they can challenge ea
ch other in community.  OK, I guess that is in line with the REVEAL study except that the growth can be in community.

The second factor I have seen is burn out and distraction.  I have seen several leaders, very active in the church, frequently heading up a major task force, committee, or Pastor Nominating Committee, finish up their work and quickly disappear from the church.  In talking with a few of them I have found that they wanted to switch churches and find a place where they could be anonymous.  They just wanted to get the administratia behind them and focus on their spiritual lives, and they did not feel they could do that by remaining in the same place.  It was not the church’s teaching or lack there of, it was the distraction they felt at the church.  They wanted to wipe the slate clean and start over.  It was not that they were necessarily looking for a “better” church, they were interested in a “different” church.  I will say that several times in our lives my wife and I have felt this and been “two-church” people:  One where we worked, and one where we could attend without business on our minds and feel a stronger sense of worship.  Is it possible for churches to structure themselves so that members can feel free to “release” their servant side and concentrate on their worship and learning side for a while?

Finally, I have known a limited number of church leaders who have become dissatisfied by the politics within the leadership of the particular church and have considered moving on to find a church without the problems and politics.  In severe cases this spills over to the congregation as a whole and members use the opportunity to move on to other churches.  But here I am talking about mild disagreements within the Session that persist and so a leader feels frustrated and considers moving on to another church where things might be better.  I have reminded a few of these people that we are a fallen race and every church has its problems.  Some church’s challenges are larger than others, but as the former chair of the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry I can assure you that no church, at least in our presbytery, was immune from an occasional leadership problem.  Maybe your presbytery doesn’t have these problems.

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to the spiritually mature dissatisfied church member.  I do agree that mature Christians in general, and the elders of the church in particular, must take some responsibility for their own continuing spiritual development.  Furthermore, as the shepherds of the flock, they are responsible for the spiritual development of all the members of the congregation.  This responsibility is not just to make sure that worship is meaningful and that education opportunities are available, but to individually mentor other members of the congregation and keep them accountable for their development.

I Might Need to Declare a Departure

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It is time for my annual introspection and reflection on my law-keeping and whether my actions cause others to sin.  No, I’m not preparing for Ash Wednesday and Lent, although that would be a good guess since that is important to me as well.  I’m considering my regular reflection on the Westminster Confession of Faith, Section 21-8:

8. This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs before-hand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up, the whole time, in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

No, somehow this passage comes to mind every year about this time as I consider the spectacle of “Superbowl Sunday.” In the past I have rationalized it:  I’m sort of resting, we are not under the law any more, I did go to worship in the morning and to the evening service afterward, it is really only one Sunday a year that I watch American Football, and I watch it with others from my Bible study group.  But in the end, I have still vowed to “sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will be instructed and led by those confessions as I lead the people of God.”  So, I should not be distracted from God on the Sabbath by some silly football game.

Well now, thanks to the PUP report, I can declare a departure from the Westminster Confession.  I can refer to Paul’s words “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:1-2) so that, at least for this one Sabbath day, we don’t have to worry about our “recreations.”

Well, satire aside, I still remain conflicted over this particular day.  I know that some churches use this as an outreach event.  And I know that I am probably one of the few, if only, elder in my church that would worry about this.  And other Sunday afternoons I get work done around the house so that could be a violation too. But it is impossible to deny that this section in the Westminster Standards derives from one of the “big ten,” “Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy.” 

But the bottom line with any of this is Jesus’s words that “The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)  The Law and the Confessions are there to guide us for we are indeed free from the legalism of them.   They guide us towards a deeper relationship with God.  And as we do approach Lent, I am reminded that there is a bunch of other stuff in my life that does more to separate me from God than sitting down with friends one Sunday afternoon a year and watching a media circus that might have a football game attached.

Presbyterian News Service Article on The “School of the Americas”

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There was an interesting news article this week from the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) about the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.  This is a Spanish language school at Fort Benning, Georgia, where military, police, and a few civilians from Central and South American countries are trained by the U.S. Army.  This Institute, formerly known as the “School of the Americas,” has been the focus of condemnation for decades for allegedly training its students in torture and other questionable techniques which they then took back and applied in their own countries.  The concern has been that the U.S. Army was training foreign operatives in methods that violated human rights. 

