Last week the National Capital Presbytery voted unanimously to endorse Elder Cynthia Bolbach as a candidate for Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  This news is brought to us from the Presbyterian Outlook, but I am expecting that a news story will soon appear from the PC(USA) News Service and be posted on the GA219 web site.

However, Ms. Bolbach is well ahead of the curve and has her web site/blog up and running.  She has titled it “Food for Thought” and her first, and only post so far, has the understandable title “Am I Crazy?”  In addition, the site includes pages “About Cindy” and “Why PCUSA [sic] Moderator?”  She has her own press release and a photo gallery. (And the National Capital Presbytery has a short note that links to the press release.  And I probably should mention that the news was also announced on the blog of the Presbytery of Silly Walks in the Pines.)

Elder Bolbach grew up Lutheran and joined the New York Ave. Presbyterian Church when she moved to D.C. after college.  There she was ordained a deacon and elder and served as the clerk of session.  She currently is a member of First Presbyterian Church in Arlington, Virginia.  Her other service to the denomination includes being a commissioner to the 209th GA in 1997, serving on and chairing the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry, and serving as Moderator of Presbytery.  But maybe the service that really answers the question she asks above, “Am I Crazy?” is that she has spent the last four years as the co-moderator of the denomination’s Form of Government Task Force.  On her web site she writes about this saying:

We have the opportunity to begin to change by adopting the proposed new Form of Government – a proposal that returns the Form of Government to its proper status as a Constitutional document, rather than the regulatory manual that it has become over the past 25 years. That’s a good start. We need to go further. We need our presbyteries to focus less on administration and more on empowering their congregations to be effective wellsprings of ministry and mission. We need to stop thinking and acting like a bureaucracy and start thinking and acting like disciples.

So why does she want to stand for Moderator?  In her “why” piece she writes:

[O]ur ability as a denomination to proclaim these messages effectively as we move into the second decade of the 21st century is in peril. Our multicultural, secular society no longer has Christianity, much less the institutional church, much less the P.C. (U.S.A.), at its center. It no longer trusts implicitly in the effectiveness of institutions. Yet we continue to believe that we can do ministry the same way we did fifty years ago.

It’s a simple choice, really: if we don’t change, we’ll die.
…
A denomination that proudly claims the resolve and resiliency of John Calvin cannot let this happen. A denomination that takes seriously Jesus’ command to “go out and make disciples” cannot let this happen.

How do we reclaim a prophetic voice that will be listened to and taken seriously? The first step is to understand that we must proclaim our message in new and different ways. We must understand that we can no longer rely on a denominational name brand or on denominational loyalty. We must understand that the corporate organizational structure that was created in the 1950s is no longer viable. We must understand that our primary responsibility is not to impose rules but to empower and enable our congregations and their members to go out into the world and proclaim the transforming message of the Gospel.

Coming from a legal career in the corporate world I’m sure she understands “corporate structure” and “brand loyalty.” I look forward to hearing more.  I also look forward to all those other things that come with a moderator candidacy these days including the Facebook group and the Twitter hashtag.

UPDATE:  The PC(USA) News Service article is now available.