Officers Of The Church — Prepetual Or Three-And-Out?

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In my recent reading I found a convergence of ideas that I want to spend some time musing about.  The basic theme of this is the nature of the ordained offices of Ruling Elder and Deacon in branches where the office is perpetual but the service on the local board is not.  I have not done a comprehensive survey of this point of Presbyterian polity but in my experience the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is the only branch I am aware of that has terms with limits as the only option, in their case six years, then requiring an individual to go off the board (session for elders, board of deacons for a deacon) for one year before serving again on that board.  For many branches, and historically for mainline American Presbyterians, once your are called as a Ruling Elder of the church you continue serving on the session without limit.  You can voluntarily step down due to personal circumstances, and if you move churches you remain an elder but you do not automatically go on to the new church’s session.  And usually there is a process to remove you from the session should circumstances warrant.  But it is not the case that you leave because “your time is up.”  (The exception there would be in the sense of joining the Church Triumphant.    )

Personally, my service as an elder on session lasted five years (I was first elected to fill a vacant partial term) and in the 12 years since I have not been invited back onto my church’s session.  I state this only as fact and not as complaint because in those 12 years I have never ceased serving the church in the capacity of a ruling elder in other governing bodies of the church.

But my experience, vis a vis the congregation, is not unique based upon the numbers in the Presbyterian Panel background summary. PC(USA) Research Services, in what I consider a misleading and inaccurate division, categorizes their sample population into “elders” and “members.”  If you dive into the data you find that when they refer to elders they mean elders currently serving on session.  Furthermore, they report that of what they classify as members, more than one-third (38%), are ordained Ruling Elders.  If you take all the individuals that have been ordained as Ruling Elders or Deacons (or both) it turns out to be more than half of the “members.” There is a very large population within the PC(USA) that have been ordained to church office.  As we will see in a minute this is such a large group that within a congregation it is difficult to effectively use them to serve on the session.  The Panel survey is silent on other ways that this large pool of ordained officers live out their call in the life of the church if they are not serving on session.

Now consider how the survey question is worded:

Have you ever been ordained an elder in a Presbyterian church?
Have you ever been ordained a deacon in a Presbyterian church?

I’m not sure if they are trying to capture those who have demitted and are no longer ordained officers, but in my experience that is a pretty small number, probably so small it would not be statistically significant.  I would think that they could better reinforce the perpetual nature of the ordained office by asking “Are you an ordained elder (or deacon) in a Presbyterian church?” Or maybe they are recognizing that individuals may not realize the office is perpetual and phrase the question so that it still captures the respondents correctly. In that case we need to do a better job of educating our ordained officers.  But either way, the nature of the survey questions do nothing to reinforce the perpetual nature of the office.

OK, that is a particular point in the ethos in the PC(USA) that really rubs me the wrong way (in case you couldn’t tell) and that I have ranted about before.  But it is not just me… In the resource piece by the Rev. Joseph Small that was posted for the Special Commission on Middle Governing Bodies I found this (as part of a longer section beginning on page 4 that is well worth the read)(my emphasis added):

What led to the bureaucratization of sessions and presbyteries? At root, it was the bureaucratization of American society, and the church’s endemic eagerness to follow culture’s lead. But there are proximate symptoms and causes. In the 1950’s, Presbyterian polity was changed at several points for the very best of reasons, but with unintended, unfortunate consequences.

First, the understanding of “elder” as a called ministry within the congregation was weakened by the introduction of a regulation stipulating that elders could serve no more than two consecutive three-year terms on the session. This mandatory rotation of elders was instituted for one very good reason and one of questionable intention. The ordination of women as ruling elders had been part of (northern) Presbyterian polity since 1930, but most sessions had few if any women serving. Limiting terms of service on sessions was one way of opening the eldership to new persons, notably women. The regulation had its desired result, but this appropriate motive was joined by another, less noble one. It was thought that mandatory rotation would break the hold of “bull elders” on the life of the church, reducing the capacity of sessions to thwart pastors in their attempts to modernize and renew congregational life.

The unintended result of mandatory rotation was the loss of an understanding of elders as persons called to one of the ordered ministries of the church. Term limits for service on the church session produced brief tenure by an ever expanding circle of members. In many congregations, one three-year term became the norm, and the understanding of the eldership was transformed from a called ministry to merely taking one’s turn on the board. Short-term, inexperienced elders also increased the influence of pastors by diminishing the ministry of called, knowledgeable elders. This imbalance, evident in sessions, became especially pronounced in presbyteries where well-informed pastors were accompanied by revolving elders who knew less and less about matters before the assembly.

My thanks to Rev. Small for including the historical context along with his concurrence on the effect that I have seen of rotating elders.  I’m glad to know that this is a recognized issue and not something I’m just reading into the polity.

What are the positives?  As Rev. Small points out it encourages (forces?) diversity and additional voices on the session.  What are the negatives?  Personally, I am especially concerned about the loss of the understanding of the roll of elders and on this I believe the other problems hinge.  And, in addition to the lack of experience and the loss, in some cases, of the joint governance, I have seen another issue where nominating committees have to find someone to “fill the position” and it becomes more of an issue of who will say yes as opposed to who has a sense of call.  I, and others I have met who are in congregations with similar happenings, would rather see the position left vacant until it can be filled by someone who does have the sense of call.  In some times and places the position of ruling elder has become just another position for someone to help out with.

In his 1897 book The Ruling Elder at Work, the Rev. J. Aspinwall Hodge captures the weight of the office and the nature of it as he writes as a fictionalized elder nominee in the opening paragraphs:

The Pastor of our church has just informed me, that the Session has decided
that the number of Elders should be increased. This has long been
regarded necessary. A meeting of the church will soon be called for that
purpose. I am troubled, because the Session desire to nominate me as
one of the new Elders. I wanted to decline at once, but the Pastor
informs me that I should with care and prayer consider what may be my
duty. He urges that, while the communicants have the privilege to
nominate and elect their own representatives, they have the right to
expect the advice of the Session, as its members are in a position to
consider the questions involved more fully than the communicants can.
They are required constantly to observe the christian character and
efficiency of the members of the church, and are thus prepared to judge
of the personal qualifications of those to be nominated. From their
intimate knowledge of the people, they should be able to propose those
who would be most acceptable to the various classes in the congregation, and
who can best represent them. And being well acquainted with the
peculiarities of themselves and of the Pastor, they can best select
those who are qualified to cooperate with them in maintaining the unity
of the church and the spirituality of the members. On the other hand,
the Session ought not to be a self-perpetuating body. It should impart
the information which it possesses, and give advice, but the
communicants can nominate and elect whom they please. Our Session,
feeling the responsibility, had, after long and serious consideration,
by a unanimous vote, determined to nominate me as one of the new Elders.

