Well, the Moderators have done their job and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has their Special Commission on Middle Governing Bodies.  There are 21 members of the commission and they look like a good bunch.  I know a couple of the members well and they are good choices for this work.  My prayers and best wishes are with all of you as you begin your work in two weeks.

This commission commencing its work, and the analysis I did last week, got me thinking about middle governing bodies and Presbyterian structure.  In particular I started wondering further about the size of presbyteries and where the PC(USA) falls in the spectrum.

After looking at some numbers I thought it would be a worthwhile thought exercise to consider the following option for reorganizing the PC(USA):

Oh, gosh, yes, this is counter-cultural and possibly counter-intuitive. The current thinking around the church is that with our declining membership we need to adjust our structure accordingly, combining presbyteries to keep them sustainable and eliminating parts of our structure. But this is only a thought experiment so stick with me for a few minutes.

What started me on this path were the following data.  Consider the following Presbyterian branches and their average presbytery sizes:

	Churches	Presbyteries	Churches/Presbytery
PC(USA)	10,657	173	61.6
PC Taiwan	1208	20	60.4
PCA	1740	79	22.0
EPC	298	10	29.8
PC Canada	952	45	21.2
Church of Scotland	1200	43	27.9
PC Ireland	550	19	28.9
Historic
PCUSA Synod of New York 1888	822	29	28.3

Now I don’t know if these data got your attention, but obviously they got me thinking.  At the present time the PC(USA) has presbyteries that are on average a bit more than twice as large as these other branches and as they have been historically.  That is not to say that these other branches have uniform size presbyteries — Edinburgh Presbytery has 81 congregations and in 1888 the Presbytery of New York had 52 churches.  But today the largest PC(USA) presbytery is Coastal Carolina with 188 churches, and there are twenty more larger than 100 churches.  The smallest current presbyteries in the PC(USA) are San Juan and Cimarron with 14 churches and there are five more with less than 20.

So if smaller presbyteries are more of the norm, what if the PC(USA) were to reorganize so that it has lots more smaller presbyteries?  If we chose a target average of 25 churches per presbytery that would mean about 426 presbyteries in the denomination.  (Yes, I just saw a bunch of you flinch.)

Now I have no idea if this is a worthwhile thing to do — after all, the discussion on all levels has been to combine smaller presbyteries to make them sustainable.  But let me continue this thought experiment for a few more minutes to explore the implications.

It is interesting to note how the PC(USA) and its predecessor branches got here.  Finding the 1888 records was in some ways providential because, as the report of the Special Committee on the Nature of the Church and the Practice of Governance, approved by the 205th General Assembly (1993), tells us (p. 18):

Until the late nineteenth century, the denomination was “a ‘constitutional confederacy’ of congregations loosely connected by relatively weak institutional structures and a broadly defined constitution.”

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the church became a corporate denomination.

It goes on to clarify that the “corporate denomination” is not necessarily a negative because it could deliver goods and services to congregations and devote resources to mission causes.  But then in the mid-1970’s there was a decentralization of the corporate structure (p. 22):

Twenty years ago [1973] major reorganizations took place in the predecessor denominations of the PC(USA). A basic principle of reorganization was that mission was done best by the governing body closest to the area of mission.
…
In the UPCUSA, this reorganization led to the development of large regional synods where there had been smaller synods generally following state boundaries. Presbyteries and synods had full-time executives and offices… Presbyteries and synods linked sessions and congregations with the General Assembly. The UPCUSA saw this interrelatedness as program and polity, demonstrating the oneness of the church.

This is the background to how the PC(USA) got to its current structure.  Now, this thought experiment is about changing the structure but I do not fully discuss how much the underlying model on which the current structure is based would need to be changed to fit the new model.  Probably the model would need to be changed, but maybe not.

As I said earlier, the conventional wisdom in the PC(USA) right now seems to be that we need to find combinations of presbyteries to keep them sustainable as they loose members and resources.  But what is it about the institution we need to sustain?  The word that keeps flying around the PC(USA) right now, and what the new Form of Government is supposed to encourage, is to be missional.  We also keep hearing that we should not be stuck in the old ways but to find new and innovative ways of doing things.  With that in mind let’s consider what a structure loaded with small presbyteries would bring.

