Category Archives: PCA

The 2010 Assemblies Discussing Central Points Of Presbyterian And Reformed Thought

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This past weekend the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held a special session to celebrate and remember the 450th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland that produced the Presbyterian church.  (You can watch the two hour long session on the Church of Scotland web site.)  And for those who keep track, this past Thursday (when I started writing this) marked the 446th anniversary of John Calvin’s death.  It seems to me the various Assemblies this year in their business have more ties to Calvin and Knox than happens in most years.

As I think back on the Church of Scotland Assembly I’m sure that for many of us who followed the meeting there was an interesting sense of paradox (or irony or outright contradiction even) having to do with the fact that on the one hand the Assembly endorsed the Third Article Declaratory defining the Kirk as a territorial church with a mission to the whole of Scotland, while on the other hand cutting ministerial staffing 10%.  I probably can not state it any better than Davidkhr who says in his blog post about the Assembly:

It’s all very well making potentially visionary statements looking at alternative forms of ministry, but the education process within the membership will be impossible. Let’s face it, and the Committee/commission didn’t, the vast majority of ordinary members expect a form of ministry that may have happened 40 years ago, and the only ‘visit’ from the church that is valid is the dog collar. That is plainly ridiculous in today’s situation. Parishes will get bigger, more vacancies are planned for, more churches needing covered with interim ministries, it’s a recipe for meltdown….

Or have I missed something in all this ?

And this in a Presbyterian branch which has been proactive about considering the church of the future with their Church Without Walls initiative and the various Commissions and Panels on restructuring the church.

I’ll return to this in a moment, but as I consider the Assembly meetings now adjourned and those yet to convene it strikes me that more than most years there will be a lot of discussion, more than usual, around the application and relevance of several points which many of us consider central to what it means to be Reformed and Presbyterian.  Some of these are…

Worship
We are all familiar with the “worship wars” but the echoes this year seem to be very much concerned with the original Reformed understanding of divine worship and the inspiration and value of the Psalter.  At their Assembly, the commissioners of the Free Church of Scotland agreed to a special Plenary Assembly later in the year to discuss the possibility of permitting flexibility in worship and providing for a congregation to include music other than unaccompanied exclusive psalmody.

But I found it meaningful how much unaccompanied Psalm singing there was at the Church of Scotland Assembly, not just at the special session but throughout the week. A significantly larger amount of the music sung that week was unaccompanied Psalms, more than I remember from previous years.

Teaching and Ruling Elders in Joint Ministry
This gets to the heart of many discussions this year and especially part of the solution of the Third Article and the ministry cuts paradox.  The Special Commission on the Third Article Declaratory in their report made it clear that to accomplish that mission would require new ways of being the church.  And as Davidkhr makes clear above it will fail, meltdown in his language, if there are not new ways.

But that is the beauty of the model of shared ministry that we see in the Presbyterian and Reformed system.  Under no circumstances is leadership for the teaching elder alone.  Authority, responsibility, and accountability lie with both the teaching and ruling elders.  And while there are plenty of service roles for others in the church, in times of reduced staffing there is opportunity and responsibility for the ruling elders to live into their role and help leading the church where there is now need.  Yes, there is need for training regarding some areas, but a great opportunity for ruling elders to be part of the joint leadership the Reformed tradition recovered.

And I would say that many Presbyterian branches would benefit from being intentional about the joint ministry of teaching and ruling elders.  This is not necessarily a budgetary argument but an understanding of call.

But in this regard there are a couple of other points where our GA’s are touching on this joint ministry.  One of these is in the balance of teaching elders and ruling elders standing for Moderator and Vice-Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  Five of the six Moderator candidates are teaching elders and all four of the announced Vice-Moderator candidates are teaching elders.  Only one in ten, 10%, is a ruling elder.  Now I actually think this says something about how the PC(USA) structures these position and I will rant about discuss that another time, but at a minimum it does implicitly say something about how the church looks at this joint ministry.

Another branch where this joint ministry has been mentioned as lacking is in the Presbyterian Church in America.  Commentators have pointed out that having teaching and ruling elder parity at GA is a problem with more conflicts and less incentive for ruling elders to attend.  This is one of the “back stories” to the Strategic Plan…

Connectionalism
This leads us into one of the areas that is constantly being worked out in Presbyterian branches, and that is our connectionalism — how each governing body is connected to the others.  I have to think that if we were not a fallen and sinful people this would come naturally, or even be unnecessary, but having our sinful nature it does not come as easily for us to determine what of our authority, power and treasure we are to reserve for one governing body and what portion is properly exercised by higher or lower bodies.  Just as we believe that our human nature is such that authority should not be concentrated in one individual but rather in a body, we also believe authority should not be concentrated in one governing body but shared (not necessarily equally) across higher and lower governing bodies with review and appeal between them.  (And this is just the polity argument and not the role of connectionalism as representative of the Church as the Body of Christ.)

Having said this, the connectional level of Presbyterian polity is one of the most sensitive issues in several branches right now and for the PCA Strategic Plan the several ways that it proposes to improve connectionalism may be the most controversial and contentious points.  One thing the report considers is how the Administrative and Assembly functions of the denomination should be supported and how to assess churches for the financial support of these areas.  There are numerous analyses and a counter proposal being circulated so at the Assembly we will have a significant discussion on the specific implications of connectionalism.

At the upcoming Assembly of the PC(USA) a different situation will be on the floor.  The PCA Strategic Report begins with the position that growth has slowed and started to reverse and asks the question “What do we need to do to start growing again?”  The PC(USA) discussion begins with the fact that the current structure was designed for a church roughly one million members larger and asks the question “How do we need to structure ourselves for our smaller size?”  There are proposals for specific tweaks, like abolishing synods, to requests for creating a committee or commission to study the role of higher governing bodies and suggest, and in the case of the commission implement, changes to the presbytery and synod structure of the denomination.

As a parallel proposal, there is also a PC(USA) overture for a “New Synod,” and flexible presbyteries, that would allow connectionalism along the lines of theological affinity.  But the PC(USA) is not alone here because the Evangelical Presbyterian Church also has a proposal before it for presbyteries to have, in my words, “fuzzy boundaries,” to allow for congregations to align themselves in presbyteries that have a similar stance but on one very specific issue, the ordination of women as teaching elders.

And finally, the Church of Scotland, in several reports including the Panel on Review and Reform, is looking at devolving responsibilities from the General Assembly level to the presbytery level.  We will see more of these specifics as the year unfolds and they are discussed and implemented.

Confessions
I would be remiss if I did not mention one more traditional item and that is our confessional nature as Presbyterians.  The PC(USA) GA will be discussing a recommendation to add the Belhar Confession as a confessional standard.  I will leave it at that for now as I am working on a much more extensive post on the PC(USA) and its confessions.

So that is what I am seeing.  In my memory I can’t remember so many Presbyterian branches dealing with so many of the characteristics that we of the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition consider core to our doctrinal framework.  So hold on — it looks to be an interesting summer.

Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei

The PCA Strategic Plan — How Do You Grow Larger?

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The 38th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will be considering the new Strategic Plan for the PCA.  The church is putting significant effort into presenting and interpreting the Plan including the main report with the narrative of the Plan, an executive summary dealing mainly with the funding proposals contained in the Plan as well as a slightly longer detailed description of the funding formula, and a concise summary of the changes to the Book of Church Order that would be necessary to implement one part of the Plan.  On the interpretation side, there is a five part video on the Plan web page that I think does a good job explaining the situation and what the Plan includes to address those issues.  There is also an FAQ  and a page of comments about the Plan from “PCA leaders” (a note that all the comments are positive, a fact noted in the file name which contains the word “endorsements”).  The PCA publication byFaith has articles about the committee approving the Plan, reaction to the Plan (again positive) from pastors,  and responses to questions/criticisms that have been raised.  Speaking of criticisms, the PCA blogosphere has been buzzing about the Plan and from what I have read it has generally been doubtful or critical of the plan.  For a collected list of all these responses keep an eye on the blog Johannes Weslianus where Wes White has been keeping track of all this.  He posted his latest list yesterday where it is instructive to note that there are no unofficial positive responses to the Plan but 10 (some in multiple parts) “cautious/skeptical” responses and two “opposed” — But that is the nature of the blogosphere which, interestingly, is something the Plan comments on ( pg. 13 ).  Wes also includes his picks for “Best Concise Summary” of the Plan.

I have made selective general comments about the Plan twice now, but before I launch into my more detailed analysis I think it is important to remind you of the lens that I read the Plan through.  On the one hand I am a ruling elder in a denomination other than the PCA so as I read the report I can miss some of the history, nuances and subtleties that it contains, references, or includes implicitly from the ethos of the denomination.  On the other hand, I am an observer and student of “big picture” Presbyterianism and some of the conclusions I have drawn from the report are similarly big picture and I have not seen them mentioned in the comments on other blogs (although I have fallen behind in my reading so if this is bringing the observation to the party late I apologize).