This article is interesting because it is about two Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PC(USA)) chaplains who either work at or work with the Institute and their perspective and inside knowledge of the school.  As Chaplain John W. Kiser, who teaches ethics at the school says:

“Here’s the problem that I see,” Kiser told the Presbyterian News Service, recently. “Bits and pieces of different things have been glued together and false conclusions drawn. It’s the old line that
two-plus-two does not equal five.”

While they do not deal with the school twenty years ago, they do make a point that graduates of any school are not going to be completely perfect, but out of 60,000 graduates of the Institute in the last 60 years, only 600 have been implicated of a crime and about 100 have been convicted in their home countries.  That is 99% of their graduates who have not had a problem.  As Rev. Kiser says:

“A school should not be held accountable for the moral failings of a few of its graduates.”

The thought is echoed by Chaplain James S. Boelens, also interviewed for the article:

(Boelens) said doing so would be the same as suggesting that Harvard University be held accountable for the murderous acts of convicted Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski — the Harvard graduate who between 1978 and 1995 sent letter bombs that killed three people and injured 29. “The inductive fallacy would be to say that everybody that graduates from Harvard is a criminal.”

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been prominent in the protests against the school, including the 206th General Assembly (1994) passing a motion calling for its closure and being represented and having media coverage at the annual protest and civil disobedience action.  This past November two PC(USA) protesters, one a pastor, were arrested for trespassing as part of the protest.  Fifteen to twenty years ago closing down the School of the Americas was a major issue for the PC(USA) Washington Office.

I bring up this article because one of the criticism’s I have had in this blog was what I, and those around me in the pews, perceived as a “progressive bias” by the Presbyterian News Service.  ( December 2007 post, November 2007 post, August 2007 post)  I now consider it incumbent upon me to recognize their news coverage of an issue that is in balance with a previous article.  So thank you to the PNS, and particularly Evan Silverstein who wrote both of these articles, for covering both sides of the issue and providing a balance many of us are looking for.  Well done!

Are We Presbyterians Really All That Joyless?

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This topic surfaces regularly and the last time I posted on it was back in October, 2006.  However, this past week two new items appeared that brought this into focus again.

Specifically, it is usually the Scottish Presbyterians that get typed as too serious and joyless.  This past week press coverage brought my attention to an article in the September issue of the regular publication of the Free Church of Scotland, the Monthly Record.  The press coverage brought other people’s attention to it as well since the church set up a special page for it on their web site.  The issue of the magazine is about “Enjoying God” and the editor, David Robertson, wrote the lead article is titled “ The Joy of Calvinism” and begins with this sentence:

The definition of a Calvinist as being a person who is miserable at the thought that someone somewhere is actually enjoying themselves’ is sadly all too typical of the popular misconception of the Free Church (and other forms of Reformed Christianity) in Scotland today.

The writer goes on to say how the culture sees religion, particularly the Scottish Presbyterian kind, as “doom, gloom, blackness, depression and joyless,” how everything that is wrong with Scottish society and even the weather get blamed on Knox and Calvin, and how the Prime Minister of the UK, Gordon Brown, is always labeled by the media as a “dour Presbyterian Scot (the three words always going together).”

The article then reminds us that if we are miserable at our human condition, if we “complain, moan, and have a spirit of bitterness” it is “not because of [our] Christianity — it is in defiance of it.” (emphases in the original)  The author is not denying the true pains and challenges of our human lives.

His point in the article is that Christians should enjoy life more than non-believers because we know the source of our blessings, God the giver of all good gifts.  In so doing, we should enjoy the good things in life as gifts from the one we worship, not worship the good things as idols unto themselves as those who do not know the ultimate source was God.  “The ultimate joy is to know God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And if we cannot thank the triune God for what we are doing, eating, drinking or watching then we should not be involved with them.”  He goes on to talk about worship and say “Every service should be a celebration.”  It is not an argument for a particular “style” of worship, but our attitude towards worship and how we approach such things as the content of prayers and the tempo of hymns.