The benefits of the smaller presbytery model that I see are that they are more flexible and potentially more connectional among the member congregations.  For some presbyteries there would be no change — they are already in the target range.  For others, particularly in metropolitan areas, there would be significant reorganization.  Maybe San Francisco would remain unchanged (78 churches) but presbyteries over 80 (arbitrarily chosen from the size of Edinburgh) would be divided so Greater Atlanta and National Capital would each be divided into two presbyteries with slightly more than 50 congregations in each one.  Something like this is done in Toronto by the PC Canada where they have an East Toronto and West Toronto Presbytery with 23 churches.  It would seem that with a smaller more compact presbytery groups could meet more frequently, there would be less business so meetings could include a greater part of education, fellowship or visioning, and the smaller size would help make them more attuned, flexible, and responsive to local needs.  In other words — less business, more focus, more flexibility in addressing mission needs.  Isn’t that what the nFOG is supposed to be all about?

There are a number of issues I could see going either way depending on your perspective.  One of these is the institutional infrastructure.  On the one hand there are presbyteries in the target size range now that sustain their paid staffing needs beyond the stated clerk.  On the other hand, this suggestion is partly modeled on the way that the PCUSA was before it became a “corporate church” so paid support and resource staff at the presbytery level beyond the stated clerk may not necessarily be a desired part of the new structure.

Another issue that could  be subjective regarding the benefits and outcome is whether this would decrease connectionalism between middle governing bodies.  The structure back in 1888 was described as a “constitutional confederacy.”  Depending on your ideas for the PC(USA) and what your goals for the new structure are, that looser affiliation could be viewed as either a positive or a negative.

The issues on the negative side are significant as well.  With 426 presbyteries there would be an increase in the ecclesiastical review necessary, including records review and polity consultation.  One would expect the number of judicial cases to remain constant.

OK, that is where my thought experiment brings me and I have to admit I’m not entirely sure I like it in that form.  I did not address synods and for today let me simply say that something like synods would be needed in this model for a variety of reasons, including the fact that judicial and records review for 426 presbyteries would overwhelm the General Assembly.  There could be the same number of synods, there could be more – I don’t think that part of it is important right at the moment.

Now the discussion currently circulating in the wider church is about what the appropriate size of a presbytery should be so that it is sustainable.  Let me ask it a different way – What is the appropriate size to be able to conduct the necessary mission?  Remember, mission is to be done by the governing body closest to the mission.  I am more than ready to acknowledge that a presbytery of 25 churches could be too small to carry out the mission needs they see in a region.  What about a larger grouping?

Let me suggest another grouping here — for the sake of this discussion let’s call it a “district.” (FYI – districts are a perfectly good Presbyterian concept for non-governing body groupings, although some branches use it for subdivisions within a presbytery and some use it for groupings of presbyteries.)

The district would not be a governing body, no commissioners would be sent to it, it would have none of the powers or responsibilities of a governing body.  A district would exist for the purpose of presbyteries mutually coming together to conduct mission or other business that requires a scale larger than a presbytery but smaller than a synod.  Groupings like this already operate, such as the Sierra Mission Partnership between three presbyteries in California and Nevada.

Beyond that I really wouldn’t specify anything for a district.  Maybe it would be a formal division, such as covering three present presbyteries, or maybe it would be ad hoc and formed of presbyteries interested in a specific mutual mission.  (That latter concept could actually lead to overlapping districts each based on a mission need.)  It might or might not have staff.  The essential point is that it would be a larger grouping to help presbyteries facilitate mission of mutual interest.

Now, I have some dear friends who are presbytery execs and I don’t want to put this in a negative light for them, so let me suggest that there are places in this thought experiment for denominational staff if it is phased out at the presbytery level.  As I indicated, the place for sharing resources would be at the synod or district level.  While not every district would need/want/afford one or more professionals, that would be a place that someone would be beneficial to coordinate, encourage and oversee the joint mission. That would be a place for resource staff.  The other thing that I would imagine happening under this scenario is the expansion of professionals shared between or across presbyteries much like Sierra Blanca and Santa Fe do now.  The positions would not be the same, but it is probably a safe bet that not too far into the future the current professional positions will be different one way or another — We just need to figure out how.

So there is one model or option: We turn the PC(USA) into a collection of smaller, flexible and more intimate presbyteries.  We give up the idea of economies of scale for more relational groups that can focus on specific ways to be missional as God is calling them.

Anyway, I just throw this out there after looking at presbytery sizes in other Presbyterian branches.  It is only one of the options.  I don’t know if this is the route God is calling us since that is the task of all of us joining together to seek the will of God.