The question is, therefore, distinctly before me,
and I must consider it. The deliberate judgment of the officers of the
church demands respect, and my Pastor adds that he knows that the desire
is general in the congregation to have me an Elder.

I recently found out about a training program for ruling elders at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.  This program, designed to be completed in two years of full-time study, leads to a Master of Ministry for the Ruling Elder degree.  The program is described to “help the
Ruling Elder function on the Session, Presbytery, and General Assembly levels in a biblical fashion.”  But they do add the qualifier that “the fact that Greenville Seminary offers these programs for the training and/or continuing education of Ruling Elders in no way implies that a seminary education is needed for the Ruling Elder to function properly in his office.”  I wonder if SFTS or Fuller will every bring a program like this to the Left Coast? (Or if there are enough other interested ruling elders to make that worthwhile?)

Before I finish this post let me present a thought exercise:  Consider a congregation of 240 members.  If we use the Panel information and figure that one-third of the members are ordained elders that would mean that there are 80 elders in the congregation.  I modeled this exercise on a congregation roughly the size of my own and my first reaction was that 80 was way too high.  However, after thinking about it some more I am now inclined to think that it is high, but not by too much.  For this thought exercise I will continue to use it. (And you will probably figure out that while the numbers are pretty close to my church, for this exercise I have selected numbers that give round numbers for us to talk about.)

Now consider a session of 12 members.  This is a reasonable number for this size congregation.  It represents 5% of the members and would be organized into three classes of four.  If we have a situation where every elder serves only one term so four elders from our pool of 80 go onto the session each year then each elder in the pool would wait 20 years between their terms on the session.  (So I have another eight years to wait.)

Of course, the situation is not that simple.  In the case where each year two of the four were eligible to serve a second term and agree to do so, only two elders would need to be drawn from the pool so the rotation would be 40 years between terms.  To add one more level of complexity what if we say that of the two “open” spots each year, one is filled from the pool but one is filled by a new elder, someone who is ordained to the office that year, then it would be 80 years between terms for those in the pool and the pool would grow by one new elder each year.

Now, this model does not take into account those that leave the pool by death or transfer, and of course it does not include elders joining the pool by transfer into the church.  In addition, it does not include those who due to age, health, or other circumstance are in the pool but not up to the responsibilities of serving the church any more.  (And I know several very faithful and dedicated elders who have inspired me who are now in this category.)

The bottom line though is that, if the Panel data is correct, each congregation has an abundance of called and ordained individuals, ruling elders and deacons, sitting out there in the pews every week.  How does the congregation continue to give them opportunities to live out their call?  How do we reinforce to them, and the church as a whole, that the office is perpetual?  If we are going to limit service on the session, how do we intentionally find ways to uses elders in other appropriate roles?  Should the denomination’s polity include provisions for limiting the number of elders so such a large back-log does not build up and individuals are able to serve on the session, and thus more often use the spiritual gifts that were recognized in them when they were originally called to serve on the session?

I want to leave you with one last image:  In about a month-and-a-half at least a couple of the elders in my church who are going off of the session will have to give up their name tags that also identify them as “Elder.”   What message does this send to them and other ordained officers not serving on boards about the perpetual nature of the office?  What message does this send to the congregation about the nature of the ordained office?  Just because they are not on the session and have stopped wearing the name tag do they stop functioning as elders or stop thinking of themselves as such?  What does this mean for the PC(USA) as a whole?

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Special Commission On Middle Governing Bodies Gets To Work

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Over the last two weeks the Special Commission on Middle Governing Bodies created by the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) got down to work.  The 21 members of the Commission were named by the Moderators of the 218th and 219th Assemblies.

For historical perspective, the last General Assembly level commission in the American mainline Presbyterian church was the Special Commission of 1925 created by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.  In the report of that Special Commission we are told that their charge was:

[T]o study the present spiritual condition of our Church and the causes making for unrest, and to report to the next General Assembly, to the end that the purity, peace, unity and progress of the Church may be assured.

The charge that the 219th GA gave the present commission is a bit more detailed:

1.  The commission will consult with sessions, presbyteries, synods and the wider church on the mission and function of middle governing bodies.  Such a process should include:

a.  current diversity in the role and functions of middle governing bodies.
b.  demographics and financial realities that affect the role and function of synods and presbyteries.
c.  the role of each governing body in its oversight role–presbyteries of congregations, synods of presbyteries, and General Assembly of synods–both historically and in present experience.
d.  relationships with General Assembly agencies in role and function.

2.  The commission will develop models that reflect the roles of middle governing bodies in our polity and the changing context of our witness in the United States and their relationships with other governing bodies.

3.  The commission will prepare a report to the 220th General Assembly (2012) of its findings and any recommended Book of Order changes. Recommendation for future roles and responsibilities will also be made to the 220th General Assembly about changes in middle governing bodies that may best serve the PCUSA [sic] in the 21st century.

4.  The commission will implement, within the powers granted it, any decisions forwarded from the 219th General Assembly (2010) and approved by presbyteries regarding the form and function of middle governing bodies with the report to the 220th General Assembly (2012).

5.  By direction of the 219th General Assembly (2010), or upon a majority affirmative vote of the affected presbytery or presbyteries or a majority affirmative vote of the presbyteries in the affected synod or synods, the commission is authorized to act as the General Assembly according to

a.  G-13.0103m: “to organize new synods and to divide, unite, or otherwise combine synods or portions of synods previously existing;”
b.  G-13.0103n:  “to approve the organization, division, united, or combining of presbyteries or portions of presbyteries by synods.”