Let me begin with my two general observations about the Strategic Plan.  The first is that it does a very good job of describing the situation and circumstances that the PCA finds itself in today.  In fact, the point of my first post was that the insight of the report is so good that their observations and isolation of the issues can be applied to not just the PCA but to may of the Presbyterian and Reformed branches at this time.  While I previously highlighted the opening section of Identifying Our Challenges (p. 7) I found the whole section, including the North American and European Challenges, Global Challenges, and Internal Challenges to be comprehensive and useful.  I also found the sections on Identifying Opportunities and Identifying Strengths to be good.  More on some of those specifics in a moment.

The other thing that struck me was that as I read through the report, and especially the recommendations, I kept thinking “that is something a ‘large denomination’ does.”  After thinking that enough times it struck me that what the report seems to be proposing, intentionally or not, are ways for the PCA to make the structural leap from a medium sized denomination to a large denomination.  Let me explain…

There are widely recognized and described styles of congregations based upon their size — one of the most widely used, the Rothauge system, has Family, Pastoral, Program, and Corporate churches from smallest to largest in size.  While the styles and boundaries between them are not hard and fast (I would say that my own congregation well into the Program size still has strong characteristics of the Pastoral style) it is a useful general scheme for understanding congregational dynamics.  A similar system could probably be developed based on denomination size although I am not aware of one.  And while the congregation size system has some variability, I would expect the denomination system to be even more variable depending on where a particular church falls in the congregational-hierarchical polity spectrum.  But having said that, the PCA is one of a few Presbyterian branches in the vicinity of 300,000 members and I have suspected that for Presbyterian branches there may be a transition point there.  One indication of this may be the slowing growth the PCA has seen recently (although there are numerous other possible explanations as well).

Why is there a transition point?  As the Report itself identifies (p. 13) “Our organizational cohesion has not primarily been achieved by shared mission goals, ministry practice, organizational support, worship style, ethnicity, political perspectives or economic status – but by doctrinal agreement.”  To go forward the Report describes the evolution of the denomination in this way:

Our values are well identified in the “motto” of the PCA: Faithful to Scripture, True to the Reformed Faith, and Obedient to the Great Commission.

The phrases of this motto also provide insight into the missional development of the PCA. It is fair to say that commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture was the driving force of our founding and that the churches who initially came into the PCA immediately united in this value. Determining what it meant to be true to the Reformed faith was not as unifying, and created significant debates among us for the next 30 years. These debates both clouded understanding of our mission and inhibited cooperative participation in it. While progress has been made in defining how we will hold each other accountable for being true to the Reformed faith, relational tensions wax and wane around this issue. Thus, the next stage of PCA development likely relates to the last phrase of our motto. How we do mission together, and whether we can do mission together, is the key to our future. If we are able to unite in missional purpose, we have much to contribute to the future of the Kingdom; if we cannot, then our future is likely incessant, inward-focused pettiness.

To put it into general terms – when small a branch can be held together by a strong common tie, probably historical or doctrinal, but as it grows the increase in size creates enough diversity that at a certain point a “critical mass” is reached where well-intentioned and sincerely held doctrinal differences threaten the cohesion of the group and unity needs to be found in something other than shared history or doctrinal conformity.  At least that is my perspective on denominational size and where I see the PCA as I read this report.

So as I read through the report I saw several items that I would identify with a “large denomination.”  These proposals include advisory delegates, representation/quotas/places at the table, pro rated and progressive assessments for Administrative work, and “safe places” to talk.  And when I say “large denomination” I’m sure that many in the PCA would rightly think PC(USA) , but I would also include the few other large Reformed branches, like the RCA and the Church of Scotland as well.  Therefore, to emphasize the generality of my argument I use the generic label rather than a specific denomination.

Now, let me also say that in a general sense the proposals for growth are in and of themselves neutral.  It will be how they are implemented and used that determines their usefulness and missional applicability and validity.

One final comment about the report in general:  As I read it I had to agree with many of the other commentators that when it got to the actual plan portion it got very specific and business-like and it was tough to tell that this had anything to do with a church.  Taking from one of Wes White’s Best Concise Summaries, David A. Booth says this:

Addressing specific details in the PCA’s proposed strategic plan that one Elder or another objects to still leaves the denomination approaching Christ’s Church like a non-profit organization that simply needs to be managed better. This is not to imply that the men involved in crafting the PCA’s proposed strategic plan have anything other than good motives. Furthermore, some of the problems that the report is wrestling with are very real problems for the PCA. What should be called into question is the very idea of grand strategic planning within the Church of Jesus Christ. We cannot manage-in the Kingdom of God.

There is a tension in how we use human means to organize ourselves to do God’s work.

As something of a counter argument I would recommend watching the five part video posted on the web page.  It not only adds substantial and much-needed theological depth that the printed report itself lacks, but provides an interesting commentary on the challenges the church in general faces and the changes in society.  Even non-PCA members might find the first three segments of this presentation interesting where the general challenges are discussed.  (It is about the first 30 minutes of this 49 minute presentation.)

Having now expended a substantial number of words on my general observations I will only briefly touch on just a few of the specifics of the report.

In the report it talks about “animating values” (what gets us interested) and “formal values” (stated standards of the church).  There is a list of 27 animating values of local churches (p. 5) and I did not see where those came from and whether there was a particular order to them.  I must admit that if ordered I would have “Right administration of the Sacraments” and “Good Bible preaching” higher than their respective 8 and 10 on the published list.  I was also a little surprised for a Reformed branch to include “Revival thru viral repentance and faith” in the list but maybe I’m not interpreting that correctly. (Or maybe I’m too T.R. for my own good.)

There is a great list on page 6 related to the animating values of groups that I think does an good job of classifying the various identities within the PCA and how they are viewed by others.  One thought that crossed my mind as I read the report, and that seems to be a sub-text in some of the discussions in the PCA, is how the churches from the former RPCES are, or are not, part of this group identity?  While “Southern Presbyterianism” seems to be a factor in places in the report, the RPCES heritage is not.

Another great list is that of Internal Challenges (p. 12-14) which, as I noted above, transcends the PCA.  I was particularly interested to see item 6 on the list:

6. Pervasive Disregard for Eph. 4:15 and Matthew 18 in Discussions of Differences
Our organizational cohesion has not primarily been achieved by shared mission goals, ministry practice, organizational support, worship style, ethnicity, political perspectives or economic status – but by doctrinal agreement. The downside of so valuing doctrine is that we have little tolerance within or without the church for theological variance. Our tendency is not simply to consider those who differ with us wrong – but to consider them bad (because they are obviously “compromisers” or “unbiblical”). It is easy for us to give moral status to our theological perspective – even on secondary issues, and thus rationalize uncharitable characterizations of those who differ (esp. on blogs)

I think this is an issue that has not been vocalized enough but will have to be in the future as more of our interaction goes into the virtual world.  A topic for another time and nice to see listed, but we must be careful not to uniformly demonize the web.

On that same list item 18 had me scratching my head a little bit: “Lack of Desire among Young Leaders to Assume Positions with PCA’s Most Significant Pulpits and Organizations (perception that they are moribund and dangerous for families)”  If read at face value this is interesting because the “clergy crunch” currently is typically described as small rural churches, not flagship or tall steeple.  But maybe with my lack of connection to the PCA I am missing something here.

Let me move on to the specific recommendations.

Theme 1. Safe Places – This would provide open forums for expressing any opinions regarding the selected topic at GA meetings and encourage similar forums in a presbytery context.  The goal is to provide a safe, non-judgmental environment for bringing up differing viewpoints on Biblical Belief, Ministry and Mission.

Theme 2. More Seats – These recommendations relate to getting representatives at the table from currently unrepresented groups: younger generation, women, ethnic leaders, global church representatives.  Some of this involves participation on committees, in forums, and mentoring.  This theme also includes identifying, credentialling, and encouraging non-ordained vocational ministries.

Theme 3. Global Mission – This is more of a mixed bag and more controversial.

Means 1 – I would describe this as being more intentional about working in Gospel outreach outside the PCA.

Means 2 – “Develop a unifying funding means” – This is the revision of the funding model for the Administrative Committee and the only part of the report that requires a change to the Book of Church Order.  For the details here see the Rules Changes document, but the change to BCO 14-1 would empower the GA to collect the mandatory assessment, and the change to 14-2 specifies that TE and RE commissioners to the Assembly are only in good standing if their congregations have paid the fees.  Otherwise they have voice but not vote.  The last action would change the Rules of Assembly Operations 14-11 to describe the fee, proposed to be capped at 0.4% “of local church Tithes and Offerings.”