While not a current article, I and others discovered it this week and it stands in contrast to some comments from a politician about Scotland that reinforces this stereotype.  Interestingly the comments are also old, five years old to be exact, but were brought to light this past week by a Freedom of Information request.  The comments were made in an e-mail by Mr. John McTernan, now serving as a top aide to the Scottish Secretary.  In that old e-mail he tells a colleague that they will enjoy their trip to Sweden, “It’s the country Scotland would be if it was not narrow, Presbyterian, racist, etc, etc. Social democracy in action.”  At the time Mr. McTernan worked for the Scottish Arts Council.  Mr. McTernan is claiming that the comments were taken out of context and are old.  The ruling Scottish National Party is using this as evidence of what Mr. McTernan’s Labour Party really thinks of Scotland.  I won’t go any further into the national politics of this, for that you can see the news on-line, including a story from Scotsman.com.

The point here is that the church can be joyful about the proper things and that would help to not only reverse the perception of Reformed Christians, but attract people to Christ.

The Report of the Form of Government Task Force — New Form of Government and Concluding Comments

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The bulk of the material and changes in the Form of Government Task Force report are to chapters 5-18 of the current Form of Government.  While the changes to the Foundations of Presbyterian Polity were mostly reorganization with some modification, this part is probably better described as modifications with some reorganization.  As I mentioned in the previous post, sort of the part 1 of this series, the objective of the task force was to create a new Government part that preserved the essentials of the PC(USA) polity, while making it more flexible, streamlined, and missional.

I can understand
and applaud the desire to make the polity more flexible.  After serving on the
Committee on Ministry in a presbytery with several congregations that
worshiped in languages other than English, Spanish, or Korean the
flexibility is appreciated.  For example, what does it mean to conduct
a proper pastoral search for a pastor for a language group for which
there are less churches in the PC(USA) than you can count on one hand
and you have to be blessed to be searching at a time when even one candidate who
speaks that language is qualified ready.  Or working with a church who
needs a pastor who speaks a particular language but a theological outlook
that is not typical for that culture.  Or there are language groups who have so
few minister candidates in any Presbyterian branch in North America
that they regularly include pastors in their country of origin in their
searches.  These are examples of times when our COM had to be
“creative” with the existing PC(USA) polity to accommodate the
realities of our presbytery.  By the same token, geographically large
rural presbyteries are coming up against situations where the polity
can make things difficult when churches are small, interested pastors are few, and compensation is at minimums or the position is part-time.  There are times when the flexibility is desirable if not required.

Does the proposed Form of Government do that?

As I mentioned before, fourteen chapters have been consolidated to six:  1 – Congregations and their Membership, 2 – Ordained Ministry, Commissioning, and Certification, 3 – Councils of the Church, 4 – The Church and Civil Authority, 5 – Ecumenicity and Union, 6 – Interpreting and Amending the Constitution.

Now, there is no way that I can touch on all the changes the proposed revision has.  (If you are really interested, you can read the report and side-by-side comparisons yourself.  If you see something that I missed or I did not think was significant enough to include feel free to leave a comment.)  Most of the changes fall into the category of “procedure” so if you are thinking of something in the Book of Order and it seems like a procedure rather than a principle it is probably not in the new Form of Government (Government).  This includes a lot of the details.  For example, quorums and meeting notification times for any meetings, congregational, session, presbytery, etc., are no longer in the text.  Just that “adequate public notice” be given, and for congregational meetings it must be at a worship service (G-1.0501).

Likewise, the proposed revision tells governing bodies what must be done, but now how to do it.  This means that committees, like the Committee on Ministry, the Committee on Preparation for Ministry, and even the Nominating Committee and the Committee on Representation are not specified and not required of governing bodies.  For example, a governing body shall “…have a process for nominating persons to serve in positions requiring election…” (G-3.0112).  They can use a Nominating Committee, but can also have a different mechanism.  An extension of this is that presbyteries must simply examine ministers for membership in the presbytery, it does not say how so there is no longer a requirement to examine before the whole presbytery (G-3.0307).  A third example is the session representation to presbytery (G-3.0301).  It says that each session gets at least one commissioner and that the numbers of teaching elders and ruling elders should be as equal as possible.  Beyond that a presbytery may decide how additional ruling elders are apportioned to churches, but it does say that the membership of the church should be taken into account.  Other cases like this are found throughout the revised Government.

One exception to the lack of procedures is that the procedure for
amending the Book of Order is still present complete with the
specifications for the Assembly Committee on the Constitution and the
120 day submittal deadline before an Assembly. (Chapter 6)  Another
exception which could be viewed as procedural is that the six-year
limit of consecutive service of ruling elders and deacons on session
and the board of deacons respectively is still included (G-2.0206).

