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.