Means 3 – To develop a method to evaluate GA level ministry to support only those “critical to our calling.”

Means 4 – “Partner with national & international ministries with whom we can most effectively participate in God’s global mission.”  This would have the church be selective in who they partner with and withdraw from organizations with whom they do not share “ministry priorities,” and NAPARC is mentioned by name to withdraw from.  In other words, put resources of gifts and talents towards ministry and not doctrine.

Well, that is a summary of the document.  There is plenty of reading there for you as well as in all the various responses. At great risk of being too selective I am going to highlight one particular response that seems to have gotten referenced around the blogosphere as much as any of them have…

On the Aquila Report William M. Schweitzer has a commentary titled “Thoughts on the PCA Strategic Plan: Is It Presbyterian?”  In this article he highlights three areas where the Strategic Plan would compromise ecclesiastical standards as Presbyterians understand them.  First, the provisions for future planning and implementation decision making shifts power from the presbyteries to the Cooperative Ministries Committee.  Second, the use of non-ordained vocational ministries would circumvent the process of call, exploration, and response understood in our process of certification and ordination and derived from the Pastoral Epistles.  And finally, the idea of more “seats at the table” compromises the role of “biblically qualified and ordained elders” and shifts power from elders to advisory delegates.

Well, as I said, the on-line response has been very concerned to negative but what will ultimately matter is the discernment of the body through the debate and vote on the floor of the Assembly.  Is the question whether the PCA has reached a point in their size where structural changes are needed to grow?  Or does the church go back to “being the church” and concentrate on spreading the Gospel. (Which is one of the theme of the Plan.)  There are well known names on both sides of this issue at the moment and it will be interesting to hear from the broad range of commissioners as they discuss this.  I’m sure there are a lot more viewpoints out there that have not been expressed yet.  Stay tuned.

Financial Implications — Decisions Coming To General Assemblies

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I am struck by the number of Presbyterian branches that have financial issues to deal with right at the moment.  I highlighted some of these a couple of weeks ago when I posted a large block of text from the new Strategic Plan from the Presbyterian Church in America .  A few brief excerpts that are relevant for today’s purpose say:

[D]espite our formal values of connectional polity and cooperative ministry, less than half of the churches of the PCA support any denominational agency or committee (less than 20 percent give at the Partnership Share level).
…
The cooperative efforts that do exist are often directed toward affinity gatherings or the ministries of large churches that have become missional expressions of the animating values of specific groups.
…
We remain an anti-denominational denomination – excusing individualistic ministry by re-telling the narratives of past abuses in former denominations, demonizing denominational leadership or movements to justify non-support of the larger church, or simply making self-survival or self-fulfillment the consuming goal of local church ministry.

I bring these up as a very good summary of where Presbyterian denominations find themselves today in these still-challenging economic times.  Compared to other branches the PCA finds itself in a relatively good financial position.  However, the GA will be considering this report and its recommendations for implementing a new formula for supporting the work of the Assembly.

A situation a bit more stressful is that of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland whose General Assembly held at special meeting at which they authorized raising £1 million for a special hardship fund for those impacted by the collapse of the Presbyterian Mutual Society.  While this is being raised through a special appeal and not general funds, the plan will be presented to next month’s GA for approval.

To the east across the North Channel the Church of Scotland General Assembly will be debating plans to reduce expenses by disposing of property, including church buildings, and reducing ministerial staffing, as measured by FTE’s, by 10%.  As the report of the Ministries Council says:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”(Prov 28:19), declares the Wisdom writer. This was a sentiment most likely forged in crisis, addressed to people who found the pressures around too great to raise their heads and look around. These are words which speak into our current situation in the Church of Scotland, facing as we do a significant crisis in relation to ministries. A deficit budget of £5.7M is quite simply unsustainable. Given that the Ministries Council is responsible for 87% of the Church’s budget, this is a crisis for the whole Church, not just for the Ministries Council.

Which brings us to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and hard decisions that continue to be needed, right now by the General Assembly Mission Council but soon by the General Assembly itself.  As followers of the PC(USA) know this is not new — the Outlook Article reminds us that over the last eight years about 250 positions have already been eliminated.  Thirty of those were early retirement packages offered to staff following the February 2010 GAMC meeting.  At that meeting CFO Joey Bailey presented financial projections of 15 – 20% lower unrestricted funding for 2011.  The Council also approved a new set of Guiding Principles for Planning Decisions. Going into the GAMC meeting this week Leslie Scanlon of the Outlook writes:

This time, denominational leaders have warned that the cuts could mean the elimination of entire programs or areas of ministry. As council member Matt Schramm put it in February: “We may have to say goodbye to some long-treasured programs that no longer serve the needs of the church.”

Expect significant news to develop over the rest of this week as the GAMC wrestles with significant decisions.

But the 219th General Assembly will have review on some of these actions, responsibility for approving overtures with “financial implications” that will affect the GAMC’s proposed budgets, and setting per capita for the next two years.  In addition, there are overtures to the GA that not only have financial implications but address the financial practices directly.

One of these is Item 03-09 (overture 72) from Great Rivers Presbytery which would add a line to the section about special committees that says “Special committees and commissions should be appointed only in very rare and exceptional circumstances, i.e. national or denominational crisis.”  The rational makes clear that this is suggested for representational and procedural reasons, but knowing how the special committee I was on was constrained by budgetary considerations I know that carefully controlling the creation of special committees will put less strain on budgets.

Another more direct one is item 03-04 (overture 54) from San Diego Presbytery that would, for budgetary reasons, restore the number of GA commissioners to the lower levels before the switch to biennial Assembly meetings.

Finally, for today, there is item 09-02 (overture 34) from Sierra Blanca Presbytery requesting “the 219th General Assembly (2010) to consider that all undesignated funds flowing from the Presbyterian Foundation to the General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC), a Corporation, be allocated directly to individual presbyteries (by percentage of denominational membership) for direct dispersal to particular churches of that presbytery, as each presbytery determines.”  While this overture seeks to implement G-9.0402b (“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.”) the rational acknowledges that it will impact the GAMC in unspecified ways.  (Although I am pretty certain someone in leadership on the GAMC has come up with at least some rough figures.)

So where does this take us?  It all depends on how you view and address the challenges.

In the PC(USA) there are two proposals, one from the Office of the General Assembly, the other overture 58 from Synod of the Southwest (with five presbyteries and one synod concurring), that would review the  middle governing bodies of the PC(USA) but neither of these would directly review the structure of the General Assembly and its agencies.

For the PCA the Strategic Plan suggests:

This Strategic Plan seeks to address these realities by helping the PCA identify its challenges, address them with strategies that are consistent with our biblical values, and build denominational support for implementing these strategies. The overall goal is to enable the church to work together to steward its blessings and resources to advance the cause of Christ according to the principles and priorities of his Word.

For the C of S Ministries Council they answer their opening statement that I quoted above with this statement:

Out of crisis, however, can come both vision and opportunity. The remit of the Council is: the enabling of ministries in every part of Scotland and elsewhere where appropriate, giving special priority to the poorest and most marginalized, through recruitment, training and support of recognised ministries of the Church and the assessment and monitoring of patterns of deployment of those ministries.  In fulfilling this, we want to take seriously the scale of work which needs to be done, initially to 2014, then beyond towards a revitalized ministry at the end of this new decade. 2020 Vision does not imply that we can wait until 2020 to sort things out! Far from it, change must begin now and continue as a full and natural part of life for the years ahead.

Now it is up to the Assemblies to each collectively discern God’s will and lead their respective branches in the mission that they decide on.  May the Lord bless them and guide them in this mission.

Update 5/24/10 – Corrected the spelling of Matt Schramm’s name.

An Interesting Section In The Strategic Plan

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At the present time I am in over my head in a whole bunch of report reading so I am not quite prepared to present my analysis of the Strategic Plan from the Presbyterian Church in America .  For a great list of many of the bloggers that have weighed in so far I would suggest a post by Wes on the blog Johannes Weslianus.

Having said that, I will comment that it seems to me the Strategic Plan does a good job of assessing where the PCA is at the present time.  As for what it should do to get where it wants to go, and even maybe even figure out where it wants to go, I have to agree with many of the other reviewers that I am not as positive about those sections.

However, one section in particular struck me for its relevance across multiple Presbyterian branches.  Here is that section with only minor editing to make it generic and I’ll leave it to the reader to filter out a couple of other lines if your branch doesn’t fit that category.  So now, anything in here sound familiar to your situation?