The use of new language in the document has attracted some attention.  Governing bodies are now referred to as “councils,” a great word from church history but it will be confusing at first because the current councils of our governing bodies are usually executive boards.  While the terms “minister” and “Minister of Word and Sacrament” are still found in the proposed revision, the use of “teaching elder,” to coordinate with to the term “ruling elder,” is now favored.  Another one, which will take me some getting used to, is the use of the term “ordered ministry” instead of “office” or “ordained office.”  Finally, “congregation” is used in place of “particular church” at times, a swap I am not as favorable to of since I know of several churches that have multiple congregations that worship in different languages but join together on one session.

There are at least two sets of terms which have been removed from the proposed Government.  The first is “inactive” when referring to a member of a church or a minister member of presbytery.  To the task force considering missional polity the term “inactive member” was an oxymoron.  Another set of terms that you will not find are those wonderful descriptors of “temporary pastoral relationships.”  The new Government says that there are temporary pastoral relationships (G-2.0303b) but that “Titles and terms of service for temporary relationships shall be determined by the presbytery.”  While “pastor,” “co-pastor,” and “associate pastor” remain, gone are specifications of “interim,” “designated,” “temporary supply,” and “stated supply” pastor.  From my experience working with churches and our stated clerk to match the right designation to the needs of the congregation and the requirements of our polity, I personally won’t miss this matrix.  This is one point where the flexibility is welcome. 

That brings us to an important point about the proposed Form of Government.  There are points where the task force did propose significant changes to the polity and in a nice gesture of full-disclosure and integrity they have included these as separate recommendations in the report.  After the full text of the Government part there are four more recommendations that would change significant items in the Form of Government should it be approved.  This will allow the GA and presbyteries to vote specifically on these polity changes.

The first possible adjustment deals with associate pastors and their ability to become the pastor of that church.  In the proposed Government the task force included the clause that the associate could become the installed pastor if the presbytery concurred by a 3/4 vote.  This proposed change would strike that clause returning the polity to our current status that an associate shall not become the next senior pastor in the congregation they serve.

The second is the similar change for temporary pastoral relationships.   As currently written any temporary pastor could be declared eligible to become the installed pastor by a 3/4 vote of presbytery.  The possible new language would make it so that any temporary pastor but an interim pastor could become eligible to be the next installed pastor by the 3/4 vote of presbytery.  But this sets up a very interesting situation in the proposed polity.  As I already mentioned, no temporary pastoral relationships are defined or even listed in the new Government.  In fact, doing a search of the Task Force report for “interim” this is the only use I find in the whole report!  If adopted, it would set up polity for a position we know by tradition, and probably by external definition, but would use a term that would be an orphan in the text without any internal context.

The third Additional Recommendation would remove an addition the task force made to make the polity more missional.  In the new G-2.0302a, the section on validated ministry, the sixth item in the list of what a validated ministry shall include is “include proclamation of the Word and administration of the Sacraments.”  This is not something associated with all validated ministries but the reasoning goes that if you are a Minister of Word and Sacrament shouldn’t you be living into that title by doing those things.  This third adjustment would eliminate that requirement.

Finally, the fourth adjustment is language that, while not mandating the Committee on Representation, would at least make reference to something like it in G-3.0104 by adding “Councils above the session may establish committees to advocate for diversity in leadership.”

I would also note that the proposed Chapter 6 on amending includes a section (G-6.0501) that prohibits the new Foundations of Presbyterian Polity from being amended for six years following their adoption.

For me, one of the “sleepers” of this report is the change in language from “per-capita” to “raising funds.”  This is not just a semantic change but the last paragraph of proposed section about administration, G-3.0107, (a long section with minimal citation) reads:

The funding of mission similarly demonstrates the unity and interdependence of the church. The failure of any part of the church to participate in the stewardship of the mission of the whole church diminishes that unity and interdependence. All mission funding should enable the church to give effective witness in the world to the new reality of God in Jesus Christ. Each council shall prepare an annual budget. Councils higher than the session may request funds for their mission and for support of the meetings and ongoing functions through which the interdependence of the church is lived out. Presbyteries are responsible for raising their own funds and for raising and timely transmission of requested funds to their respective synods and the General Assembly. Presbyteries may apportion requested funds to sessions within their bounds.

