Candidates For Moderator Of The 220th General Assembly (2012) Of The PC(USA)

3 Replies


With three days to go before the election of the Moderator of this year’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I thought I really needed to get back to this subject a bit.

First, I wanted to mention two developments related to the field of candidates standing for Moderator and their selections for those standing with them for Vice-Moderator.

One of these is the departure of Teaching Elder Janet Edwards from the field. As she explains on her web site her husband Alvise has developed some medical challenges and this is no longer the appropriate time in her career to consider serving as Moderator of the General Assembly. our prayers continue to be with Janet and Alvise. Since she is no longer a candidate a revised Moderatorial Candidates Book has been issued. However, for my purposes here I am interested in the broader sweep of the candidates and will include her information from the original version of the book for part of my discussion below.

The second item is a bit of a controversy that has arisen around Teaching Elder Tara Spuhler McCabe, Vice-Moderator selection standing with Neal Presa. An anonymous source provided the Presbyterian Outlook, and apparently the Presbyterian Layman, with documents showing that the Rev. McCabe signed the marriage license for a same-gender marriage in the District of Columbia in April where the marriage is legally recognized. I suggest that you read the complete article from the Outlook with excerpts from their interview with Rev. McCabe because her answers are specific and nuanced. I will leave it to say that she describes her role as “standing with” the couple in their ceremony and guiding them through it, that it was not a ceremony at her church and her church was not aware of it until some time after it happened. Rev. McCabe will remain as the Vice-Moderator selection and Rev. Presa has released a statement on Unity with Difference related to the situation.

Turning to the Moderatorial Candidates Book I am struck by the incremental improvement in the candidate’s submissions with each successive GA, especially in the area of layout, design and typesetting. (The Book from the 219th GA for comparison) The candidates submit their self-formatted copy to the OGA and with the advances in desktop publishing they are looking more professionally done. In addition, throughout the time introducing themselves to the church each has established ways of branding themselves, like TE Randy Branson has done with similar graphical elements between his blog and his pages in the book. It is interesting to see that both TE Sue Krummel and TE Branson have gone to more formal portraits in their material now while TE Robert Austell and TE Neal Presa have stuck with the same head shots since they announced (if my memory is correct), neither of them appearing to be formal portraits. And you have to admire the QR code that TE Presa has put on his bio.

The Moderatorial Candidates Book has biographical and sense of call information supplied by each candidate and a page about their selected Vice-Moderator candidate. The candidates also have to provide brief (less than 500 word) answers to five questions from a list supplied by the OGA. The first three questions are required and they are:

1. What are some of the exciting possibilities facing the 21st Century church? What are the challenges that face the church in this century?

2. In the Mid-Council Commission report a great deal of the narrative spoke to the emerging shapes and forms for mid-councils. In your view, what do you find especially promising in the narrative and why?

3. How might the initiative to create 1001 new worshipping communities help the PC(U.S.A.) reach its goal of increasing its racial ethnic membership and come closer to becoming a multicultural community of faith, hope, love, and witness?

The additional two questions are selected by the candidate from a pool of seven possible questions. Interestingly – and I think this is a sign of the condition and hope for the PC(USA) – all five candidates (including TE Edwards) answered this question:

5. In F-1.03 of The Foundations of Presbyterian Polity in the Book of Order, we are reminded that, “Unity is God’s gift to the Church in Jesus Christ. Just as God is one God and Jesus Christ is our one Savior, so the Church is one because it belongs to its one Lord, Jesus Christ.” How would you work for unity within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and how would this contribute to the visible unity we seek within our church and with other churches and Christian communities?

In addition three candidates, TE Edwards, TE Krummel and TE Presa, all answered the same question as their second optional one:

10. Brian McLaren will be addressing the Office of the General Assembly breakfast on Monday morning. He has written: “Those who dedicate themselves to be agents of change in our churches will require superhuman doses of courage, kindness, creativity, collaboration, and perseverance. Thanks be to God, faithful change agents will find, like the little boy with his fish and bread, that they already have more resources for the journey than they realized.” What are some of the resources God has already provided the Presbyterian Church for the journey ahead?

For his second question TE Austell answered:

7. What suggestions do you have for identifying new directions for the development of faithful leadership for the mission of Christ?

and for his second TE Branson discussed:

8. We are living in a war-torn world. What might the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and its congregations do to strengthen the ministry of peacemaking at this time?