III. IDENTIFYING OUR CHALLENGES

Because the animating values of those in the PCX are so much more diverse than its formal values, the PCX has struggled to maximize its organizational strengths. For example, despite our formal values of connectional polity and cooperative ministry, less than half of the churches of the PCX support any denominational agency or committee (less than 20 percent give at the Partnership Share level). Presbyteries are increasingly perceived as mere credentialing bureaus or discipline courts with little ability to unite members in ministry. The cooperative efforts that do exist are often directed toward affinity gatherings or the ministries of large churches that have become missional expressions of the animating values of specific groups.

This is not to suggest that overall there has been a great deal of cooperative effort. We remain an anti-denominational denomination – excusing individualistic ministry by re-telling the narratives of past abuses in former denominations, demonizing denominational leadership or movements to justify non-support of the larger church, or simply making self-survival or self-fulfillment the consuming goal of local church ministry. In these respects we simply reflect the surrounding secular and religious culture where institutional and organizational commitments have been eroded by the demise of family systems and loss of community identity. These losses are exacerbated by economic and technological changes that simultaneously shrink our world and allow each of us to live in personal isolation or in shrinking, special-interest enclaves. However unique we may feel is our struggling to maintain historical distinctions, ministry continuity and generational cohesion, we actually echo struggles occurring in every major Evangelical denomination. The response of most has been to focus increasingly on their own security, not recognizing that (for denominations as well as local churches) allowing people to focus on themselves inevitably destroys the selflessness that is the church’s lifeblood.

In order for those of us in the PCX to see beyond self-interests and to be willing to work cooperatively despite differences in our animating values, we must have a renewed sense of collective mission. The catalytic power of our founding was fueled by a shared zeal to wrest a Biblical church from mainline corruptions. Differing understandings of what it meant to hold to Reformed distinctions in ministry and mission were either unrecognized or suppressed to support the primary mission of combating liberalism. That mission was compelling enough to unite us in ministry despite our differences. Willingness now to honor our differences while harnessing our shared blessings will again require a sense of being united in a cause that is of similar Biblical consequence.

Such a cause cannot be concocted from marketing schemes or designed to reflect the ministry preferences of a particular branch of our denomination. The cause that is our present calling must be forged from a comprehensive and realistic understanding of the challenges this generation must face in order to live faithfully before God and for his Kingdom. Some of these challenges are external, thrust upon us by dynamics of our history and culture. Other challenges are of our own making and will have to be honestly faced and fairly handled in order for our church to participate meaningfully in God’s purposes.

EPC Report Of The Interim Committee On Women Teaching Elders

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The Evangelical Presbyterian Church has released the Report of the Interim Committee on Women Teaching Elders1 and it is a document that polity wonks will want to have a look at.  It lays out a rational for the EPC to structure itself in light of its motto “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things charity”2 to accommodate the ordination of women in some congregations and presbyteries. Now you may not agree with the committee’s analysis and recommendations, and in fact the report acknowledges that some people won’t when it says:

The interim committee does not advocate running from this potential conflict but heading into it with humility and a conviction that we will honor God by treating one another respectfully. The unique ethos of the EPC on women’s ordination intrinsically implies that not all Presbyterians will be comfortable with our ecclesiastical arrangement.

The report begins with a review of the situation in the EPC.  The first line says “A guiding principle of the EPC from its beginning has been our declared intent to allow liberty on the women’s ordination question.”  The second paragraph sets out the polity basis for this stance:

At the beginning, we must acknowledge the fundamental principles that inform the EPC’s liberty on women’s ordination. The Biblical Principle: The Holy Scriptures are the inspired Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. This authoritative Word is true in all that it teaches. The Ecclesiastical Principle: Women’s ordination is a non-essential issue about which faithful believers may have honest differences of biblical interpretation and practice. One’s view of women’s ordination is not an essential element to the catholic faith, Evangelical Protestantism, or the Reformed Tradition. The EPC has always affirmed that women’s ordination is a matter of biblical interpretation, not biblical authority.

So the committee sets forth at least two important Presbyterian principles here — The primacy of Holy Scripture and the freedom of conscience in the matters of non-essentials.  (Whether this issue falls into the category of essential or non-essential we will return to later.)

Another Presbyterian principle the committee bases their recommendations on is the right and responsibility for electing officers:

“The particular church has the right to elect its own officers” (§BOG 7-2). This right is guaranteed in perpetuity to all churches in the EPC. Similarly, the authority of presbyteries to determine their membership is granted in the constitution.

So given these principles as the doctrinal basis the committee makes three recommendations:
 
1) Reaffirmation of the EPC Position on Women’s Ordination
The committee recommends making the denomination’s stance as set forth in the Position Paper explicit in the constitution :

Recommendation: That BOG §2-2 be amended by adding an excerpt from the EPC Position Paper on the Ordination of Women to the existing statement. The amended BOG §2-2 would read:

The Officers of the Church as set forth in Scripture are: Teaching Elders (designated by many titles in Scripture, including Ministers and Pastors), Ruling Elders, and Deacons. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church does not believe that the issue of the ordination of women is an essential of the faith. Since people of good faith who equally love the Lord and hold to the infallibility of Scripture differ on this issue, and since uniformity of view and practice is not essential to the existence of the visible church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church has chosen to leave this decision to the Spirit-guided consciences of particular congregations concerning the ordination of women as Elders and Deacons, and to the presbyteries concerning the ordination of women as Ministers.

The rational argues that while the Position Paper has functioned as justification of BOG §7-2 “it would be appropriate to insert these succinct excerpts from the Position Paper into the constitution.”  They also point out that there is precedent for doing something like this from when the document Essentials of Our Faith was incorporated into the constitution.

2) Transfer of Congregations to Adjacent Presbyteries for Reasons Regarding Women as Teaching Elders

The interim committee recognizes the tension inherent in our polity regarding the ordination/election of women as Teaching Elders. Basic polity rights can actually compete with one another in presbyteries on this issue. The right of the congregation to elect its officers and the authority of the presbytery to examine persons for a position as Teaching Elder can create conflict. A congregation may elect a woman as a Teaching Elder while a presbytery may decline that call due to the majority interpretation of Scripture on this issue. This creates an obvious tension that we would like to resolve.

The committee goes on to recognize the situation of a congregation transferring into the EPC through the New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery with a female TE in place.  So how does the denomination provide this liberty within the structure of the geographic presbyteries?  The committee writes “We desire to provide freedom for these congregations without compromising the constitutional authority exercised by presbyteries.”

In this section the committee provides only general guidance for changing the BOG not specific wording like Recommendation 1.  For this recommendation part A suggests “In specific cases, for reasons related to the prohibition of the ordination or reception of women as Teaching Elders, a church may petition a geographically adjacent presbytery for membership.”  This would require all the usual approvals that we Presbyterians are familiar with for transferring presbyteries — request by the session with explicit reasons regarding this ordination issue, approval by the receiving presbytery and approval by the dismissing presbytery, both by majority vote.  And the wording of the recommendation is clear that congregations with positions on either side of the issue could request to transfer.

The second part of this recommendation addresses churches entering the denomination through either transitional presbyteries or directly.  The proposal is that the BOG would provide for the church to first consult with the geographic presbytery they would be within and “If, after such consultation, the presbytery discerns the need for relief for the entering congregation on this issue, then it will contact the adjacent geographic presbytery and recommend admission of the church”

3) Immediate Relief for a Presbytery in Conflict
Finally, this committee arose from a specific overture at the last General Assembly by Mid-America Presbytery to permit the Presbytery to act as two parallel presbyteries in the same geographic area.  The committee recommends dividing the Presbytery into two geographic presbyteries roughly along the Mississippi River with the expectation that one would permit ordaining/electing women Teaching Elders.

Discussion:
If you are tracking the debates in the PC(USA) and the PCA over ordination standards you have probably already read this document with one or the other or both of those branches in mind.  Here are my thoughts…

The issue of presbytery membership is the easier one to discuss and for the EPC with their tradition of “local option” the recommended relief seems to make a lot of sense.  I have not analyzed the pattern of presbyteries to see how far a church would have to “reach” to find a compatible presbytery, but one could envision the membership patterns becoming a checker board with fuzzy boundaries between the “yes” and “no” presbyteries.  If this recommendation is adopted it will be interesting to see how much this becomes a point of consideration in the future in forming new presbyteries like it is part of the thinking in Recommendation 3.  In other words, will there be consideration of whether a “permissive” or “restrictive” presbytery is needed in a particular geographic area.

It is interesting to compare this with the proposals coming to the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that call for flexible presbytery membership and an alternate synod structure.  It strikes me that this EPC proposal tries to preserve the geographic nature of presbyteries to the maximum extent possible, something not a prominent in the PC(USA) proposals.

