Dear Members of the Mid Councils Commission;
     I would like to thank you for the time, effort and sacrifice in your service on this important Commission. Having served on a GA special committee myself I know that the task is not easy. I appreciate the long hours you have all put in, the time away from friends and family, the time of prayer and reflection in your discernment process and the testing of the values and beliefs you brought to this work – all the while working under the pressure of an unforgiving deadline. And maybe the greatest pressure is that once you complete your report it no longer belongs to you – rather it is a gift to the greater church and to the General Assembly in particular. As I previously wrote in this space, I considered the business around your work to be the most important business the Assembly would have to deal with this year.

    And what is more, it is all this while sitting in a fishbowl with media watching your every move and the denomination expectantly waiting for your decisions that will help save us from our division and decline.

   Having served on a similar committee I know some of what you have gone through and having watched your report at General Assembly, both in committee and plenary, I am concerned that your gift to the church could have been better utilized. I was hoping that the Assembly would be more open to change – maybe not specifically what you were suggesting but at least that the issues you pointed out in your report would be thoughtfully discussed and that your recommendations would provide at least a catalyst if not a framework. Walking away from the Assembly I really felt like your fellow commission member John Vest did when he wrote:

But in committee and on the plenary floor, what I heard most was what I
feared the most: passionate pleas based on predetermined opinions about
synods and non-geographic presbyteries. I don’t think I ever heard a
commissioner talk about the post-Christendom realities we find ourselves
in and how our recommendations might or might not address them.

    Let me be clear at this point that I appreciate the hard work and dedication of each and every member of the Commission. But there are four of your number I do wish to specifically thank for being the public face of the Commission to me.

   The first has to be the Commission Moderator Tod Bolsinger. Tod, from the very start, and I really mean from the very start, you have been a tireless cheerleader for this work. From your appearances at events in our synod to your blogging, videos, Twitter and Facebook, I don’t know how you could have made the work of the Commission more transparent and accessible. And in your work guiding the Commission and presenting at GA you presented with clarity, honesty and integrity. For the multitude of hours that this consumed I deeply thank you.

   The second face of the Commission for me was John Vest. I can not say enough good things about the honesty and unreserved nature with which you spoke on your blog. In particular, you earned a lot of respect from me for your great discussion about changing your mind about provisional experimental non-geographic presbyteries. John, my deepest thanks for putting so much on-line, and on the line, in working with this Commission.

    The other two members of the Commission might be surprised to see their names here, but they were no less important to me in helping me understand the Commission’s work.  So to Jane Smith, thanks for being there at so many of our Synod events to give us updates, insights and interpretations of the Commission’s work. And to Miriam Dolin, thank you for doing much the same thing on Twitter. I like to hear a multitude of voices and yours was a particularly clear and insightful one in the whole Commission process. (exempli gratia: So…just for the record, I actually am not a fan of non-geo
presbyteries, but I am a fan of conversation, creativity and progress. ‪)

    And to all the other members of the Commission, I am sure all of you were similar friendly and helpful faces to your various constituencies and I thank you for that work.

    So to all the Commission members, I thank you for your time and dedication. Committees and commissions may seem like a crazy way to do our ecclesiastical work, but we have to trust that it is though the discernment of groups of us actively seeking God’s will and direction that we make the best possible decisions.

   Having just said that it is with a certain amount of irony that I again point out that in my reading of the situation I find it hard to believe that the General Assembly made the best possible use of the gift you gave to them. But the Assembly has done their work and has spoken on this subject — the report now belongs to them.  They too were seeking discernment for the whole church in their deliberations and discussions. We trust in God’s Providence and the work of the Holy Spirit in these matters.  Some of your recommendations continue to move forward in modified form, and your full report with your great volume of collected data is available for us to pour over and drill down into. I hope that others make good use of what you have given us. (And to the web spirits at PC(USA) – please make sure it is available and easy to find for some time to come.)
  
   It is with great respect and sincere appreciation that I thank all of you for your hard work. May you know the depths of our thanks and may God’s blessings be upon you all.

Sincerely
Steve Salyards