Questions about highlighting our confessional theology, ecumenical challenges and resources, and addressing economic injustice were not answered.

Now, I need to condense each candidate’s responses down into something manageable so I decided to feed their narrative portions and the answers to their questions through Wordle. OK, maybe a bit too much condensing, but it is interesting none the less.

It should be no surprise that “God” and “Church” are prominent in almost all five candidates’ statements and “Presbyterian” comes through pretty strong as well. But there are a number of interesting subtleties. (And the images below are displayed at about half size if you want to pop them out and have a closer look.)

Let me begin with Neal Presa. As you can see his cloud is dominated by “God” and “Church” with “one”, “Presbyterian”, “Christ”, “communities” and “mission” (and “Neal”) in a noticeably lower second tier. This is consistent with a recurring theme in his statement about the Church needing to be “catching up” to what God is about.  
 In many ways Randy Branson’s cloud is a bit different than all the rest. You will note that his is the only one with “God” not dominant in the cloud and that since Wordle is case-sensitive it differentiates between his use of the “Church” universal and the “church” particular. I was surprised that with his emphasis on the PC(USA) needing a Moderator-as-pastor at this time that the word “pastor” was not more prominent, but the associated word “ministry” is there. In a technical note, TE Branson is the only one to use the church abbreviation PCUSA and so that appears prominently in the cloud. The cloud does a good job of capturing his idea that this is a time of healing for the church so it might be looking a bit more inward.  
 Robert Austell’s Wordle cloud, like TE Branson’s, has several terms primary in the cloud – in this case “world”, “Christ”, “congregation” and “community”. In particular it reflects TE Austell’s emphasis on community and the outward look to the world. With his extensive work related to worship I was surprised that word is not more prominent and similarly for mission.  
 The first thing that struck me about Sue Krummel’s Wordle cloud was that her’s was the only candidates’ cloud with their name prominent in it. This is easily explained by the story telling about her family she does in her statement as well as the fact that her endorsement letter is peppered with her full name. Since that story telling relates to mission it is not surprising to see that and “world” also prominent in her cloud.  
 For the sake of completeness here is the cloud for Janet Edwards. In addition to “God” and “church” the term “Christ” is just as prominent. There are then several terms in the second tier like “new”, “unity”, “Presbyterian”, “change” and “moderator”. It is also interesting to note that a locality comes through stronger in her cloud than any other one due to the fact that Pittsburgh is not only the location of GA but also her long-time home and presbytery as well as her teaching at Pittsburgh Seminary and having historical family ties to it.  

This obviously is not intended to be anywhere near an exhaustive discussion of the candidates’ thoughts and positions. For those making the decision on Saturday night I don’t want this to substitute for a good read of the Moderatorial Candidates Book. I do hope that it gives everyone a good overview and maybe a slightly different look at the candidate’s statements. In addition, it is my observation that the single most important phase of the election process is the Q and A on the floor of the Assembly before the vote. I intend to be there live blogging that. We can make two assertions at this point – the new Moderator and Vice-Moderator will be teaching elders and the winning ticket will be gender balanced. To the rest we trust the leading of the Holy Spirit. (And on a side note, I am leaving it as an exercise for the reader to consider the references to the three persons of the Trinity in the Wordle clouds above.)

In conclusion I need to give some full disclosure and on a personal note I want to contribute what you might call a reference check. This is the first year in a while that I have had some significant previous interaction with one of the Moderator or Vice-Moderator candidates and it should be no surprise that it would be Robert Austell. He is, after all, a first class GA Junkie as testified by his great GA Help web site and he has done me the honor of linking this blog there. In working with him I have always found him sincere, hard working and well informed as well as having a cheerful and positive attitude. I have seen him working with the diverse theological perspectives in the PC(USA) and I really believe that his gracious dismissal resolution four years ago has done much to set a more peaceful tone for the PC(USA) today. And please don’t hold our shared like of Bluegrass Music against either one of us.  I don’t know the other three candidates well enough to single out Robert as the only choice for GA Moderator, but I know him well enough to say that if he is elected he will do a good job and represent the PC(USA) well.

And with that I turn it over to the wisdom, discernment and leading of the Holy Spirit through the voice of the commissioners. We pray that God will lift up a Moderator that God has prepared for these times.