6.  The commission will supervise the Special Administrative Review Committee on Puerto Rico and act on any recommendations they may make within the powers given to the commission.

7.  The actions of the commission shall require a two-thirds majority for approval.

Following the naming of the members of the Commission I had the opportunity to be part of the first consultation the Commission held, even before the first face-to-face meeting of the Commission. Maybe it is more accurate to say that the newly appointed Moderator of the Commission, the Rev. Tod Bolsinger, came to our Synod Assembly meeting and in a couple of the break-out sessions tried a few things out on some of us. In return, I think it is fair to say, we introduced him to a few things as well.

It is worth taking a moment to introduce you to Tod, and while the GA Moderators have not elaborated on their decision, I think you will see why Tod got the invite to convene this group.  First, yes that is the correct spelling of his name with only one “d” and I will leave that for him to explain.  Second, his present call is as the senior pastor and head of staff of San Clemente Presbyterian Church in Los Ranchos Presbytery.  He blogs at “It Takes A Church…” which is a reference to one of his books, It Takes A Church To Raise A Christian: How the Community of God Transforms Lives.  He also mentions some church and leadership consulting activity. In addition to all this, he was the Moderator for his presbytery’s Odyssey group to re-imagine the functioning of the presbytery.  So he has a tremendous background in both the redesign part and the leadership aspect making him a good candidate to convene this new group.  (And as I will get to in a minute, the materials for the Commission’s first face-to-face meeting include a white paper from the Odyssey group.)

So at our Synod Assembly meeting Tod conducted two listening sessions as part of the breakouts that we did.  Both were well attended – the second was overflow – and in neither case did he get through his whole set of questions on PowerPoint slides.  Some of the points he wanted to make were:

  • The Commission on Middle Governing Bodies ( MGB ) is not looking for one answer but multiple models for the PC(USA)
  • MGB Commission wants feedback on “How are those governing bodies best organized to be responsive both to the Spirit of Christ & opportunities for discipleship?”
  • “Are the structures of history the best platforms for carrying our mission into the future?”
  • Calvin organized Geneva to “be responsive” to the immigrant community.  How do we organize to be responsive to our communities?
  • The Commission will be listening, experimenting, discerning. Tod says he will be looking for “safe, modest experiments”

Tod then started a discussion around a series of questions he had for us to answer. A few of the better discussion starters were:

  • What is a Synod? Why did you first get involved in Synod work?
  • What do we celebrate about being Synod? Who are the heroes of the Synod?
  • What do we want to preserve in our current MGB system? Conversation must start with what will not change. What is our risk tolerance?

I (@ga_junkie) was live-tweeting this consultation and this last question was rephrased in a response from @davehackett: Conversation must start with what is most valuable to preserve. (And the rephrasing was endorsed by Tod later on.) I should also mention that my tweet about the “safe, modest experiments” raised the question from @KathleenLambert about whether a safe, modest experiment is an oxymoron?

One thing Tod found out from this was that he had way too much material for the time available (one hour).  It also seems that Tod was not expecting me, or anyone else, to be live-tweeting or blogging this consultation.  I didn’t announce it but I was sitting there typing on my laptop throughout it so I was not hiding my activity. (This does raise the question of what is social media etiquette for such meetings — I had not brought my “I’m Blogging This” badge with me.  I think a lot of us presbynerds figure open sessions in the PC(USA) are fair game without need to announce our intentions unless told otherwise.)  The result was that I tweeted with my usual MGB hashtag of #mgb and at the end of the talk Tod (@todbol by the way) told us he would be using #mgbcomm.  A bit later that day he retweeted many of my posts with the “official” hashtag. As I will get to in a minute, the MGB Comm is encouraged, if not outright required, to be Web 2.0 connected.

The next event was the first meeting of the Commission in Baltimore at the end of last week.  Actually, looking at their docket they approved the minutes of an October 14 conference call, so they have been at work for a while now.  This meeting was full of the getting-started sorts of things, including the intro remarks by the GA Moderator and Stated Clerk, team building exercises, and the usual breaking into subgroups to begin discussion and work. The listed sub-groups are the Research Strategy group, the Emerging Models group, and the “Soil Tilling Group:” Preparing the Church for Change.

The meeting did include two presentations: The first was “Middle Governing Bodies in a Changing Religious Cultural Context” by the Rev. Eileen Lindner.  Via @lscanlon  we have tweets about her presentation (and in fact tweets about the whole meeting – THANKS Leslie!), including these two, the second of which was heavily retweeted:

Eileen Lindner: Measure church vitality differently – not by membership. How many come to pray? How many bring food?

Eileen Lindner to #mgbcomm: “Don’t be afraid. Be afraid of doing nothing and hoping for the best.”

The second presentation was by the Rev. Joseph Small titled “What is a Middle Governing Body, really? A Theological Perspective.”  This was tied to a 2008 resource piece by Rev. Small among the Commission’s papers about “The Travail of the Presbytery.”  One tweet about the talk from a member of the Commission, @miriamdolin, said “#mgbcomm ‘s task according to joe small is to recover communion among congregations. Wow, no pressure!”

There was also a discussion about another resource piece titled “’How Did We Get This Bureaucratic Model?’ or ‘What Kind of Presbytery Do We Really Want?’”  This is also known as Odyssey Group White Paper 1 and comes out of the Los Ranchos Presbytery redesign group Tod chaired.

I’ve skimmed these resources and they all seem to provide a good starting point for the Commission to begin discussions and discernment.  There are some points in each that I’d like to explore further but I’ll save that for another time since this post is getting on the longer side. But as the Commission searches for models and experiments it will be interesting to see how such proposals as the New Synod and flexible presbyteries are considered and evaluated, along with the continuation of synods in our structure.

As I mentioned before, this Commission was urged to get connected to Web 2.0 and social media.  Tod has encouraged all interested parties in the PC(USA) to follow him on Twitter with his handle @todbol and the mgbcomm hashtag.  There is a Facebook page which is a place for open discussion about the Commission’s work and it appears to be very active. And at the end of the meeting several members of the Commission popped up on Twitter with brand new accounts — We will see if this is mostly for listening or speaking.

