[No, this is not about the questions arising from the differences in the official vote count on nFOG and the unofficial tallies.  (The official tally for this week is posted and the OGA has the count at 45-32 while the unofficial “word on the street” is 24-35.)]

This post is about my experience the last three days with the discernment process around approving a New Form of Government (nFOG) section of the Book of Order that is currently being voted upon by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) presbyteries.  But it seems that this amendment has left many people conflicted or confused.  And it seems that it is hard to work up any enthusiasm for or against this major change in polity.

As part of the discernment process for my presbytery the group planning the presbytery meeting where the Belhar Confession and the New Form of Government would be voted upon asked two individuals to be resource people for each of these issues.  Each of them had served on the committee (Belhar) or task force (nFOG) for that issue.  Unfortunately, the nFOG specialist was not available yesterday and I guess I got the call as the second choice.  So my job at the presbytery meeting was to give a pre-presbytery presentation on nFOG, a brief intro to the debate, and to answer questions during debate.  In agreeing to the request I did make it clear to the planners that they were not getting an nFOG advocate but a polity junkie who would try to give a fair and balanced presentation.  What I got out of it was a better understanding of nFOG myself, and a fascinating insight into the nFOG discernment in my congregation and presbytery.  So here it is as a story in three scenes.

Scene 1
I have the advantage that I have been following the progress of the New Form of Government since the task force was created over four years ago, so I know the history.  I have read, but not studied in detail, a lot of the material that is out there concerning nFOG.  And I have previously heard presentations at least five times by members of the task force, including the member who was not able to make it yesterday.  But that really only covers the history, charge, and over-arching view of the product — what about the details?

I set about to look more closely at the details of nFOG by first visiting the official documents.  The amendment as printed by the Office of the General Assembly runs 46 pages. (The booklet itself also contains an Advisory Handbook bringing the total length to 58 pages.)  There is also an eight page insert that provides some background material and a study guide.  That insert has a list of six additional printed resources and a link to a 21 slide PowerPoint presentation explaining the proposal.  All total, that comes to 352 pages of material.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!  If that is not enough for you there are many additional nFOG resources floating around out there.  The most useful, and what I drew heavily from, is the regular analysis from the Association of Stated Clerks.  There is also a blog by the nFOG task force folks.  Most of the rest of the resources are from advocacy groups promoting one side or the other and most of those promoting a negative vote.  I won’t go into detail, and I have not made any attempt to add up the pages, but if you are interested I’m sure the best list of all these items is over at GAHelp.  And if you want one more, I have a one-sheet, front and back, nFOG Summary I used for my presentation yesterday.

The point of all this is that there is plenty of material out there about nFOG, and arguments for and against, for your reading pleasure.  For me, the challenge was to figure out what to pack into a 45 minute discussion and then a 15 minute presentation.

Scene 2
My pastor, seeing that I was doing the presbytery presentation, invited me to present to our church’s Session on Sunday.  I welcomed the opportunity to not only educate them, but to practice my presentation.  It turned into a bit of a “focus group” experience for me.

I had my prepared materials and went through my presentation and at the end one of the elders commented “this is just as murky as before.”  Message or messenger?

Well we talked about nFOG for a while and in the end it was probably a bit of both that was causing the murkiness.  Specifically, for our elder commissioners to presbytery, I recommended the GAHelp site and they were going to check it out to prepare themselves for the discussion.

Scene 3
With the help of the focus group behind me I threw out my first presentation and handout and started over to try to construct a more helpful one.  It must have been successful because I got good feedback from members of presbytery about it.  But what I also got was a lot of feedback about how people were feeling about nFOG.  I spoke with almost no one who had strong feelings about it but rather they were leaning one way or the other but said they were still uncommitted.  And this was across the demographic spectrum – it included teaching elders and ruling elders of different ages, levels of experience and theological leaning.  In fact, in the debate on the floor of presbytery there was no debate – there was one speaker against who made some claims, another speaker who then asked the question whether what the previous speaker had said was really correct because that was not his understanding, I got called on to answer the question, and debate was over — no one else rose to speak.  In the last three days I have had contact with no one in my church or presbytery who expressed strong feelings either way about nFOG except the one speaker who seems to have been working with incomplete information.  (For the record, I am pretty sure that several commissioners attending my presentation had firm opinions on nFOG but did not express them in that session or later in debate.  Also, again for the record, the lack of debate could also get back to my rule of thumb that a governing body has in it “one good debate per session” and the body had already had that debate on Belhar.)