While I will grant you that this section is theologically based and it clearly eliminates the procedures of splitting mission and per-capita funding and then soliciting the first and collecting and arm-twisting the second, the open-ended nature of this section seems to invite creative accounting and blurred lines between ecclesiastical and mission budgets.  But I know, the new polity is all about mission; everything we do is now supposed to be mission.  However, the current Book of Order is like it is because we have a fallen nature and we use the rules not as a legalistic tool, but a device to guide and focus us in our ministry.  There is a place for hard and fast rules and without those to guide our finances I see this as one of the points for possible abuse.  OK, soap box mode off.

At this point I am down to my “laundry list” of numerous changes trying to decide what else to include in this post.  One of interest is that the section on “Preparation for Ministry” does make mention of the written Ordination Exams, but no longer specifies the topics (G-2.0407d).  The number of members of a commission and the fact that you can not have elders from the same church are details that are no longer specified (G-3.0110).  I would also note here that like the Foundations part, the proposed Government part is also minimalist with citations and that section 3.0110 is quite long with very little numbering to assist citation.  Another interesting change is that the responsibility of the session to instruct and examine those who join the church by reaffirmation of faith has been dropped, but it is still there for those who join by profession of faith (G-1.0304).  Finally, the proposed polity lets presbyteries decide if synods should have “reduced functions.”  Section 3.0404 says “When a two-thirds majority of its constituent presbyteries so decide, the function of a synod may be reduced but shall in no case be less than the prov
ision of judicial process and administrative review of the work of the presbyteries.”

There are a whole bunch more of this type of changes, but I think you should have the idea by now.  The report concludes with an Advisory Handbook for Councils for the Development of Policies and Procedures and the recommendation to GA that it be commended to the governing bodies-turned-councils.

Talking to several other “polity wonks” we all agree that if this revision to the Form of Government is approved by the GA and adopted by a majority of the presbyteries in anything like the form in the report there are likely to be two important consequences.  The first is that presbyteries will begin, and could be preoccupied with, a writing process to create the procedure and policy pieces that will have been removed from the Book of Order.  The second consequence will be an increase in the number of Permanent Judicial Commission cases as sessions and presbyteries deal with, and are challenged on, the new flexibility, including the freedom to set quorums and notification times for meetings.  The present Book of Order has the detail and procedures that it does because of cases like these in the past and the perceived need to codify certain items.  The governing bodies can delay, or cover themselves during, the writing of policies and procedures documents by adopting the procedures of the old Form of Government the way several (many?) presbyteries did this past year following the approval of the new chapter 14 which similarly makes use of Advisory Handbooks which were still in preparation.

The flip side of this is that there is great uncertainty about the applicability of current authoritative interpretations and PJC decisions that help us interpret the current Book of Order.  In fact, in my reading the new Government appears to be silent on these and the affect of existing or new guidance on the new Form of Government.  Do these remain in effect, but we have to figure out how they apply to new citations and new wording?  Do they get thrown out and we start over building a new framework?  Or something in between?

I have expected a bit more reaction to this report than I have found so far.  On his blog Pastor Bob has made some comments both positive and negative about the Foundations and the Government part and has some good points beyond what I had thought about.  I have found on the web a letter from the Session of Chula Vista Presbyterian Church which expresses the opinion that the revision is not an improvement on the current and offers suggestions for improvement and clarification.  There is also a movement to have the church look it over for the two years between the 218th and 219th General Assembly.  According to a commentary by Jim Berkley on the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD) web site there were several members of the General Assembly Council who advocated for this at their September meeting where they got an advanced look at the task force recommendation.  In this article Mr. Berkley seems to advocate this as well and the Presbytery of Mississippi has sent an overture (16) to GA requesting this.  Jim Berkley also has an earlier article on the IRD web site addressing the obvious confusion that could result from overtures to amend Book of Order text that may not exist if the FOG report is adopted.  Finally, Jim has on his own blog, The Berkley Blog, a commentary titled “ Ready for a Book of Order Downgrade?“

As for myself, I am withholding judgment on this part until GA gets done working it over.  If I had to vote today on how it currently reads I would probably vote no.  I appreciate the increased flexibility and would like to see a Form of Government that can adapt to a variety of unique situations.  However, I have also seen my own congregation go to the Committee on Ministry and say “we like our interim, can we keep him?”  Fortunately the COM turned them down and it was a good thing too.  Besides the fact that it was it against the rules, the pastor we did call was truly God’s gift to our congregation and shows what can happen when you do a search right.  As a former moderator of COM, I am trying to figure out how I would write it to provide flexibility without undue temptation.  And I will acknowledge that the current Book of Order has become a patchwork with amendments to answer particular issues but not necessarily added in a big-picture way.  I do not want to argue against a rewrite, just something that is in the middle ground between the current and the proposed.