The other issue in this proposal is what is essential, or how ordination standards are “Biblical Principles” and not subject to “honest differences of biblical interpretation.”  The Presbyterian Church in America is clear that the ordained offices of elder and deacon are open only to men based upon the witness of Scripture.  The discussion that is ongoing in that branch is about interpretations and practices that are nibbling around the edges of that doctrine regarding the participation of women as commissioned helpers of deacons.

The situation in the PC(USA) is the opposite and they have inherited a stance from the former United Presbyterian Church that the ordination of women is an essential.  Knowing that this post was in the works, at the very end of my last post I made a cryptic, and probably snarky, comment that referred back to the 1975 General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission decision in the case of Maxwell v. Presbytery of Pittsburgh, now universally known as the Kenyon Decision.  In that case Mr. Walter Wynn Kenyon was denied ordination as a Teaching Elder because he disagreed with the ordination of women.  He was clear about his declared exception and the fact that he would not participate in the ordination of a woman, but he also said he would not hinder someone else doing it.  Pittsburgh Presbytery approved his exception and cleared him for ordination but the Presbytery decision was challenged.   In the end the GAPJC decided:

The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of Scripture, and guided by its confessions, has now developed its understanding of the equality of all people (both male and female) before God. It has expressed this understanding in the Book of Order with such clarity as to make the candidate’s stated position a rejection of its government and discipline.

In the PC(USA) accepting the ordination of women is an essential according to the GAPJC decision.

So what if you read this report and try to imagine it as applying to the PC(USA) and its current controversy which has been cast to be about biblical interpretation of non-essentials and the presbytery’s authority to decide who can be ordained? An ordination standard currently in the Book of Order (G-6.0106b), seen as a “clear mandate” by some , is included in a General Assembly Authoritative Interpretation as something that can be declared by a presbytery as a non-essential.  The overlap and parallel nature of these discussions is striking.

But this discussion in the PC(USA) is not an independent one because it has the shadow of the Kenyon decision cast across it — how is a 1975 decision about what the Book of Order says is essential applicable to the denomination today?  I am not the first to consider this juxtaposition and the Kenyon decision has been cited as one of the reasons for churches leaving the PC(USA) for the PCA and EPC in the 70’s and 80’s over the disagreement of not just the essential itself but over the GA, and not the presbytery, being able to specify that as essential.

On the other hand this new report points to the principle advocated by the recent PC(USA) AI that presbyteries have the right and responsibility for deciding on the suitability of candidates for ordination or election.  Essentially all leadership decisions are to be done under “local option.”  (And again it is noted by some that the Kenyon decision and G-6.0106b properly or improperly raised certain ordination standards to the level of denomination-wide essentials.)

So as I said at the beginning this report crafts a resolution suitable for the “ethos of the EPC,” but a resolution that will not have the concurrence of all Presbyterian polity wonks.  I believe that the committee has done a good job of crafting a solution that fits the circumstances and polity of the EPC.  How the overtures in the PCA and PC(USA) that includes facets of the EPC report recommendations will fare will be interesting to see.  At the present time the EPC model does not fit the polity of these other branches which have some significant internal challenges.  Going forward it will be interesting to see how essentials and non-essentials and unity and liberty are balanced in each of these.  And of course, “In All Things, Charity.”

Footnotes
[1] This link is to a PDF format version I created for easier download. The original is a Word document file available from the EPC web site .
[2] An interesting discussion on the origin of this phrase can be found at http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine/quote.html

Presbyterians — Owning The Label

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An interesting little news article flashed across my news alerts this morning.  If I am not reading too much into the story it is not only interesting but fascinating.

The news site NorthFulton.com reports that “Church of the Hills Changes names.”  The story lede says:

JOHNS CREEK – The Church of the Hills officially changed its name to Johns Creek Presbyterian Church effective Easter Sunday, April 4.

If you read this the same way that I did the first thing that jumps to mind is that a church with a name that evokes the generic community church concept, maybe one that is trying to be “seeker sensitive,” has changed course and is now embracing its Presbyterian roots and membership.  At the present time that seems to be the exception and not the rule.

Now I may be reading way too much into this news story.  But here is a quick run down of what I have found out.  (And since they are changing their name their web site may be changing as well so some of these links might be broken shortly.)  They are a relatively new church in the growing suburbs north of Atlanta and part of the Greater Atlanta Presbytery, PC(USA).  The news story says that the church “follows many local area businesses in adopting the young city’s name” suggesting recent incorporation of Johns Creek.  The story also quotes the interim pastor, The Rev. Chris Price:

“Our new name better assists newcomers and families who are seeking a Presbyterian church in the Johns Creek area and reinforces our commitment to the Johns Creek community,” explains Johns Creek Presbyterian Church’s interim pastor, the Rev. Chris Price. “Our name has changed, but our philosophy has not. We’re looking forward to strengthening our presence in the city of Johns Creek by continuing to offer residents a strong and balanced community-based, spiritual home that provides fellowship, worship, and extensive outreach programs.”

That quote sure seems to indicate they want to increase their brand as being Presbyterian.

From the history of the church on the web site we find out that it was chartered in 1995 with 100 charter members.  The congregational statistics from the PC(USA) show fairly steady growth from 1998 (about 390 members) to 2008 (855 members).  Worship attendance has not grown as much going from 250 to 390 in the same time period.  Nevertheless, it is a growing congregation in the PC(USA).

At the present time the web site is still under the old name and on the web site the church neither promotes nor runs from the “Presbyterian USA” label, as they use it.  As you can see in the church logo to the right the Presbyterian label is smaller but present.  (I don’t normally insert a graphic like this in my articles but with the name change I expect any links to break so I’ve included it this time.)  Reading through the web site references to the PC(USA) by that name are present but scattered and the presbytery involvement in the planting of the church is acknowledged.

In short, I am left to conclude that the while the congregation and/or leadership was previously accepting of the Presbyterian label it appears that they have decided to now raise its visibility in the community.  And this is based on what I could find quickly and read into it, a somewhat dangerous thing to do.  The Presbyterian affiliation may have been more or less visible than I estimate before this.  The affiliation may be more or less than before with the name change.

[This is about to get a bit off-topic but one thing that did strike me is that there may be a bit of a back story to all this.  You thought I was out on a limb so far, let me put one more item on the table.  In another article in NorthFulton.com from almost exactly two years ago there is the announcement that a new pastor had been called to become a co-pastor with the founding pastor of the congregation.  The article also says that the founding pastor is getting ready to retire so it appears they tried to do the “co-pastor pastoral transition” strategy to get around the vacant pulpit and interim like they have now.  Anyway, two years later neither the name of the called pastor nor the name of the founding pastor are now seen in the staff list, and in fact from comparing the pictures it appears that the pastor they called has now landed in Vicksburg.  This is not to cast any aspersions on what may have caused this turnover — I have chaired COM, I know that things like this happen for good reasons.  But I bring this up only to ask, but not answer, the question of whether the name change may also have been directly or indirectly influenced by the staff changes?]

This story is an interesting contrast to another item today, a post by Dave Sarafolean on Joshua Judges Ruth. That post reminded us of a post by Darryl Hart on his blog Old Life Theological Society about a year ago titled “Too Cool For You? Wither The PCA.”  In that piece Mr. Hart talks about the reasons that one conservative Presbyterian branch might have a church plant near an existing church in another conservative branch.  He suggests:

One possible reason for the inability of PCA Philadelphians to recommendCalvary OPC to Presbyterian communicants in the area is that the PCA,even in some of its more traditional sectors, like Tenth, no longercultivates a sense of being Presbyterian. Instead, what appears to drivethe PCA, and has been doing so since roughly 1995 when Tim Keller andRedeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City became such a phenomenon,is exegeting, engaging, and redeeming the culture. (emphasis added)

And another recent example that I have cited is the Oakfield, NY, church.  What began as the First Presbyterian Church of Oakfield became the Oakfield Independent Presbyterian Church and then the congregation reorganized again as the Oakfield Community Bible Church losing its Presbyterian identity.

So in these days of churches downplaying their denominational affiliations if not distancing themselves from them (remember in my neck of the woods the Crystal Cathedral is Reformed Church in America and Saddleback Community Church is Southern Baptist) it is fascinating to see Johns Creek re-engaging the Presbyterian title.

Meetings Of A Presbyterian General Assembly — How Often?

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How often should a Presbyterian General Assembly or General Synod meet?  For a couple of centuries now the answer has generally been annually, but in recent times that pattern has been up for discussion.  It is interesting to note that in the list of Moderators of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on Wikipedia in the early years there are multiple Moderators listed in a given year indicating not just multiple meetings, but multiple Assemblies per year.