Mid Councils Commission Report To The 220th GA Of The PC(USA)

Leave a reply


Having gotten through a bunch of posts related to a number of other GA’s let me turn to the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I am hoping to discuss a few of the major topics coming to the GA and I hope that my blogging time before the big show starts is sufficient to get through what I want to.

While many in the church are hanging on the results of the overtures concerning marriage, and a number outside the church are actively lobbying on both sides of the Israel/Palestine divestment debate, it is my view that the most important business coming to the Assembly in terms of the future of the PC(USA) is the Mid Councils Commission Report.

This Commission, originally known as the Middle Governing Bodies Commission but renamed when the church got the new name for governing bodies (councils), has been working hard since the last GA to produce a report and make recommendations. The report is a good piece of work and does a great job of dissecting the denomination and its problems. You can read the basic report (111 pages) or a version with all the data they collected ( 326 pages – you have been warned but presbygeeks can go have a field day ). In fact, in one of the presentations on the MCC Report I attended the member of the commission freely admitted that there is way more info in that data than the commission had time to massage out of it.

But the Commission’s output does not stop there. They also have posted a number of Resources, their Minutes and Meeting Documents, an active blog with embedded YouTube videos they have produced, a Twitter account (@mgbcomm), and a Facebook page. There has also been a lot of discussion of the Commission’s work on the individual blogs of Tod Bolsinger, the chair, and commission member John Vest. You can not say that this Commission was trying to be stealth about their work.

Let me make some comments first on the report in general so if you just want to see my comments on the recommendations you can jump down a bit.

The report begins with the usual front pieces including the recommendations and an executive summary. The main body of the report begins right up front with their vision:

We envision a larger geographic canvas, a secure frame of constitutional accountability, and creative, collaborative leaders experimenting in creating missional communities for sending disciples into to the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It then goes on to unpack that vision a bit before going on to assess the state of the PC(USA) specifically and the context of the changing world around us.  I know that the Commission is promoting a later piece of their report as the “if you are only going to read one thing read this…” but for me I think the preceding section on Presbyterians in a Post-Christendom World is a great reality check for anyone who tries to simplify the current context the denomination finds itself in.

So based on that what’s the nature of the recommendations the Commission is proposing? They say:

So instead of affirming structures that only protect us from the dysfunction of a few, we offer a proposal for the “maturing, motivated, and the missional”; that is, those who are willing to work together to draw upon the historic values of our past and faithfully reinterpret them to engage a far different world than any of our forbearers imagined.

Another way that they have been describing it is a denomination that is “Flat. Flexible. Faithful.” They then offer these suggestions that come out of their conversations:

  • Reengage the Pew in Presbyterian Shared Life, Mission, and Governance
  • Growing in Cultural Proficiency to Engage an Increasingly Multi‐Cultural Context
  • Develop Capacity to Lead Congregational Transformation
  • Rebuild Trust

The report then gets into details of their work — if you are interested in it go read it. In summary, they talked with anyone and everyone from the denomination they could get into a room with them. In addition they conducted surveys of the wider church through Research Services. They are a little bit vague on consultations with other denominations and I would be interested in seeing more here since I think there is a lot to learn from some of our Presbyterian brothers and sisters around the country and the globe.

I must admit that in my early thinking about this Commission I was anticipating some more concrete recommendations about what the PC(USA) should look like going forward. We will see if it is for better or for worse, but the Commission report does lays out a lot of models as examples of what is being done now without recommending or favoring any specifically, except to the extent that they got included. They basically invite the church have at it.  So in order to create the space for that to happen they have eight recommendations that fall into three categories.

Synods
This may be the recommendation that has gotten the most press and many see as “getting rid of synods.” Yes, the very first recommendation in the report is to strike Book of Order section G-3.04, but read the recommendations carefully and you realize that a lot of what we now know as synods continue in some form under their proposal. The Commission describes it as Repurposing synods.

Synods as a judicatory court governing body council would disappear but similar work would go on in different forms. The Commission proposes that most of the ecclesiastical work would be carried out in five Regional Administrative Commissions at the General Assembly level (Recommendation 3). Similarly, the judicial structure would be revamped to continue to provide for an intermediary judicial level (Recommendation 4). And each of the current synods would bring to the next GA a plan for what is going to happen to its assets, projects and programs (Recommendation 2). We will have to wait and see what diversity of proposals there are to this repurposing.