But, this report has a long way to go in the next six months.  It will be poked and prodded in GA committee and on the plenary floor.  It can be amended, modified, rewritten, or abandoned at both stages.  Throw into the mix the numerous overtures for Book of Order changes and how they may, or may not, apply to the rewrite.  And then the final product will be ready to go back out to the presbyteries for approval (but not modification).  We will see what the process brings.

The Report of the Form of Government Task Force — General Comments and the Foundations of Presbyterian Polity

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A few weeks ago the Form of Government task force (FOG) completed its work and released their final report for the consideration of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in June.  This is not light reading and it took some time to digest the report and the accompanying documents.  While all the documents listed on the FOG web site are useful, I found that I relied on the “ Side-by-side comparison of the current to proposed form of government” the most since it best shows what has been removed in addition to the changes in wording.

It is important to keep in mind the charge to the task force from the 217th GA:  The Task Force was to rewrite the Form of Government section of the Book of Order to provide more leadership to congregations as “missional communities” and allow for flexibility for governing bodies to best work with congregations in our modern world.  However, the basic fundamental polity was not to be changed, the presbytery was to remain as the central governmental unit, and controversial sections G-6.0106b and G-8.0201 were not to be touched in wording but could be renumbered.

The changes to the Form of Government that are proposed are of two types:  There are organizational changes that move sections around, consolidate chapters, and even create a new part to the Book of Order.  Then there is editing to make the Book of Order a “Constitutional document, not a manual of operations.”  To achieve this aim all procedural sections are edited out.

The organizational change that has gotten the most coverage has been the division of the current Form of Government into two sections.  The first four chapters with the foundational polity has been put into a new section now called “Foundations of Presbyterian Polity” (Foundations) and the remaining material kept in a smaller “Form of Government” (Government).  In addition, the Form of Government has been shortened further by moving some supporting material out of the constitution and into handbooks for the Committee on Ministry and the Committee on Preparation for Ministry.  In the reorganization of chapters the first four chapters of the current Form of Government are now three chapters in the Foundations section while the remaining fourteen chapters of Government have been reorganized down to six.

With the removal of the procedural sections how much has the Form of Government been shortened?  While page sizes and formatting make it challenging to get exact counts, the current Form of Government chapters 5 to 18 covers 112 pages in the published Book of Order and roughly 75 pages in the side-by-side comparison.  The new Form of Government is 64 pages as formatted in the report and roughly 43 pages in the side-by-side comparison.  These two measures are pretty consistent so without doing a word count the general appearance is that the reduction in size is by almost one half.

For comparison, the comparable document for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, The Code, is divided into two parts with Part I having about 40 pages of structure and Part II containing almost 100 pages of “Rules.”  In the Presbyterian Church in America, the Book of Church Order is 346 pages long with 84 pages in their Form of Government section and something like the PC(USA) chapter 1 in a Preface.  The PCA BCO is sized and typeset very much like the PC(USA) Book of Order so this is a close comparison.  Finally, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church Book of Order has a Book of Government section of about 76 pages.

In reviewing all of the material from the Form of Government Task Force (FOG) the rational for the structural reorganization makes sense to me.  One of the reasons for splitting out the Foundations part on its own is to make it clear that those principles apply to Directory for Worship and the Rules of Discipline parts in addition to the Form of Government.  This is something that I have always accepted implicitly so I don’t have a problem making it explicit.  Likewise, I am not opposed to the consolidation of chapters in the Government sections.  Anyone who has flipped between current chapters 6 and 14 trying to figure out some point of pastoral search or ordination, or who has searched chapters 9, 10 and 11 trying to locate a specific section on governing bodies, can probably appreciate this reorganization.