According to tweets from @lscanlon, Tod ended the meeting with three questions the Commission will look at next time:

  1. What’s the function of a middle governing body?
  2. What definitions & terms should they explore?
  3. What are the changing realities of our world that affect our discipleship?

And wrapping up this part, a couple of things @todbol tweeted help set the tone – “The question of the day isn’t what we are going to do, but what is God already doing.” and “There is a yearning for presbyteries etc to do more discernment together. What keeps us from practicing discernment?“

That wraps up my summary of the meetings.  I originally thought I would add a bit of commentary regarding that question number 1 about mgb’s, but considering the length I’ll post separately about that.  I do want to add one comment about something from the meeting…

Based on a section of the White Paper one of the members of the Commission, @johnvest, tweeted “Discussing institutional isomorphism at #mgbcomm.” This piqued my curiosity since in addition to the biological and organizational sense that isomorphism is used here, in my field of geology it has application as well regarding minerals.

In an environmental sense, be it natural or cultural environment, isomorphism refers to the organism or institution taking on a particular shape based on, or dictated by, the environment it is in.  In a mineralogic sense it refers to minerals of different compositions having the same basic shape.

The geologic alternate to this is polymorphism — minerals of the same composition having different shapes.  The best known example is carbon which has one crystal structure for the mineral graphite and another for diamond.  A couple of other examples include the chemical calcium carbonate which some clams make in the form of calcite for their shells and others in the form of the mineral aragonite.  And for different pressure and temperature conditions, there are at least six different naturally occurring crystal structures of silicon dioxide, including the common mineral quartz.

My first question was was to wonder whether our present institutional structure would permit presbyteries to be polymorphic.  Given the same basic ingredients could different judicatories use them to form different shapes based on the local conditions.  Beyond that, does the new Form of Government currently before the presbyteries help us, or even encourage us, to be polymorphic?  Maybe the big question, given that Tod has already helped do something like this in Los Ranchos Presbytery without outside help, is what role does the Commission play to do this across the church?

Let me take this geologic object lesson one step further:  In mineralogy we have some fascinating mineral forms called pseudomorphs.  You probably picked up on the Greek roots and realize that this means “false shape.”  They are a mineral that has taken the shape of another.  But how this typically happens is interesting and possibly instructive.  Under the original conditions a mineral will grow within another rock and fill a space that has the shape typical of its crystal shape.  Then, when conditions change, that mineral alters to another chemically similar mineral.  But in the alteration it keeps the exterior form that the original mineral carved out for itself rather than reshaping the rock around it to its own new form.  There is a great page of pictures of pseudomorphs that shows the results of the iron sulfide mineral pyrite altering to similar iron minerals limonite and goethite but keeping the cubic shape of pyrite.

I probably don’t have to spell out the object lesson here other than to ask the question whether the present presbytery structure is actually a pseudomorph with an outward shape reflecting circumstances under which they were formed at an earlier time but now with a composition that would not naturally take on that shape.

Anyway, you hopefully followed my scientific explanation and maybe it will give you something to think about like it did for me.  Thanks John for sharing that comment on Twitter.

Well this process has a long way to go and the Commission will be traveling around the denomination for both full commission meetings as well as presbytery and synod consultations.  The next meeting is in February in Orlando, then the end of May in Seattle, in Indianapolis in October, and Dallas in February 2012.  Keep watching to see where this process goes.

More Official Presbyterians On Social Media

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It should be no surprise that I take an interest in how Presbyterians world-wide are adopting and using social media, especially those with some official ecclesiastical capacity.  So today I note a few new additions to the roll of Presbyterian officers on web 2.0.

The one that I am most excited about is a new blog from the freshly-installed Moderator of the General Assembly of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa.  The Rev. George Marchinkowski is letting us follow him around on his moderatorial term with a blog appropriately titled Moderatorial Moments.  My own excitement comes from the fact that we now have a window into a Presbyterian branch that doesn’t pop up on the interwebs too much, at least that I have been able to track.  So far Rev. Marchinkowski’s writing has been mostly narration of the visits he has made, but even that provides interesting insights into that particular branch.

As I said, this is one of the Presbyterian churches that does not get as much exposure from what I can tell (although it may have something to do with multiple languages in Southern Africa and there may be more that I can’t read and my searches don’t find).  The denomination was formed eleven years ago with the merger of the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa, which was established by settlers coming into the region, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, which originated from Scottish missions with the indigenous people.  A good article on the uniting of these churches and the UPCSA’s history can be found on the blog Grace and Mercy, written by the pastor of Centurion West Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Andries Combrink.

Turning to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, the Rev. Gradye Parsons, is breaking new ground for that branch with his weekly videos on his own YouTube channel.  So far he has tackled the election of elders, a three-part series on becoming an elder, and this week he posted the second part in his future of the church series.

I also realized that while I have pointed out the monthly columns web page of the PC(USA) General Assembly Moderator, Vice-Moderator and Stated Clerk, I neglected to also inform you of the official blogs for GA Moderator Cynthia Bolbach and Vice-Moderator Landon Whitsitt.

So enjoy these new sources of information and insight into the workings of Presbyterianism.

How Bright These Glorious Spirits Shine! — Reflection On All Saints Day

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How bright these glorious spirits shine!
Whence all their bright array?
How came they to the blissful seats
of everlasting day?
Lo! these are they, from sufferings great
who came to realms of light,
and in the blood of Christ have washed
those robes which shine so bright.

Once again I observe the Commemoration of All Saints.  In my reflections last year it struck me that the year was an “easy” one, if there is such a thing when remembering those that have gone to join the Church Triumphant.  That was not the case this year as there were more friends than past years that went on to their heavenly reward, and more close friends than any previous year. 

Now, with triumphal palms they stand
before the throne on high,
and serve the God they love, amidst
the glories of the sky.
His presence fills each heart with joy,
tunes every mouth to sing:
by day, by night, the sacred courts
with glad hosannas ring.

So this year I remember the following saints who left their mark upon my life and for whom I give thanks that I could share the spiritual journey with them.