Since this set of recommendations seems to continue synod activity in a modular form it is interesting to speculate about alternate options for synods. As I will discuss in a moment the report recommends providing a new flexibility at the presbytery level and it might be worth considering the possibility of extending similar flexibility to synods rather than the compartmentalization.

I should also note the significant transitional infrastructure that comes with the transformation of the synods. There will be a committee to set up the Regional Administrative Commissions and to clean up the polity wording for the Constitution (Recommendation 3). Another committee would work on setting up the new PJC structure. Finally, there would be a commission that would be empowered to act on presbytery and synod rearrangements in the interim until the Regional Commissions are empowered to do so.  This final Commission is important because it will allow the denomination to act more rapidly on presbytery restructuring rather than waiting for the next regular General Assembly.

Presbyteries
The Commission is recommending something that has been proposed before ( 217th, 218th, 219th ) but overwhelmingly rejected, the idea of flexible presbyteries. The Commission does put two provisions on the recommendations that makes it different from previous proposals. First the flexible presbyteries are only for missional purposes and not for more general purposes of affinity (but I would speculate there is a thin line between the two). Second, there is a sunset clause and these flexible presbyteries are provisional and only for trial purposes and at the end of the trial at midnight on December 31, 2021 these golden carriages turn back into pumpkins and everyone goes back to where they started. And one of the things the Commission emphasizes is that at the presbytery level nothing has to change.

The details are pretty straight forward: It takes ten churches and ten ministers to form a presbytery. (But the report says churches on average only have 56% installed pastors so maybe it would really take 18 churches to come up with 10 pastors.) Under Recommendation 6 if you have the requisite number you can form a non-geographic presbytery for missional purposes. The churches remain connected to their geographic presbyteries of origin, can split their per capita between them, have voice in meetings of the presbytery of origin, and have to have the approval of the presbytery of origin for matters regarding property or for division and dismissal.  For churches moving between geographic presbyteries it would work the same way.

Associated with this is Recommendation 5 which forms the previously mentioned commission to act on behalf of the Assembly in matters regarding presbytery and synod reorganizations.

Racial Ethnic Ministries
One of the hot topics this Commission faced was racial ethnic ministries in the PC(USA). This has to be dealt with if synods are to be repurposed because, as the report says (page 73):

It is widely acknowledged, and factually irrefutable, that Synods have been the traditional Safe Haven for matters regarding racial ethnic Ministry. This truth emerges from two (2) primary factors, Critical Mass and Sociological Necessity.

The Commission emphasized this relationship and formed a Racial Ethnic Strategies Task Force as part of their Commission to specifically address this and their report is included in the body of the main report.

In response to this need the Commission recommends (Recommendation 8) that a National Racial Ethnic Ministries Task Force be formed.  The recommendation begins:

In light of what we have heard in our conversation with the church identifying a critical condition concerning lack of confidence in the substance and direction of racial ethnic ministry, we recommend

It goes on to specify the groups the members of the task force should be drawn from and to state that its charge is to “review, assess and explore the call to, responsibility in, and vision for racial ethnic ministry within the PC(USA).”

Trust
One final area the Commission noted was the break-down of trust within the denomination. They write (page 41):

Of all the “non‐structural issues” that we have identified, perhaps the single greatest gift that this Commission can raise up for the church is to say as loudly and as clearly as we possibly can that there is a crisis of trust in our denomination and that it, more than anything else, is the single greatest threat to the vitality and future existence of the church.

Congregational leaders don’t trust presbyteries. Presbyteries don’t trust synods. Synod leaders see themselves as the “breakwater” protecting the church from the General Assembly (which might be the least trusted system of all.) As the report from our Commission’s Racial Ethnic Strategy Task force states, “Also prominent in the Commission’s polling of the Church were the expressions of deep and abiding mistrust – fueled by a general absence of meaningful connection to the national, regional and even local judicatories.”

There is no specific recommendation to rebuild trust but they explain it this way (page 43):

Perhaps the greatest effect of our proposals is that it will by necessity bring the church closer. Now, for congregations to have more flexibility they will necessarily practice discernment within both presbytery and General Assembly processes. While the flexibility to experiment comes with built‐in mechanisms to insure relational and constitutional fidelity, the true test of our trust will come as we allow room for others to create presbyteries that are different than our preferences and maybe even contradictory to our convictions.