However, in reviewing the details of the editing there are proposed changes which open up questions and concerns for me.

For purposes of length and readability I have decided to split this blog post and so will discuss the proposed new part, the Foundations of Presbyterian Polity in this post and in my next one will pick up with the revised Form of Government part.  So…

Looking first at the Foundations part, the FOG claims:

The new Foundations preserves the vast majority of the text of the current first four chapters. There are sixty-seven paragraphs in the current G-1.0000 through G-4.0000. Of those sixty-seven paragraphs, sixty-three of them have been brought over into The Foundations of Presbyterian Polity. In thirty-five of the preserved paragraphs, the new text presents verbatim the contents of the current text. Twenty-eight of the paragraphs preserved have undergone some revision or modification, such as the combination of several smaller paragraphs into one larger one or the revision of content.

The Task Force, and its members individually, make a big deal about the continuity between the current and proposed versions.  But some of the changes, while subtle are not insignificant.  The red flag here should be the 28 paragraphs that have been “preserved” but modified.  These include subtle changes, like old G-1.0100a that refers to “Almighty God” but is replaced in new F-1.0201 with just “God.”  Or in the next paragraph where “his Kingdom” is replaced with “God’s new reality.”  I am in favor of using gender-neutral language where possible, but this change shifts the theological meaning.

There are points where the editing does improve the text in my opinion.  One example is the Great Ends of the Church where the current G-1.0200 lists them in a narrative paragraph but the new F-1.0304 splits them out as a bulleted list.  Likewise, the current G-3.0200 is supposed to be about “The Church as the Body of Christ” but the section starts with the church being the “provisional demonstration of what God intends for all humanity” and the “Body of Christ” language is down in G-3.0200c.  In the proposed F-1.0301 that Body of Christ section is moved to the top and the Provisional Demonstration immediately follows.  Personally I like that better.

It is interesting to note what has been deleted from Foundations.  In particular, I would point to the current G-2.0500b which was not carried over to Foundations.  This section begins “Thus, the creeds and confessions of the church reflect a particular stance within the history of God’s people.”  I’m not sure why this was eliminated since I think it helps us as Reformed Christians to recognize and understand that many of our confessional documents were written to address theological issues at a
particular point in history.

I have two other stylistic comments about the new Foundations:

First, there are a lot less numbered sections.  While most of the words are still there the citation system no longer gets you some of the detailed sections as it used to.  For example, in the current G-2.0500 Faith of the Reformed Tradition there are six paragraphs, each numbered down to trailing letters and numbers (such as G-2.0500a.(1), a citation length that a GA Junkie would love).  In the proposed revision the only citation, covering the same six paragraphs is F-2.05.

Second, I don’t like the opening.  Now here I may be getting picky but sometimes the first line of a book sets the tone for the whole thing.  Here are the choices to open the Book of Order:

Current Proposed
All power in heaven and earth is given to Jesus Christ by Almighty God, who raised Christ from the dead and set him above all rule and authority, all power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. God has put all things under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and has made Christ Head of the Church, which is his body. The mission of the Church is given form and substance by the sovereign activity of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Church bears witness to this one God’s sovereign activity in the world as told in the Bible and received by faith through the confessions of the people of God. The Church recognizes this activity of God in the goodness of creation and in the story of God’s dealings with humanity and with the children of Abraham; in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and in God’s sustaining, forgiving, and demanding grace that forever issues in the call to discipleship. The Church proclaims that in the one God’s threefold work it finds its assurance of blessing, its call to ministries of compassion and justice, and its hope for itself and for the world.

For me, the current opening section is favored.  The main reason I favor it is that it contains many recognizable references to scripture, including the very first phrase which is taken from the Great Commission in Matt. 28, which if we are truly interested in missional polity would not be a bad thing to start with.  Yes I know that the proposed actually mentions mission as the second word, but somehow the identification with specific scripture passages really strengthens the current opening.  As a second reason, and this may be tied to the first, I am just struck by the more forceful and poetic nature of the current version.  Now this is subjective and your opinion may be different, but that is how it affects me.

If I had to vote at this point on the Foundations part I would probably vote no, but only weakly.  As a consensus document I could live with it.  None of our documents are perfect and while I do have objections I consider them minor in the grand scheme of things.  In any of our polity documents there are places I would love to make changes.  And there are places that I consider the new document an improvement.