Some observations
So what do I gather from this little drama in three scenes?  First, that there is too much material out there about nFOG and it results in sensory overload.  OK, let me rephrase that – while it is good and useful to have the 352 pages of official material available for someone thoroughly studying the dynamics and implications of the New Form of Government, how that material gets presented needs to be carefully considered.  One approach would be to have tiers – general information on the first tier, more specific resources on the second, and the comparison charts (all 268 pages) and other very detailed material on the third tier.  As it is now, they are all listed together with no guide for the uninitiated as to what to read first.

But the corollary to this is the fact that when these issues are sent out to the congregations and presbyteries for study, it is my experience that we usually pass up the opportunity.  (Anyone out there studying the Marriage Report I helped write and put so much time, effort and sleepless nights into?)  As faithful teaching and ruling elders we need to be aware of these items the GA wants us to study and encourage each other to do so.  This is especially true when we will have to vote on making them part of the church constitution.

Second, the nFOG in and of itself is too long to be easily considered in one fell swoop.  Yes, it is easier from a polity standpoint to just do a rewrite of the whole thing rather than work with a hybrid document as it is revised in bite-size pieces.  But we did the hybrid thing with current Chapter 14, maybe it would work for the rest of the book.  And based on the “deer in the headlights” looks I saw in my presentation when we started talking about the work of producing the operating manuals, taking those incrementally as well might make the task seem easier.

Finally, there is a great deal of mixed feelings about the nFOG.  Many of the people I have talked with understand the goal of flexibility and concept of returning the Book of Order to a constitutional document by removing the operational details.  But many experienced elders I have talked with in the last three days, both ruling and teaching, know how much our polity hinges on a few words here or a sentence there.  That is the stuff that Authoritative Interpretations and GAPJC decisions are made of.  To lose some of those, particularly the one due process section, raises concern in this experienced cadre.  For both experienced and inexperienced elders I really sensed that they were looking at the “risk/reward” balance and it was pretty even – the rewards did not outweigh the risks by much if anything.  I can also say that I had input from very few that saw this as an ideological issue or that saw it as change for change’s sake.  There was a real and profound sense that everyone was deliberately weighing the pros and cons of the text itself and actively seeking God’s will in this matter.

A couple of additional observations:
1. It might be reasonable to take some of these observations and experiences and look at the Presbyterian Church in America and the defeat of the Administrative Committee’s funding initiative in the same light.  While that change to the Book of Church Order was much shorter, only two specific sections, it struck me that it had the same sort of “sensory overload” as large amounts of official material, including the video, were unloaded on the church to “help” them make a decision.  Similarly, there was a large amount of unofficial chatter about the amendments. Were these resources truly helpful or did they add to the sense of confusion and being overwhelmed?

2. On the nFOG vote the commissioners in my presbytery were not alone in being undecided or looking for strong reasons one way or the other.  Last week there was an interesting exchange when John Shuck in advance of the Holston Presbytery meeting asked on his blog “Should I Vote for the New Form of Government?”  He expressed an undecided position and lack of strong reasons in support of the document,  sentiments that were similar to what I heard from commissioners in my presbytery.  Mr. Shuck admits in the first paragraph “I really don’t see myself having a horse in this race.”  In terms of arguments either way, one of them is “I know the LayMAN and the various true
believers and biblical reclaimers are against it. That would give me
reason to vote in favor, but admittedly not much of a reason.”  After the vote he tweeted “Holston Presbytery approved nFOG. I ended up voting in favor. Time
for a new thing…”  Change for changes sake?

So this was an interesting experience with the New Form of Government.  I don’t know if it will be approved and therefore it will be over and dealt with, or if the presbyteries will not concur and another rewrite may be back for another round in the future.  But whether it is this issue, or another large and complex one, we as a denomination need to think carefully about what will happen to it after it leaves the General Assembly and how it is presented to the presbyteries so they are best positioned to be able deliberate, discuss, debate and discern the issue.

Oh, how did it turn out?  San Gabriel Presbytery did not concur with nFOG by a 47 to 99 vote.  They approved of the Belhar Confession by a 79 to 66 margin.  Each vote had one abstention.