The importance of the “how often” question is raised again today as the highlights of the meeting of the Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church in Canada are released.  The Assembly action on an overture to the 133rd General Assembly (2007) asked the Council to consider biennial Assemblies and the Assembly created a task group to study the issue and consult with the other governing bodies.  The Council considered the report which included the responses to a model for biennial Assemblies that was sent to the church for comment.  In general, the church was narrowly in favor of biennial Assemblies with sessions favoring it 54 to 37, presbyteries opposed 11 to 13, and synods and committees were each 2 to 1 in favor.  But it is most interesting to see the commentary on this voting:

It was noted, for example, that there appeared to be a regional divide where courts in Quebec and the Maritimes were overwhelmingly opposed while support strengthened to west. It was also noted that those courts supporting the notion tended to not include reasons for their support while those opposed offered lengthy explanations for their decision.

The report recommended moving to biennial Assemblies but a motion to move that direction in principle failed in the Council vote.  The report tells us  “A new motion recommending that General Assembly ‘affirm the practice of annual assemblies’ was proposed and approved.”

So while the recommendation in response to this overture has been made, as the comment in the Minutes of the 133rd GA (p. 214) tells us, this matter has been before the church “many times in the past.”  As would be expected, the overture itself (p. 519-520) appeals to the time, effort and finances expended on annual Assemblies and the best use of those resources.

(A side note on a topic that I will be considering further in the future:  It is interesting to see that this matter was sent to the lower governing bodies for an advisory vote.  From what I have seen this is a practice that the PCC seems to do on a fairly regular basis but is much rarer in other Presbyterian branches.  One other place in the PCC history that this formal advisory vote is seen is in the early 20th century as the Presbyterians were considering their place in the Union movement and the presbyteries and sessions were consulted on multiple occasions about uniting with other Christian bodies.  In light of this, I find an overture to this year’s  General Assembly of the PC(USA) to require the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy to send proposed statements out to the presbyteries for “study, discussion, and comment” prior to the report to the General Assembly to be in a very similar spirit.)

There is another overture to a General Assembly to consider biennial Assemblies.  This one is to the 38th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America.  Overture 6, from Evangel Presbytery, asks the Assembly “to direct the Administrative Committee to conduct a study for the feasibility of conducting General Assemblies on a bi-annual basis.”

The Whereases do include the usual argument about the amount of time and financial resources it takes to make the Assemblies happen, but that is not the primary argument in this overture.  The principle argument is that with modern communications the Assembly no longer serves the purpose of getting reports out to the Assembly commissioners to take back to the lower governing bodies.  In that task the Assembly is now irrelevant.  But the overture goes on to say that efficient electronic communications has another impact:

Whereas, denominational issues that once were debated on the floor of GA are now resolved and presented in a refined and reasoned manner causing the floor process to lose much energy and interest with commissioners spending considerable time away from the meeting to visit the exhibitions during the presentations of Committees and Agencies; and

Whereas, in addition to declining interest in the conduct of business, travel and lodging expenses have affected GA and attendance during the last five years has declined annually while the ratio of Teaching Elders in attendance has increased and the number of Ruling Elders has declined;

Interesting rational — On the one hand very true but on the other hand this cuts right to the very essence of Presbyterianism.

Functionally, Presbyterian and Reformed polity is distinctive in two regards — joint rule of teaching elders and ruling elders and connectionalism of governing bodies.  This overture essentially says that modern electronic communication is at least changing, if not eroding, the way that both of these principles operate.  It has moved the governing of the church from face-to-face interaction to virtual interaction, reducing the importance of the meetings for the joint deliberations of elders in decision making and eliminating the need for meetings to facilitate the connectional flow of information.

The overture does request regional meetings in years that the Assembly does not meet that would involve…

…contiguous presbyteries to cooperate on an alternate years to join two or three day meetings that can be conducted in churches and smaller venues where travel and lodging are less expensive. During such regional meetings Committees and Agencies can participate with reports and ministries can present displays if so requested and approved by the Administrative Committee.

It will be interesting to see where this goes and the discussion it begins.

Finally, there are a couple of items related to biennial Assemblies coming to the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  The first is the fact that when biennial Assemblies were instituted it was specified that after this year’s Assembly meeting there would be a review of this practice.  The Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy has sent an overture (Overture 49) that would expand the review of the GA from not just the timing but to include…

…considering the form and function of our General Assembly meetings by expanding the action of the 214th General Assembly (2002)… instructing this study committee to consider the whole of the General Assembly meeting in its form and function.

This review is to include, but is not limited to, matters of financial stewardship, the use of alternative forms of discernment, the number of commissioners and advisory delegates as well as the role of advisory delegates, the schedule for moderatorial elections, the environmental impact of assemblies, the frequency of meetings, and models for governance for future generations.

Got all that?  The request is for a complete review, to put anything and everything about how General Assemblies operate on the table.

Another approach is taken by Overture 9 from Presbytery of Foothills.  I discussed this in more detail a while back, but this overture essentially states that the way the PC(USA) does business in the GA hinders our connectionalism and to promote our connectional nature the church should hold a General Convocation “for the purposes of worship, mission celebration, and building up relationships within the Body of Christ” for five years.  In the sixth year the General Assembly would meet to do business.

And in a final related overture, the Presbytery of San Diego notes that one reason for going to biennial Assemblies was to save money, but in changing the meeting pattern the number of commissioners to the Assembly was roughly doubled, not really saving that much money.  They have sent Overture 54 to the 219th General Assembly asking for a change to the Book of Order to restore the number of commissioners to their previous levels.

We are all well aware that in this age of Web 2.0 the technology and pressure is present to make face-to-face meetings unnecessary.  As we balance the use of technology and the stewardship of resources with the questions of how often and in what ways to meet, we also need to be mindful of the implications for our understanding of call, connectionalism, and discerning together in the Covenant Community brought together with Jesus Christ as its Head.

Final PCA SJC Decision In Bordwine v. Pacific Northwest Presbytery

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This past Thursday the General Assembly Standing Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church in America issued their final decision in the case of TE James Bordwine, et al. vs. Pacific Northwest Presbytery.  By a vote of 17 concur, 2 dissent, and 3 absent (with no disqualified, recused or abstaining) the Proposed Decision was affirmed by the full SJC.

This case is regarding the process and conclusions of the investigation and examination of TE Peter Leithart by the Pacific Northwest Presbytery.  (For more details you can check out the enumeration of the facts in the decision or my brief summary when the Proposed Decision came out last December.)  The Commission found:

II. Statement of the Issue

Did PNW err in its handling of the Reports from the PNW Study Committee appointed to examine Leithart’s fitness to continue as a PCA Teaching Elder?

III. Judgment

Yes.  The Complaint is sustained, and the case is sent back to PNW with instructions to proceed according to the Reasoning and Opinion of this Decision.

Then the Reasoning and Opinion Section begins with:

The Record in this matter suggests that there are aspects of the teachings of TE Leithart that are in conflict with our standards.

The section goes on to briefly point out that since a formal disciplinary judicial process had not been carried out in this case the relief requested by the Complainants of declaring his views out of accord could not properly be made.  On the other hand, without the judicial process the Presbytery can not declare that the views are not out of accord.  But there is a strong presumption of guilt, the test for initiating judicial proceedings.

The Decision sets forth a two step process:  1) To counsel TE Leithart concerning his views and to encourage him to either “recant and make reparations for those views,” or “to take timely steps toward affiliation with some other branch of the visible church that is consistent with his views.” 2) Failing one of the outcomes of step 1 to then begin the judicial process.

Having now set out the basic findings of the Decision, I wanted to comment on the significant difference between the Final Decision and last December’s Proposed Decision.  The Final Decision is seven pages long, the Proposed Decision is twenty.  The difference is almost exclusively in the Reasoning and Opinion section.  In the Proposed Decision the SJC wrote an extensive analysis of the documents from the PNW investigation showing where TE Leithart’s views were problematic.  There is none of this in the Final Decision.  In the Final Decision the SJC shortened up their reasoning a bit to simply state that a strong presumption of guilt exists and then leave it to the judicial process, if there will be one, to decently and in order make the decision if the views are out of accord.

The second way that the Final Decision differs from the Proposed Decision is the inclusion of “Step 1.”  In the Proposed Decision the order was to “institute process.”  In the Final Decision the preceding step of non-judicial counsel was added to try to achieve a restorative outcome without the divisiveness the judicial process can bring.

I would also note that the cover letter indicates that the two dissenters to the opinion have not indicated an intent to file a Minority Report so this Decision is final and no decision between a majority and minority report will need to be made by the General Assembly.  (I would also add that there might be a minority opinion floating around out there but not a minority report, and second in my reading of the BCO to send a Minority Report to the GA requires at least one-third of the voting members of the SJC to dissent and the two dissenting votes is far short of that so a minority report would not be appropriate.)