Having gotten through the changes to the Form of Government as a whole, and the new Foundations of Presbyterian Polity part I will finish up the new Government section and some concluding comments that I will post separately tomorrow.  Have fun and stay tuned.

The Christmas Story: Reading it with New Eyes

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In my Christmas reflection/greeting yesterday I chose a slightly different but, to my understanding of the Greek text, reasonable reading of the passage.  Specifically, in John 1:14 where we usually say that the Word “dwelt” among us, an alternate translation is that it “tabernacled” or literally “pitched its tent” among us.

If you want an even more counter-cultural example, I recommend an article from the Christianity Today web site titled “ No room at the what?”  This is a great, and challenging, discussion of how we view the “no room at the inn” phrase and what the Greek text and the cultural setting may actually be.

Is this applicable to how we view Presbyterian polity?  Absolutely.  If you have every worked with a congregation of a different cultural background, you know they will read, interpret and apply polity with certain cultural understandings and expectations which could differ and conflict with your established understandings.  Presbyteries have sometimes needed extensive discussions to come to a mutual understanding about the views of polity and each others cultural understandings.  The need for flexibility to accommodate different cultural approaches, for better or for worse, is one element in the rewrite of the PC(USA) Form of Government.

The question in any of our polity becomes “What is fundamental to our theology and what can be flexible to accommodate cultural traditions and backgrounds?”

A good Feast of Saint Stephen to you and a happy Boxing Day.

Coverage of a new film on the Bible and Homosexuality

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Yesterday a newly released news story from the Presbyterian News Service, a part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), caught my attention and while the tone of the coverage concerned me, I’ve commented on this slant in coverage before and decided to let this one pass.  Until…  I read the entry Viola has at her blog, Naming His Grace, titled Reporting on Reporting and For the Bible tells me so.”

First, some background:  Earlier this year First Run Features released the film “For the Bible tells me so” ( official film web site) that examines how the Bible and the church view and deal with homosexuality and homosexual behavior from the progressive perspective.  As the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) article says, this film was shown at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians’ conference in Atlanta in November and is highlighted on the front page of their web site.  In addition, it is mentioned positively on the Witherspoon Society web site.  The PNS article is generally positive about the film and has positive and encouraging quotes from Pam Byers, the executive director of the Covenant Network.

Now turning to Viola’s comments, you would not know that she was talking about the same film.  Viola comes from the evangelical perspective and is not a fan of the film, although she does say she has only seen the trailer and the promotional information.

While I have only looked at the film’s web site and have not seen the trailer, my problem and part of Viola’s problem is not with the film, but again with the PNS coverage.  And rather than my restating my complaint, I will quote Viola:

Today the Presbyterian News Service had an article, Biblical examination, about the film. It is written by Toya Richards Hill. While it is true that this particular film has won quite a few awards at the Sundance film festival, so it is a news worthy film, it is also true that the Presbyterian News Service is, well, officially Presbyterian. So it seems to me in their news reporting they should be handling the subject of this film from a two-sided position.

That is, the Presbyterian News Service could write about how the Covenant Network likes this film and here is what all of those who made the film and agree with the film, including some theologians, say about it. (Which they did.) But on the other hand, there are those scholars and theologians and Christians in the pews who don’t agree with the film’s take on the subject and this is what they have to say about it. (Which
they did not do.) And hopefully as the film is shown across the country PNS will do that?

It is interesting to note that there is a film or video expressing an alternate conservative/evangelical viewpoint called “Speaking a Mystery.” ( official film web site) This video was produced by OneByOne and Presbyterians for Renewal and was released in April 2006 in advance of the 217th General Assembly.  Now, that film did not go into theatrical release and does not seem to have won any awards, but it was produced by PC(USA) affiliated groups.  Some browsing through the PNS archive, using the search function on the PC(USA) web site, and even doing a Google search on it I could find no mention of it on the PC(USA) web site.

Well, I’ll again say, that if the PC(USA) is trying to present themselves as an organization for all Presbyterian viewpoints, they need to be much more intentional about the balance of the news they cover and balance within the articles themselves.

On a related note, today the PNS announced a realignment of which of their reporters covers what news based on the new structure of the PC(USA) General Assembly Council.  It just looks structural and not fundamental so I’m not sure it will have any impact on how news gets reported.