There is a related recommendation, number 7, which asks for a task force to review the General Assembly Mission Council and the Office of the General Assembly, their “nature and function … specifically with respect to their relationship with and support of mid councils as they serve the vitality and mission of congregations in our changing context. Regarding this they write:

Over and again, stories were told about the pervasive distrust of General Assembly, about the amount of resources that go into our six‐part structure, the lack of an effective and clear national strategy toward immigrant populations, and the ways in which the GAMC “competes” with presbyteries and synods for giving dollars. A flatter hierarchy with a focus on the congregation as the center of the mission of the church will not be complete until the church reconsiders the bureaucratic structures of GAMC and eliminates any competition for power or resources between the GAMC and OGA. These conditions foster a bureaucratic mentality at a time when we need to do get back to mission and ministry, doing “whatever it takes” to revitalize local congregations. [emphasis in original]

But Wait, There’s More
Now the GA junkies reading this are well aware that a commission report like this does not happen in a vacuum and there are other opinions floating around out there.

The first set of opinions are those attached to the report on PC-Biz. The Assembly Committee on the Constitution weighs in first in a lengthy discussion. They note that the first four recommendations concerning synods are a work in progress and while it contains the constitutional language to begin the process they express concern that the details are left for later.  They write

The
Advisory Committee on the Constitution (ACC) notes that the
recommendations presume a number of constitutional amendments that are
not yet before this assembly (cf. Recommendations 3 and 4). There is
considerable risk in committing to a course of action on the assumption
that the proposed action can be accomplished constitutionally without
having the opportunity to evaluate the merits of the proposed mechanisms
for implementation.

In addition they advise that the four recommendations be taken as a single multi-part motion. While expressing concern about non-geographic presbyteries and suggesting that the end could be accomplished by affiliations that do not require constitutional changes they more suggest tweaks to the language than out-right disapproval.

That is not the case for the Assembly Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns which asks that none of the Commissions recommendations be approved and instead the present an outline for a new Racial Ethnic Ministry Commission. However, in reading through this comment I see no powers or responsibilities being granted this entity which requires it to be a commission to act on behalf of the General Assembly.

The next group to comment is the Assembly Committee on Social Witness Policy. Their comment is brief – they recommend the Commission’s recommendations be disapproved. The opening line of their rational pretty much sums up their view: “Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.” The rational is long and I will summarize it by saying that they see continued value in the PC(USA) structure and tradition and that the main cause of the decline of the mainline is the intolerance young people see in the church.

The Committee on the Office of the General Assembly is much more surgical in it’s recommendation. It too sees the Commission’s recommendations as a work in progress and recommends referring portions that are focused on constitutional language. It wants a task force to refine these recommendations to address the critical and important issues.

The General Assembly Committee on Representation advises the Assembly to approve Recommendation 8 creating the National Racial Ethnic Ministries Task Force. They too note the non-traditional nature of non-geographic presbyteries and express concern for groupings by choice rather than by geography and implications for diversity.

Finally, there is a joint comment by the General Assembly Mission Council and the Office of the General Assembly that expresses much of the same interest and concern as the GACOR recommendation does. It particularly highlights the historic linkage between the synods and racial ethnic ministry in the denomination and expresses their willingness to resource the proposed task force.

The Mid Councils Review Commissioners Committee at GA has more than the Mid Councils Commission report to deal with. There are 19 business items plus the review of the minutes from the 16 synods.  Within the business items another six are transfers of churches between presbyteries and sometimes synods.  While most of the remaining items would have some interaction with the Commission report – such as 05-01 that would permit synods to reorganize presbyteries without the need for GA approval or 05-14 from the ACC that asks for an Authoritative Interpretation that non-geographic presbyteries are “only for the purposes of meeting the mission needs of racial ethnic or immigrant congregations” – three items directly address the report. Item 05-02 from the Presbytery of St. Andrew proposes the alternative of reorganizing the synods down into six to eight rather than the Commission’s repurposing scheme. Item 05-09 from the Presbytery of San Diego asks both to extend the Commission’s service to handle the presbytery reorganizations or make the new commission proposed in Recommendation 5 a successor commission, as well as proposing a slightly different plan for flexible presbyteries. Finally, in item 05-10 the Presbytery of Baltimore says that all of these changes are too much at one time and they ask the Assembly to delay the non-geographic presbytery recommendations to the 222nd GA (2016).