  • Jim – A gentleman, in the true sense of the word, who well into his 90’s was in worship on the Lord’s Day almost every week and who had a smile on his face that reflected Psalm 122, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the House of the LORD'” He loved to be with the community in worship and it showed.
  • Melissa – A childhood friend. I did not know the quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the time, but in retrospect I recognize that she was the first of my peers to reflect what he writes in Life Together: “Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s word to him… The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother(/sister); his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s(/sister’s) is sure.”
  • Sally – Who struggled with trials for several years but kept the joy of the LORD in her life.
  • Randy – A faithful servant of God who worked hard to spread the Kingdom.
  • Irwin – Another faithful servant, elder and leader who showed many of us the great wisdom in a simple word well and timely spoken.
  • Scott – A friend who loved music, and loved to play music to God’s glory.
  • Myrna – A people person who loved those in her care deeply and was deeply loved by them.  She left a very big hole in many lives.
  • Lillian – One of the quiet, faithful members who doesn’t attract attention but when they are gone their absence is felt.
  • Fred and Leonard – Two gentleman who were both members of “the Greatest Generation” and who both spent an incredible amount of time working with young people.  Although they lived a continent apart they both had the same big hearts, unselfish giving of their time, were an inspiration to many that they worked with, and passed away with a week of each other.

I add to that list a friend of many of us, the Rev. Howard Rice.  I had the great pleasure of getting to know Howard when he joined our presbytery, saw him regularly and in getting to know him had several stimulating discussion with him. We agreed on many points of Reformed theology and worship and we disagreed on a bunch as well.  But I will always treasure Howard’s smile and the deep respect he showed for every individual.

Finally, in an unusual step for me I would also add someone I did not know personally, I only met him once, but even at a distance his life radiated so much of the gospel.  When UCLA basketball coach John Wooden died a bit short of his 100th birthday we lost not just a great philosopher but a great role model, especially when it came to his marriage to Nellie and how he worked at it.  While much of his life was inspirational, the effort he put into his marriage impresses me the most.

So a word of thanks to all these saints who in big ways and little, for a short time or an extended period, whether known or unknown to them, have touched my life and shaped my faith and life in positive ways.  As you have gone on to your heavenly reward this past year we are the poorer for your absence.  Thank you and I look forward to the great reunion before the Throne someday.

Hunger and thirst are felt no more,
nor suns with scorching ray;
God is their sun, whose cheering beams
diffuse eternal day.
The Lamb who dwells amidst the throne
shall o’er them still preside,
feed them with nourishment divine,
and all their footsteps guide.

‘Mong pastures green he’ll lead his flock,
where living streams appear;
and God the Lord from every eye
shall wipe off every tear.

How Bright These Glorious Spirits Shine!
Words by Isaac Watts, 1707
Versified from Scottish Paraphrases 1781
As used at the Church of Scotland 2010 General Assembly Closing Worship

Celebrating The Reformation… And A Couple Of Important But Less-Known Players

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The Protestant church likes to have a day they can nail down to celebrate the Reformation. (pun intended, as if you had to ask)  Today is that day commemorating Professor Martin Luther posting an invitation to debate some theological points on a public bulletin board.

But I keep reminding myself, and others, that the Protestant Reformation was a very complex movement and while our celebration today of a public challenge that was a very major event in the Reformation and the life of Martin Luther, it is one event among many remarkable ones.  Over at Reformation21 Carl Trueman has an interesting piece where he makes the case that maybe a better event to mark was the actual realization of a public academic debate on some of Martin Luther’s theses that occurred on April 26, 1518.  And Luther’s were not the first steps in the Reformation but the likes of Jan Hus and John Wycliffe preceded Luther by over a century.

Another part of the complex history are the individuals that surrounded Luther and critical roles they played.  We are commonly aware of fellow academics and reformers like Philipp Melancthon, but today I want to lift up two others without whom, I would argue, Luther would not have been as successful as he was.

Frederick III
[Wikimedia Commons]
Frederick III, Elector of Saxony
Frederick the Wise
(1463-1525)

I think it could be argued that without the help of Frederick, Martin Luther’s cause would have been lost, and maybe his life as well.  Frederick was Luther’s protector in the early years of the German Reformation.

His first move was to make sure that Luther got a hearing at home and he arranged to have Luther tried at the Diet of Worms rather than being extradited to Rome.

The second move was his having Luther kidnapped and put into protective custody in the Wartburg Castle after he was condemned by the Diet.

Frederick had little personal contact with Luther, and it is not clear from my reading how sympathetic Frederick was to Luther’s theological perspective (I have seen arguments both ways), but he had a concern for his subjects and used his diplomatic savvy to take care of Luther as one of his own.  It is widely recognized that Frederick was a fair and just ruler who avoided conflict, hence the the title “the Wise.”

Johann von Staupitz
Vicar general of the German Congregation of Augustinians
(ca. 1460 – 1524)

Where Frederick was Luther’s political protector, von Staupitz was Luther’s theological and ecclesiastical enabler.  Again, Luther probably could not have done what he did without the actions taken by von Staupitz.

Interestingly these also came in two different steps, but this time several years apart.  The first was his pastoral care and spiritual direction of Luther as a young monk under his care.  One time Luther spent six hours in confession to von Staupitz.  Counseling Luther in his spiritual desperation, it was von Staupitz that pointed him to the means of grace and the saving blood of Christ.  Beyond that, von Staupitz encouraged Luther to pursue an academic career, and we all know where that led.

The second action, taken several years later after the theological dispute arose, was von Staupitz releasing Luther from the Augustinian order.  This was one of the “it seemed like a good idea at the time” moves whose immediate consequence was a win-win.  Luther got more ecclesiastical independence and the good name of the order was no longer tied to a potential heretic.  Long term however, the “powers that be” would have preferred to have had control over Luther and von Staupitz did come under suspicion and accusation for aiding Luther.

 

Johann von Staupitz
[Wikimedia Commons ]

Ignatius Loyola
[Wikimedia Commons]
An Interesting Conjunction

One more interesting point to emphasize the complexity of the Reformation…

Based upon the historical timelines, it appears that the great reformer John Calvin overlapped with the great Counter-Reformer Ignatius of Loyola, at the Collège de Montaigu of the University of Paris.  This happened in 1528 as Ignatius was arriving and Calvin was about to depart.  There is no evidence that they met, or knew each other there, but it is interesting how the same school would produce two great minds on opposite sides of the Reformation.

