This is a two-parter where I will ask and reflect on a couple of uncomfortable questions related to the Covenant Community of the church. (And with a little luck I’ll get both parts written in the next 36 hours.)
In this part I want to ask a question that might just get me labeled a heretic; there is a bit of that going around at the moment.
Part of what got me thinking about this is that “PresbyFest,” as Michael Kruse has labeled it, is going on in Snowbird, Utah, with back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings of the “PC(USA) Establishment” including the annual polity conference, Association of Executive Presbyters Meeting, joint Middle Governing Body and General Assembly Council meeting, and GAC alone. That is a lot of meetings for relatively few people for a denomination of about 2.2 million people.
This in part got me wondering…
Let me ask this question another way: How can we be effectively connected in a denomination this large?
The “Presbyterian” answer of course is that
the congregation’s connected to the session,
the session’s connected to the presbytery,
the presbytery’s connected to the synod,
the synod’s connected to the General Assembly…
But how does this play out in reality? In the past I have commented on what I saw as the disconnect between the “people in the pews” and “the folks in Louisville.” And this past General Assembly has raised a lot of questions and uncertainty based on what I hear when I talk with churches and groups about what the General Assembly did, or did not do. Is the PC(USA) too big to be a truly connectional church?
And when I use the term “big,” I do mean our size both in terms of total numbers and in terms of the institution and its many branches, offices, and agencies. Most of the people in the pews have never heard of ACSWP or MRTI, to say nothing of being able to tell you where the scope of one group’s work ends and the other’s begins.
In his 1994 book, The Body, Charles Colson tells the story of a church, a story that has stuck in my mind for almost 15 years now. He tells of talking to a pastor who, with some reticence, admitted that he and his board of elders were trying to shrink the church. This was not for physical or logistical reasons, but they felt God was calling them to reduce their congregational membership to those individuals who were committed to the church’s vision for mission. The elders faithfully prayed and membership dropped. But once the core group was left the church started growing again and with their unity of vision the mission of the church was strengthened. Do we take our Book of Order seriously when we say “The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its own life.”
Another way that our size may get in the way of our connectedness is the small sampling represented at General Assembly. With about 750 commissioners for 10,000 churches that is less than one commissioner per ten churches. For medium and small Presbyterian branches every pastor is a commissioner to GA and every church gets to send a ruling elder. It seems that this would improve the knowledge of GA actions and increase the “buy-in” of congregations in denominational actions. I am not sure we could fund or organize a 20,000+ person GA, but there may be a lesson in it. (And yes, I am aware that doing this does not eliminate the doctrinal disagreements, but it does seem to have them handled more smoothly.)
Please do not take this as an argument strictly in favor of the continued decline in the PC(USA) and the realignment of churches with other Presbyterian branches, but I will admit that an interpretation like that is within what I have said here.
But, what I am mostly thinking about is how the large denomination can “feel” better connected, can feel smaller to the membership. Sending four commissioners to GA or the Executive to Snowbird is a start, but only represents a small sample of the churches in the denomination. Lines of communication need to be opened in new ways and the blogging by officials is a start. But does even Bruce have 10,000 readers, one from each church? The PC(USA) fan site on Facebook only has around 2,500 fans.
How can we better connect? Should we consider regional gatherings that each church is required, or highly encouraged, to send representatives to. It would need to be worthwhile for it to get the audience that would connect each congregation to the wider church and to the other churches in a region larger than a presbytery. Do we have events that blur presbytery borders, where neighboring churches get together irregardless of the presbyteries they are in? In a dense area like Southern California could neighboring presbyteries hold joint meetings once a year? Or are we meetinged out and want to stick with the status quo?
In this case size is not just a membership or institutional measurement but a “people” measurement as well. We are too big if we lose sight of each other across the table. We need to find ways and be intentional about our connectionalism so we are truly connected on many different scales.
Next time, connectedness in the congregation: Are we too small?
Steve – I think you have hit on an important question. If the answer is “yes” what then? Is there a size that is the right size? How do we get there?
If the answer is “no” there must be a “but” that asks, “then how shall we live together?” because it is clear that some things need to institutionally shift.
Look forward to hearing what others have to say.
Yes, the PCUSA is too big to be connectional. But the more important reason, is that the world has changed and institutional structures no longer inspire commitment by the younger generation. At the present time, our government is having a very hard time with financial management. Regional meetings are the only way we can sustain a denomination loyalty. Also, I do not think that the clergy ( teaching elders) spend enough time in teaching about the significance of reformed theology. Does anyone care about this under 45? Karen Kiser
Hi Karen,
You are correct about the view of institutional structures in our culture today. We know that “brand loyalty” is decreasing among those that regularly attend church. I’ll have a bit more to say about that in Part 2.
But for this particular post I did not make it explicit that I was thinking almost exclusively about those that are still “loyal” to the “Presbyterian brand” but not sure what to think about the denomination today.
Sorry for not making the distinction and thanks for catching that.
Steve
Although PC(USA) polity is not like, say, either the Southern Baptists or the Episcopal Church, I wonder how they might answer this kind of question within their own structures.
Obviously, we can only learn so much, being MORE intentionally interconnected than the SBs and LESS hierarchical than the Episcopalians, but I still can’t help but think that we can learn from other denominations as “large” as ours.
Hi Mary-
That is an interesting question that has occurred to me but I don’t really have a good knowledge of.
As I thought about what you said it seemed to me that the Methodist Annual Conference might be something like a “connectional gathering” that I was thinking of. It has been my impression that Methodist Conferences are larger than PCUSA presbyteries and smaller than our synods. And each year the pastor and the lay leader of each congregation are required to attend the meeting. I am not sure we want wholesale adoption of this idea, but it is one example of the connectedness in another denomination that I know of that fits into the ideas I’ve been playing with.
Thanks
Steve
WHAT IF we thought of this — not on the national level — but on the level of the local church? I crossed the bay to go to an ordination at another church today, and saw a whole lot of connections going on there… but it is such a rare event. What if local churches invited each other to work, worship, and play together – rather than competing for membership?
Hi Talitha-
You are correct that we can improve our connectedness on several different levels. In my case, it is a geographically small presbytery in a densely populated area. My church is right on the eastern border of the county which is pretty much the presbytery boundary. There are PC(USA) churches just down the road to the east that are in a different presbytery that we have no substantial contact with yet are closer than other churches in our presbytery.
In your case, if you are talking about the San Francisco Bay area, the Presbyteries are a bit bigger but still reasonable size for finding common ground for events to get multiple churches together to get connected.
Thanks for your thoughts
Steve