And in another venue one of the required questions for the candidates for Moderator of the GA to answer in the Moderatorial Candidates Book is about what they find “especially promising” about the Commission report.  All four of the candidates speak highly of the Commission report and mention the flexibility and space for creativity and creating new relationships especially the partnering between churches for mission.

Concluding Remarks
I have been watching the process of the Commission, I have read their report and considered the reaction to it both in the formal comments and around the web ( exempli gratia ). Blogger John Shuck will be serving as a commissioner on the Mid Council Review Committee and he has already noted that support or opposition to the Commission recommendations fall along familiar lines. It is a complex report and most would agree it is a work in progress. Maybe the biggest question is not the church’s openness to doing things in a new way but whether it is willing to take a step in a particular direction without all the “i’s” dotted and the “t’s” crossed. And support and opposition is complex as well with multiple parts and the option of supporting it in part and disagreeing in part.

What will happen at GA? It might be approved with few or just minor revisions. Maybe it will be deemed “not ready for prime time” and referred back to the Commission with instructions (and the Commission’s life extended) much as the nFOG was. More likely the different parts will see different fates. I don’t know and I am hesitant to speculate, but where angels fear to tread… If I had to predict based purely on my gut feeling I would expect that the GAMC/OGA Review Task Force and the National Racial Ethnic Task Force (Recommendations 7 and 8) will be adopted overwhelmingly. The provisional non-geographic presbyteries pieces (Recommendations 5 and 6) will be more controversial but will be adopted with some revisions and with some opposition. The synod recommendations (1-4) will be deemed still too much of a work in progress and referred to someone to work out the details and bring it back to the 221st GA.

But as with many things Presbyterian the process will probably be as important, and telling, as the outcome. I see this issue as the primary bellwether at this GA for the future of the denomination and its openness to change. It will be here that the tension between different visions of the future from different parts of the denomination can best be discerned. And that indicator will continue down to the presbyteries if any of the constitutional amendments are sent down to them. How much can we fight the seven last words of the church – “We’ve never done it that way before.” [ Hint: we have done it that way before but that is a topic for another time.] Is Flat, Flexible and Faithful what we need to be about now? As the PC(USA) looks to its future may we be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

And now for something completely different… to conclude, a bit of silliness. While reading through the Recommendations of this report with a task force here and a commission there it started to remind me of something and so I fleshed it out so we could all sing along. I think you’ll catch on to the tune…

On the fifth day of G.A. the MC Comm gave to us
5 Regional Commissions
4 Hundred pages
3 Book of Order amendments
2 Review task forces
And a request for synod plans to repurpose

32nd General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church

1 Reply

  		As if there was not enough GA action for one week another GA kicks off tomorrow. The 32nd General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church will be meeting at First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge, Louisiana through Saturday morning. The first day is devoted to the Assembly Workshop and the business of Worship. The regular business sessions begin on Thursday.

If you want to say up-to-date with this meeting here are some resources:

The church does have their official Twitter account (@EPchurch) and the Stated Clerk, Jeff Jeremiah, is on Twitter (@Jeff_Jeremiah) but he has not previously tweeted. The announced hashtag is #epc32.

At the present time the hashtag is pretty quiet but for more on the meeting you might want to keep an eye on TE David Fischler with his blog The Reformed Pastor and on Twitter at @dfischler. (UPDATE: And per his comment below also blogging at Stand Firm.) I will update with others as I spot them or if you want to point them out to me.

There are several interesting items of business to watch out for. You can find the official preview from EPNews and let me highlight a couple of those.

First, there is a proposed revision of the Book of Government section of the Book of Order. No action this year as this is effectively a first reading with the request that the Assembly distribute it to the wider church for comment.

There are a number of interesting item of business regarding presbyteries. One of these is the completion of the authorized term for the National Transitional Presbytery and the New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery. These groups will report to the Assembly and then be dissolved at the end of the meeting with their member churches either joining geographic presbyteries or finding another direction. There is also a Presbytery Boundaries Review Interim Committee to study those issues. They will present both a recommendation that the Committee on Administration study forming a Great Plains Presbytery as well as a revised “Position Statement on Presbytery Development,” which can be found in the Appendix to their report.