John Calvin
[Wikimedia Commons]

So, a happy Reformation Day to you, if you are so inclined.  But in a larger sense take a moment to marvel at the sovereignty of God and how he uses many people with many different skills and talents, and for that matter different perspectives, to work out his purposes. Soli Deo gloria – To God Alone Be The Glory!

The 219th General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church (USA) — Further Reflection On Not Business As Usual

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Back in July following the meeting of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I commented here about the one item that really stuck out to me as a point where the Assembly diverged from the expectations of “business as usual.”  This item of business was in response to an overture from the Synod of South Atlantic to create a new non-geographic Korean language presbytery.

I think most odds-makers would have considered this a routine item that would have flown through pretty much under the radar considering it was nearly unanimously recommended by the committee and how much other business the Assembly would be spending its time on.  However, two young Korean-American women pastors rose to speak against the item and when the vote was take it was soundly defeated (125-514) by the commissioners.

The first pastor to speak was the Rev. Theresa Cho from San Francisco and following the Assembly she posted a reflection on the meeting that included comments about this particular business item.  Today she has posted a follow-up titled “Both sides of the truth: Non-geographic presbyteries ” where she not only comments in more detail on the action at GA, but as the title suggests, points out that the defeat of the request has implications as well.  If the competing demands a denomination lives with in their non-geographic language presbyteries is of interest to you this is a must-read.  In fact, it is a great window into some aspects of racial-ethnic ministry in general.

The new article was prompted by deeper discussions around this overture and the related issues at a Pastor Theologian Consultation last week.  Rev. Cho writes about her situation and journey from GA to this Consultation.  Talking about her cultural background and the consultation she says:

At this consultation, I had the opportunity to be heard and to listen.As a 2nd generation, the younger doesn’t speak up to share differing opinions with the older. It is seen as disrespectful. At this consultation, I had the opportunity to speak up and to listen.

Then, regrading the contrast to GA she writes:

I’ll be honest, after GA, I had the luxury of going back to my wonderful life. I received the accolades of my colleagues and peers for having the courage to speak up. And although I did hear some of the “gossip” of the effects of how the defeat of overture 04-08 was impacting some of the Korean community, the only personal impact to me was hearing some of the difficult remarks being made to and about one of my colleagues and friend who also spoke against the overture. Besides that, I went back to my life, working in a non-Korean church where I am appreciated for my pastoral skills despite of my racial ethnicity, gender, and age.However, my time [at the consultation] shed a light on how what I intended to be life-giving actions were life-taking for another and vice versa.Throughout these discussions, I felt the extremes of both emotions: joy for speaking out and being heard and grief for knowing that it was at the expense of my parent’s generation; honor for being acknowledged as a voice that matters and shame for participating in “airing out the dirty laundry” and betraying my people; and empowered to know that a few voices can change a vote and powerless when it is perceived as disobedience and disrespect.

I will let you continue reading the article as she discusses the question “What is the real issue regarding non-geographic, Korean-language presbyteries?”  These are not easy issues but they are something any Presbyterian branch needs to consider in the light of modern cultural realities.  I encourage you to read Theresa’s whole article.

Church Of Scotland General Assembly 2011 Moderator Designate Announced

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Today the Church of Scotland announced that the moderator designate for the next General Assembly will be the the Rev. David Arnott.

Following his training at St. Andrews University and the University of Edinburgh, Rev. Arnott served his probationary placement in Greenock and was ordained to Stobhill Parish Church in Gorebridge (now part of Gorebridge Parish Church ).  After six years there he was called to Netherlee Parish Church, Glasgow, and then Hope Park, St. Andrews. While in Glasgow he served two years as a part-time chaplain at Her Majesty’s Prison Barlinnie. (It is Scotland’s largest prison and a bit infamous, as noted in this article from 2000 about a reported closure that did not happen, but the prison was extensively renovated soon after.)

Rev. Arnott also has rendered extensive service to the Kirk.  As Convener of the Glasgow Presbytery Business Committee he helped restructure the presbytery’s committee structure. While in St. Andrews Presbytery he served as a chaplain to a hospital and two schools, in addition to presbytery service as the convener of two committees and the Moderator of Presbytery in 2007.  He also has extended service on various national church committees.

The Kirk press release gives more details and there is a BBC article and an AllMediaScotland release that both closely follow the official press release.   UPDATE: No sooner had I posted here than Davidkhr’s post appeared on his blog with a little reflection on whether this was the right choice for the church or a “safe” choice.

As we anticipate a General Assembly meeting with some controversial topics, the Rev. Arnott has both my congratulations on being selected as Moderator designate and my prayers for his skill and wisdom guiding the meeting and for his year visiting around the Kirk.

Musings On Middle Governing Bodies

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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):

The presbyteries in the PC(USA) should be divided up so there are more, smaller presbyteries.

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.

Digging Into Presbyterian Statistics — PC(USA) Presbytery Growth Rates

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Well, I see that the U.N. Secretary General has declared that today, October 20, is the first Worldwide Statistics Day.  Now, I am not sure if that is a recognition of worldwide statistics, or a worldwide recognition of statistics, but I am only too happy to add my contribution in the spirit of the latter interpretation.

As regular readers are aware I am a bit, OK a lot, of a PresbyGeek or PresbyNerd when it comes to denominational statistics.  And I have the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) office of Research Services to thank as by “enabler.”  If you are not aware, they put out a daily Tweet with some tidbit or factoid of information.  I sometimes think that what they tweet is superficial or incomplete, but just like I do the best I can with Presbyterian History in 140 characters, they do the best that they can in that space as well.

Back about three weeks ago they put out the following tweet –

Membership increased in 2009 in 13 presbyteries. Does that include yours? http://bit.ly/cxn1mn #pcusa

That factoid got me wondering about what growth rates were long-term, and not just for 2009.