There has been some significant response to the Final Decision including The Aquila Report, R. Scott Clark, and A Profitable Word. But once again I thank TE Jason Stellman at Creed Code Cult for his views on the matter since he is the closest to it, being one of the Complainants.  In addition, I am deeply appreciative of his making the decisions available.  And once again, I leave you with his words about this situation:

Although I do agree with the PCA’s decision (obviously, since I wrote the Minority Report and personally argued the complainants’ case before the SJC panel last Fall), I have absolutely no desire to prosecute a case against a good man and godly scholar simply to prove a point and set legal precedent for other NAPARC churches to follow (which a conviction certainly would do). For the sake of the weak semblance of unity that our Protestant churches have, I would prefer that this case be resolved in some way besides a long, drawn-out (not to mention expensive and time-consuming) court battle. While the confessional side may very well “win” if this thing goes to trial, I can’t help but feel that we’re all losers here. I know I’m supposed to feel a deep sense of satisfaction that, if Rev. Leithart is removed from the PCA, justice has prevailed and the system is shown to have worked, but I just can’t seem to shake the feeling of emptiness—not to mention the bitter taste in my mouth—that this whole process has occasioned.

Upcoming 38th General Assembly Of The PCA — Mid-February Update: Intro and Overtures 1-5

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The 38th General Assembly (2010) of the Presbyterian Church in America will convene in Nashville, Tenn., on June 29th.  The PCA is getting ready with the announcement of their 50 Days of Prayer for the General Assembly devotional, this year to focus on the Sermon on the Mount.  The web page for the Assembly is up (although sized a bit larger than I usually keep my monitors) with a link for registration and the overtures page.  There is no docket yet but the schedule is posted.

The theme for the Assembly is “Love, Sing, Wonder.” As the Organizing Committee web site explains, this is taken from the first line of a hymn written in 1774 by John Newton, “Let us love and sing and wonder.”  And these are words which have found a new audience in a contemporary musical arrangement.

There are currently five overtures posted:

Overture 1: “Ministry to Seniors” from New Jersey Presbytery.  This overture seeks to affirm and encourage both ministry to seniors as well as ministry by seniors.  It asks for five things: 1) Commending the Christian Education and Publications Committee (CEPC) for their good and ongoing work in this area. 2) And while commending them request their continued work in the area and this work be included in their reports to future GA’s and (3) that it be sure to include the Biblical importance of ministry by seniors as well as ministry to them.  4) That the Sunday following Labor Day be designated “Seniors’ Sunday” and (5) that the CEPC help promote the special Sunday and consider a week-long special event, as appropriate.

On the one hand the second Sunday in September has now become “Grandparents’ Day” in our secular society and this presents a way to turn that to the Lord’s purposes and recognize the wide variety of contributions made by seniors, not just their being grandparents.  On the other hand, how often are we to find special purposes for the Lord’s Day beyond the regular worship of God.  Are other Sundays throughout the year held up by the PCA for special recognitions like this?  For a strong argument against the hybridization of Sundays for purposes like this I suggest reading Andrew’s comments on Overture 1 at A Profitable Word. 

Overture 2:  “Amend BCO 9-7 to Prohibit Deaconesses” from Central Carolina Presbytery.  This overture asks the Assembly to send to the presbyteries an amendment to the Book of Church Order section 9-7 which would append to the end of that section about deacons’ assistants the following line for clarification:

These assistants to the deacons shall not be referred to as deacons or deaconesses, nor are they to be elected by the congregation nor formally commissioned, ordained, or installed as though they were office bearers in the church.

I don’t think it is news to any of my readers that this is currently a hotly-debated subject in the PCA and this is probably only the first of several overtures on both sides of this discussion.  Once all the overtures are in and we know the lay of the land I may have more to say.  In the mean time you can check out my comments about this overture (as part of a related discussion) from earlier this month and Kevin’s exhaustive analysis of the overture and broader situation over at A Profitable Word.

Overture 3:  “Expand Boundaries of Pacific Northwest Presbytery” from the Pacific Northwest Presbytery.  This overture asks the Assembly to approve the expansion of the Pacific Northwest Presbytery to encompass all areas of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska where there are PCA churches not yet within the bounds of a presbytery.  Specifically,

Therefore, the Presbytery of the Pacific Northwest overtures the 38th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America to expand the borders of the Presbytery to include the entirety of the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

First, where is the Presbytery now?  The Presbyteries web page tells us “All of Washington west of and including the counties of Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish, King, Pierce, Lewis and Skamania.”  According to the church directory page there are 24 PCA churches in the State of Washington, 19 in Pacific Northwest, three in Korean Northwest, and two in Korean Southwest Presbytery.  The directory also tells us that there is one church in Alaska, seven in Oregon (one of those in Korean Northwest), and one in Idaho.  Interestingly the directory associates all those churches with Pacific Northwest, if not already with Korean Northwest, even though this overture asks to formally expand the borders to include them.

In order to fully appreciate this overture it is also helpful to have a look at the Guidelines for Dividing Presbyteries since certain of the language in the overture’s whereases is referential to that document.  This document not only concerns dividing presbyteries but presents what are considered preferred parameters for a presbytery.  The first nine of the twelve considerations are:

  1. A radius of 2 1/2 hours maximum driving distance
  2. A minimum of 10 churches
  3. A total communicant membership of at least 1000
  4. Presbytery boundaries should not partition metropolitan areas
  5. A presbytery should have regional cohesiveness
  6. A presbytery should have at least three churches each having a membership of at least 125 communicant members
  7. Presbytery boundaries should be such that its member churches have a potential for shared ministries
  8. Presbytery boundaries should be such that its member churches have a common commitment to the region within the boundaries and sense their shared responsibility to cover the region with the Gospel
  9. When a presbytery reaches 30 churches it should consider whether subdivision would lead to more effective ministry

So where does this put the expanded Pacific Northwest?  It will clearly be larger than ideal in driving distance but with on
ly one church in Alaska there is not much that can be done there.  Yet even the Washington/Oregon/Idaho churches will be too far apart for that to be reasonable.  The expanded presbytery will have 27 churches, well more than the minimum and approaching the suggested upper limit.  Beyond that, without some more research I can not speak for the membership or church sizes but the expanded presbytery would probably still have the regional cohesiveness and potential for shared ministries.

In short, because of the distances involved and the potential situation of lots of churches in sparsely populated areas I can understand the objective of one large presbytery with many congregations.  However, under the established guidelines I would hope some study would be done to see if two presbyteries would provide a better arrangement “to cover the region with the Gospel.”

Overture 4: “Revise Boundary of Central Georgia Presbytery” from Central Georgia Presbytery.  This one is short and sweet – Central Georgia and Savannah River Presbyteries both agree that two counties now in Savannah River would be better served for spreading the Gospel if they were in Central Georgia.  A concurring overture from Savannah River Presbytery would be expected.

Overture 5:  “Amend BCO 26-2 to Clarify How Non-binding Sections of the BCO May Be Amended.” from Covenant Presbytery.  The requested change to the Book of Church Order reads:

Therefore be it resolved that BCO 26-2 be amended as follows (new text in bold and underlined):
26-2. Amendments to any portion of the Book of Church Order, whether constitutionally binding or not, may be made only in the following manner:

  1. Approval of the proposed amendment by majority of those present and voting in the General Assembly, and its recommendation to the Presbyteries.
  2. The advice and consent of two-thirds (2/3) of the Presbyteries.
  3. The approval and enactment by a subsequent General Assembly by a majority of those present and voting.

This seems straight forward, but let’s unpack this a little bit — The PCA Book of Church Order has binding and non-binding parts, as this overture recognizes.  The problem that arose was that the previous GA interpreted the BCO such that they went ahead and amended non-binding parts by themselves without sending the changes to the presbyteries for their concurrence.

So now we have this overture which provides a catalyst for interesting thought and discussion among polity wonks.  The issues involved touch on the intersection of two parts of Presbyterian polity: 1) When does a General Assembly action requires concurrence of the presbyteries, and 2) in what cases and to what degree the constitutional language is binding.

On the first question there are two general models.  The first are branches that require presbytery concurrence any time the constitutional language is to be changed.  This would include most American Presbyterian branches that have a Book of Church Order or Book of Order that has constitutional authority.  In this case for the PCA this overture requests to make it clear that this is the case for their BCO.

The other approach to requiring presbytery concurrence is usually referred to as a Barrier Act and is seen throughout much of the rest of the world including Scotland, Canada and New Zealand.  Part of the Church of Scotland Barrier Act says:

…that General Assemblies be very deliberate in making of the [Acts of Assembly], and that the whole Church have a previous knowledge thereof, and their opinion be had therein, and for preventing any sudden alteration or innovation, or other prejudice to the Church, in either doctrine or worship, or discipline, or government thereof, now happily established;

So the areas that an Assembly must seek the concurrence of the “whole Church” are “doctrine or worship, or discipline,” or ecclesiastical government.  In general, these branches have a collection of Acts of Assembly instead of a Book of Order and the Barrier Act is applied in an Assembly to specific acts that involve the four “core” areas.  But rules here are not hard and fast — the Presbyterian Church in Canada has the whole collection with the Barrier Act, Acts of Assembly, and the Book of Forms. And the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand has a Book of Order but has marked those sections subject to the “special legislative procedure,” which is their term for needing the concurrence of the presbyteries.

The second question that this overture touches on are what parts of our Presbyterian polity are binding and which are not.  For the PCA BCO this is clearly stated in the head note to the Directory for Worship:

Temporary statement adopted by the Third General Assembly to preface the Directory for Worship: The Directory for Worship is an approved guide and should be taken seriously as the mind of the Church agreeable to the Standards. However, it does not have the force of law and is not to be considered obligatory in all its parts. BCO 56, 57 and 58 have been given full constitutional authority by the Eleventh General Assembly after being submitted to the Presbyteries and receiving the necessary two-thirds (2/3) approval of the Presbyteries.

Those three specified sections that have full constitutional authority are ones dealing with the sacraments.

(This raises three slightly-related, and possibly frivolous, questions — 1) This preface uses “obligatory” and the overture uses “binding.” Should they be harmonized? 2) Is a “temporary statement” from 35 GA’s ago still truly a temporary statement.  (I have to laugh because my church got away with a building with a temporary use permit for about that long.) 3) Since this preface is in the Directory for Worship but not in one of the specified sections, is it not obligatory itself?  (I told you this was going to get frivolous.))

One of the reasons I do bring up that last frivolous statement is because there is a case on appeal in the PC(USA) regarding the binding nature of their Directory for Worship.  The PC(USA) uses terminology rather than itemization to determine what is obligatory and the preface to the whole Book of Order lays this out:

In this Book of Order
(1) SHALL and IS TO BE/ARE TO BE signify practice that is mandated,
(2) SHOULD signifies practice that is strongly recommended,
(3) IS APPROPRIATE signifies practice that is commended as suitable,
(4) MAY signifies practice that is permissible but not required.
(5) ADVISORY HANDBOOK signifies a handbo
ok produced by agencies of the General Assembly to guide synods and presbyteries in procedures related to the oversight of ministry. Such handbooks suggest procedures that are commended, but not required.

And as we saw in the Presbytery PJC decision in the Southard case there is disagreement over the role of the Directory for Worship and the authority of any specific paragraph if it does not contain one of these prescriptive words.  That will be settled by further judicial review.

So, getting back to the overture at hand — In the model of Presbyterians who operate with a Barrier Act, there is a tradition and logic to the interpretation last year that changing sections that are not “core” and obligatory need not have the concurrence of the presbyteries.  However, this overture would make the language clear, and hold it in line with American Presbyterian tradition, that if language in a constitutional document is to be changed it must be sent to the presbyteries for approval.

Now, I have used this overture as a platform to launch into a discussion of a couple related, but not necessarily germane, topics.  For a more focused discussion I again point you to A Profitable Word where Andrew has a post mostly discussing Overture 5, but touching on 3 and 4 as well.

(And I should say, in case you have not figured it out by now, that the blog A Profitable Word is a relatively new blog written by a team of four polity-knowledgeable elders from the PCA who know the PCA history, nuance and back-story to their polity better than I do.  A good blog for polity wonks to keep an eye on.)

So there is the start to this General Assembly business.  We know that more waits in the wings and I will return to that in a future post.  Stay tuned.

Leadership In Presbyterian Government — Do We Have A Name For That?

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Those of you who track “Presbyterian” on Twitter know that the twitterverse came alive yesterday afternoon with retweets of a message from @Presbyterian that said:

“Clergy” and “laity” are not Presbyterian terminology: http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2010/10108.htm

The URL links back to a Presbyterian News Service article titled “Collegial leadership: Joe Small says clergy and laity are not Presbyterian terminology“

There is much to like in this article and I agree with nearly all of it and I think anyone in any Presbyterian branch would agree as well.  The article is based on a talk that the Rev. Joseph Small, director of the PC(USA) Office of Theology and Worship,  gave in Minnesota at a Synod of Lakes and Prairies training event to presbyters serving on the Committees on Ministry and Preparation for Ministry.  I can only say that I am sorry we only got the summary and not the full text.

I would first emphasize that he highlights a problem with words that I commented on about a month ago.  In that case the narrative of the latest Presbyterian Panel report identified “elders” as “lay leaders.”  From the sound of Rev. Small’s comments he was clearly not involved in writing that paragraph.  I came at that issue from the point of view of pastors/clergy and elders sharing equally in the governance of the church and ruling elders, in my understanding, do not equate to laity.  In this article the Rev. Small seems to clearly agree, speaking of ordained officers (teaching elders, ruling elders, and deacons) being “genuine colleagues in ministry.”

This article highlights what should be our appropriate use of certain terms.  At this point I should probably confess my regular use of the term “clergy” in my writing.  I’ll keep pondering this to see if I want a style change.  My intent is not to use the term “clergy” in opposition to “lay” but to have a nice short word for that category.  In the PC(USA) the appropriate phrase is usually “Minister of Word and Sacrament” but both for length and variety I try to switch up the terms.  I try to avoid shortening that phrase to  “minister” since, as Rev. Small points out, all officers are involved in ministry and therefore are ministers.  The preferable shorter phrase is “teaching elder,” a phrase I like and use regularly.  And in other Presbyterian branches the initials TE are regularly used and understood for this making a nice shorthand.  Maybe I should use it more — and it comes endorsed by Rev. Small, the article saying that he favors the use of “ruling elder” and “teaching elder.”  Sometimes the logical term, and one that is used in this article, is “pastor.”  In my usage, I try to not use this term unless I am specifically referring to a teaching elder who is working in a congregational setting.  In the PC(USA) this is an important distinction because according to the 2008 breakdown of the “Active Ministers” [sic] of the 13,462 recorded as active I would count 9176 of them as being in a congregational setting leaving almost one-third (31.9%) in other ministries.  With that large a number not doing traditional pastoral work I tend to avoid using the word “pastor” unless I specifically mean someone working in a congregation.  (It also comes with the complexity of having Commissioned Lay Pastors who are not Ministers of Word and Sacrament but still doing pastoral work in congregations.)

So that is the collection of terms that we can use to refer to teaching elders depending on setting and space.  Now that TE Small has brought this to the attention of the PC(USA) I am looking forward to a standardization of usage across the denominational publications.

One additional comment in this article struck me and I would like to comment on it.  At one point in the article there is the line:

[Small] said, deacons are called to “leading the whole church in the ministry of compassion and justice.”

For those following the current discussions about the role of women in deacon ministry in the PCA you know that the discussion going on right this moment is about just that.  Is the role of deacon a ministry of service only or a ministry of leadership in service?  Specifically, can women served as commissioned assistants to the board of deacons?  On the one hand, the Bayly Blog brings us word of a proposed overture from Metro Atlanta Presbytery to the GA that would add the following line to the section on deacons [9-7] in the Book of Church Order:

These assistants to the deacons, selected by means determined by each Session, may be commissioned, but not ordained.

Within the rational section the writers of the overture say:

WHEREAS, the diaconal ministry is that of sympathy and service, not of spiritual and ecclesiastical governance, and any authority that may be attached to the office of deacon is a derivative authority, with plurality of elders serving as the final authority in a local church(BCO 9-1; 9-2; 9-6);

On the other side is an overture from Central Carolina Presbytery that wants to make it clear that “commissioned” deacons and deaconesses are not acceptable under the BCO by adding at the same place the line:

These assistants to the deacons shall not be referred to as deacons or deaconesses, nor are they to be elected by the congregation nor formally commissioned, ordained, or installed as though they were office bearers in the church.

I will consider the overtures to the GA at a later time but in light of this discussion it seems that TE Small’s comments seem to support the role of deacons as one of leadership as well as service.  You can check out the post on the Bayly Blog for their critique of the Metro Atlanta Presbytery proposed overture.  I have not yet seen a discussion of the Central Carolina overture, but if anyone is going to get to it before I have the time it will probably be the great polity wonks over at A Profitable Word.

It is interesting that while we complain about the mainstream media not understanding our system of polity, frequently we are not as clear and consistent ourselves and among ourselves using some of these terms.  Something to keep in mind.