So, time to dig out some data.  Presbytery size for 2008 and 2009 came from the annual Comparative Research reports, Table 4.  The oldest edition of Table 4 that I am aware of is 1996, so turning to the trusty WayBack Machine, that data is also available.  So all of that was fed into a spreadsheet and the annualized growth rate over the 13 year period 1996-2009 was calculated along with the annual rate for 2009.

Now, looking at the data, two presbyteries (Atlantic Korean-American, Eastern Korean) were excluded because they were formed after 1996 so there is not a long-term growth rate for them over the same time period as the other presbyteries.  Two more presbyteries were seen as significant outliers and removed from the analysis as well.  In the long-term growth category Midwest Hanmi had a growth rate of 4.4%, over twice the growth rate of its next closest presbytery.  In the short-term column San Joaquin dismissed several churches in 2009 and so had a growth rate of -24.3%, ten percentage points higher than the next closest presbytery.  The concern was that when the correlation was calculated these significant outliers would leverage the correlation result.

So what do we get for these 169 presbyteries?  Here are the descriptive statistics:

  Annualized
Long-term		 2009
Short-term
Mean -1.7%  -3.0%
 Median -1.9%  -2.6%
 St. Dev.  0.8  2.4

As you can see there is generally good agreement in each distribution between the mean and median.  Between the two distributions the mean and median are significantly lower and the standard deviation of the short-term is significantly higher indicating a much broader distribution.  Visually, here are the two distributions.  Both horizontal and vertical axes are scaled the same to facilitate direct comparison of the charts.

The broader nature of the short-term distribution is now apparent but without other short-term distributions to compare it to drawing specific conclusions from this is a bit more challenging.  If fluctuations have a random nature to them stacking multiple broad annual distributions to produce the long-term distribution will generally result in a decrease in the standard deviation.

The left-ward shift in the distribution, or higher rate of decline, is statistically significant, and whether this represents a one-time higher decline or the end-member of a trend towards increasing rate of decline can not be told from this graph alone, my previous analysis of the decline rates suggests the latter.

But my main interest is in a comparison of short-term and long-term rates and particularly looking at specific presbyteries.  So, here is the graph of the correlation of short-term versus long-term growth rates.

As you can see there is noticeable scatter in the data but a general positive trend.  However, with an R-squared correlation coefficient of 0.14 the correlation is not strong.  With a slope of >1 there is the suggestion that for all presbyteries the short-term rate is of greater magnitude than the long-term rate.

But here is what I really wanted to get at:  The Research Services tweet pointed out that in 2009 13 presbyteries increased in size. (And the three with the largest percentage membership increases were excluded from this analysis as described above.) Over the long-term the membership has increased in five presbyteries (Charleston-Atlantic, Middle Tennessee, Northwest, Seattle, and the excluded Midwest Hanmi).  Of those, only Northwest (Puerto Rico) and Midwest Hanmi have shown an increase in membership over both the 13 year long-term and 2009 short-term periods.  In fact, it was probably not necessary to exclude Midwest Hanmi since for a long-term growth rate of 4.4%, the trend-line calculated above predicts a short-term rate of 6.0%, reasonably close to the actual of 5.4%.  The leverage would not have been too great.

Well, lots more could be done with this but that is enough for Worldwide Statistics Day.  If you looked carefully at the spreadsheet you can see that what I really prepared it for was my own tracking of the presbytery voting trends in the next few months.  In particular, I am very interested to see how the votes on the three big issues, the Belhar Confession, the new Form of Government, and Amendment 10-A correlate, or don’t as the case may be.  You are welcome to check back but I don’t intend it to be the “up to the minute latest and greatest source of news.”  I’ll probably update it weekly with what I can find and it will be my base for further statistical analysis.  If you are interested in that feel free to follow along.  Stay tuned…

Young People And The Church — Another Interesting And Informative Study

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As my regular readers are aware one of my interests and concerns is for the future of the church, especially as it relates to youth in the church and keeping them involved in the church.  Part of my interest of course is because my household is a bit of a focus group, research study, or test bed for youth in the church.  At the present time I have one who has left the mainline for an evangelical church, one who seems to be finding a home in the confessional leanings of the mainline, and one who is trying to find their way between those two.  I do however count myself fortunate that all three of my children are involved in active congregations.

So it was with much interest that I listened to the October 3rd edition of the White Horse Inn where host Michael Horton interviewed Kenda Creasy Dean, Methodist Elder and Princeton Theological Seminary professor, on her new book Almost Christian: What the faith of our teenagers is telling the American Church.  I have added this to my list of books to acquire (easy) and read (got to figure where in the queue to place it).  In the interview there was a ton of great information drawn from the National Study of Youth and Religion project and published in the book.  While a lot of the interview, and probably the book as well, was about the faith and beliefs of teenagers and “moralistic therapeutic deism”, what was of most interest to me was the discussion about the study’s findings related to what did, and did not, make youth stick with the church as they got older.  For all of the details on the nature of the teenagers’ faith, including the great description of it as “benign whateverism,” I encourage you to listen to all 33 minutes of the interview.

So, here are a couple of the quotes I found most informative, hopefully not too out of context  (listen to the interview for that), and cited statistics from Prof. Dean (not necessarily in order and somewhat edited from conversational language to written form):

[Talking about teens with highly devoted faiths] Four things stood out
for me: One was that they had what I call “a peculiar God story.” They
had a God story that was distinct to their community’s understanding of
the world. They were able to articulate that God story… The second
thing that they had was a community of faith that mattered to them
deeply and they felt like they belonged… The family sense was extended
to faith communities, and they also felt like they belonged spiritually
though. It wasn’t just a social connection, they really felt cosmically
connected to God in their congregations… The third thing was that
they had a sense of, I call it a sense of vocation, a sense of purpose, a
divinely inspired purpose maybe. A sense that God had put them here for
a reason and that reason was to help participate in God’s plan for the
world in some way. And the last thing, and this is really striking, is
that these particular kids, the highly devoted kids in the study, had
markedly higher levels of hope than anybody else.

The young people who have highly devoted faiths, that’s the 8% of the
kids in the study who actually did find faith as a pivot point around
which they organized their lives in explicit ways, had much stronger
connections to adults in their communities of faith, and to adults in
general, than their peers who did not have highly devoted faiths.  I
also think its true that we really tend to overestimate the amount of
time that young people are spending in congregations, even if they are
active in a congregation, they are likely to be around members of the
congregation an hour or two a week. And we overestimate the difference
that hour or two makes in their lives — they don’t actually have enough
time to form deep connections.  And over and over again studies show
that pastors think that people come to church because of the pastor or
because of their interest in deepening their faith or whatever.  Most
lay people say they come to church because of the relationships.

One of the interesting things about the longitudinal studies, one of the
findings was that the most significant factor in whether a young
person’s faith weathers the transition from high school to the young
adult years is the religiosity of parents while they were teenagers.

The interview has a great extended discussion about the use of the catechism and how it was intended for use within the household, even to the point of posting it on the dining room wall and discussing it around the dinner table.  Prof. Dean makes two interesting points about this beyond the value for teaching the faith.  The first is that it is being done in the household setting.  The second is that the catechism provides youth, and all of us for that matter, with a language to talk about our faith.  She points out that in the study most teenagers “have very, very few language resources when it comes to faith.”

Prof. Dean is an engaging speaker and produces a couple of good lines to make you smile:

What we haven’t been able to do very well is to tell the Christian story, or to teach the Christian story, in a way that it looks like it matters in this world of competing narratives…  [I]t means that young people need to be in contact with folks whose lives are demonstrably different because of their faith.  Because just hearing about it is like hearing Cinderella, and Cinderella doesn’t really make a difference about the way we live our lives — it’s a story we tell.  And for a lot of young people that’s the way they experience their encounter with the Christian story as well.

[Talking about parents letting children “chose for themselves”] Well the
way we let them chose for themselves for a couple of generations was to
just sort of assume that when they got old enough we might expose them
to religion but we wouldn’t actually teach them anything because we want
them to be free to chose for themselves.  And the interesting thing is
we don’t have that confidence when it comes to Algebra, but somehow when
it comes to faith we just sort of thought it would emerge when the time
is right.

And a finding that runs counter to many mainline churches I know and to Prof. Dean’s expectations:

[Talking about vocation and social justice and mainline youth being less likely to associate moral responsibility with following Jesus Christ.] There may be less living it out, but there is certainly less living it out and connecting it to your faith.  And as a mainline Protestant this finding horrified me — this is like “oh man, how have we missed this?” But I think one of the reasons is mainline Protestants… we tend to shy away from any kind of God language whatsoever. Well, the effect of that is, you might be the most socially active congregation in the world but if you never connected it to your faith young people obviously assume it’s because you are nice people.  We go on these mission trips where we never talk about God because we are nice people, not because we are Christian and this is how Christ called us to treat one another. In fact one of the findings in the longitudinal study is that when it comes down to it the practices that matter in helping faith endure past the high school years prayer and reading the Bible matter a lot.  Going on mission trips don’t make a bit of difference.

Kenda Creasy Dean has a lot to say about how youth and young adults get integrated into the church — in fact one of the chapters in her book is titled “Mormon Envy.”  This integration of young people is something I have also come to appreciate about the LDS church.  The LDS communities have several features that make them particularly good at passing on their faith.  For more on this I would point you to a Beliefnet blog Flunking Sainthood and their comments on Dean’s book.  Here are a couple of relevant quotes from the interview:

What Mormons have that other communities have not really looked at as intentionally is faithful parents.  It’s one of the most striking findings from the study is how closely young peoples’ faith mirrors their parents’ faith.  As you know, families are the most important faith community if you’re part of the Church of Latter Day Saints. But parents are hugely influential as conduits of faith in Mormon families.  That tends to be less true for example, I’m a mainline Protestant, for mainline Protestants a common scenario would be that parents will think faith is important but they don’t have enough faith formation themselves to have any confidence at handing it on to their children themselves.  So, they take their kids to church to “get them done” by the professionals who can hand on faith in their stead.  Well, that turns out not be be as effective as when it is passed on in the context of a family community.

I think a lot of Protestants tend to think, and I tend to think this way myself, “my kids didn’t get this while they were in high school, but there is plenty of time, they’ll get it eventually.” … Mormon urgency doesn’t allow for that.

Based on my experience and previous reading these are the quotes that really resonated with me from an interview that was full of interesting data and interpretation.  And one of the things that I very much appreciated was Prof. Dean’s acknowledgement of the number of times where the data surprised her.

What is the message for the church?  For me it is a validation that we need to invite the youth to be active members of the church, not just attending services and youth group on Sunday, but encouraging them to be active in some area of ministry in the congregation where they build relationships across generations, we can challenge them to do something, and through their activity they can not just hear, but participate in the God story of the congregation.  Secondly, we need to communicate to parents how important a role they play — that they can not leave the religious education of their kids to the church but they have to be the primary educators.  And then the church has to give them the tools to do that.

If you want more on-line there is an excerpt from the book available and another interview on Patheos.

To close, here is a quote Prof. Dean gave from Tony Campolo –

We are not going to lose this generation because we ask too much, we are going to lose them because we ask too little.

Addendum: Now, here is an interesting parallel that arose yesterday in our church’s education hour.  My friend Scott was teaching a class based on Albert Raboteau‘s book Slave Religion.  After discussing how slave owners used Christianity as a justification for having slaves but then kept the religion from them someone asked the obvious question, “why would a slave convert to Christianity if it justified their oppression?”  Scott summarized the answer from Raboteau (p. 244-246) as 1) The Bible provided a language to talk to God, 2) they saw the parallel of their situation to the story of Israel in bondage in Egypt and their liberation, and 3) it provided hope for the future, particularly regarding eternity.  I was struck by how these three paralleled Dean’s points about the highly devoted youth — How the Israel story for the slaves is part of their God story that is distinct to the community’s understanding of the world.  How they both find the distinctive of hope and eschatological vision.  And while there is not really a parallel in Dean’s four central characteristics of devoted teens to the language point, it does correspond to how the highly devoted teens have acquired the language to talk about God.  Another distinctive of later Slave Religion that was mentioned but not included in this list was the high-level community structure and participatory worship, especially regarding singing. I was struck by how these characteristics of, shall I say, devoted Christianity are similar across cultural contexts.