Finally, there are eleven overtures to this Assembly from presbyteries and one of the more interesting ones is 12-C from Central South Presbytery that would provide some confidentiality for clergy salaries. There is some interest in this overture as indicated by one concurring overture (12-E) and two communications with a church and a presbytery expressing their support for the overture. This overture would change the reporting process for ministers’ salaries so that the full terms of call only need to appear publicly in the presbytery records the first time and all further records need only list the change in the terms of call.

I look forward to hearing more about these issues and the other before the Assembly and contribute my own prayers for the leading of the Holy Spirit in their deliberations and fellowship.

40th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America

5 Replies
  Coming up this week we have the two largest annual American Presbyterian General Assembly meetings. The first will be the meeting of the 40th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America which will convene on Tuesday 19 June in Louisville, Kentucky. The meeting concludes on Friday. Committee meetings and pre-Assembly workshops and seminars happen on Monday and most of the day Tuesday with the Assembly convening Tuesday evening.

There is plenty of info related to this meeting. Here is some of the most useful and important material.

If you want to follow the proceedings on Twitter this should be a fairly active meeting. As already mentioned the official news feed is @PCAByFaith but at this moment it seems the hashtag has not been settled between #pcaga or #pcaga12. As for individuals at GA… where to start? Let me suggest a few and I will update as needed – so for starters @PCAPresbyter, @RaeWhitlock, @EdEubanks, @SeanMLucas and @Weslianus. (That looks like a good Friday Follow on Twitter.) UPDATE: Add to that list @FredGreco

Lots of interesting business coming to the Assembly including that extensive report on Insider Movements.  With this meeting a lot has been known to happen with records reviews so we will see what might happen when that report comes up on Wednesday afternoon.

Fourty-three overtures is a fairly typical volume, or maybe a bit more than typical, for this Assembly and many of them are the routine business of doing things decently and in order. This would include Overtures 5 and 7, 23 and 24, and 22, 39, 40, 41 and 42. Each of these are sets of concurring overtures related to changing presbytery boundaries, including the last one which would dissolve Louisiana Presbytery and merge it into the four surrounding presbyteries.

There is a lot of important business in the overtures so let me break them into a couple of classes. A number of them are polity changes to adjust sections of the Book of Church Order (BCO), the Rules of Assembly (ROA) or the rules of the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC). There are also two (37, 44) recognizing the 30th anniversary of the “Joining and Receiving” of the Reformed Church, Evangelical Synod with the PCA.

Several of the overtures deal with confessional issues and confessional standards. This includes concurring overtures 1 and 2 which seek to have not just those that are ordained, but those that are in the process and are coming up for licensure to be examined for their conformity with the Standards. Another interesting proposed change to the BCO would make the distinction between confessing and catechizing the faith more distinct in the BCO. Overture 35 asks for a rewording of 55-1 and the addition of a new 55-2 so that faith is confessed using the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and is catechized using the Westminster Standards. This is actually part of a related series of overtures from Southeast Alabama Presbytery that deal with membership, including asking for the requirement that to join the church an individual must affirm the Apostles Creed (Overtures 33 and 34).

There are a couple of overtures that explore important theological questions. Overture 30  argues that in the Last Supper Jesus distributed the bread and wine in two separate sacramental actions and since communion by intinction merges the actions it is therefore not an appropriate means to distribute communion. The overture proposes language to make this explicit in the BCO. Another major topic this year is the historic nature of Adam and Eve and two concurring overtures, 10 and 29, ask the Assembly to reaffirm a PCUS statement of 1886 declaring the special creation of Adam and Eve by God with Adam being created from only the dust. These overtures also note that the failure of the PCUS GA to reaffirm this statement in 1969 “was a sign of the apostasy of the PCUS.” In response is Overture 26 which states that current statements on this topic are sufficient and that the specificity of the declaration is outside the Westminster Standards and therefore the statement proposed in the other overtures should not be adopted. (Earlier this afternoon updates from the committee meeting indicate that the committee will recommend not affirming Overtures 10 and 29 and affirming Overture 26.)

Just a sampling of the business before the Assembly. For a fuller discussion of the overtures check out Wes White’s blog Johannes Weslianus.

So I wish all the commissioners and families a good time in Louisville and enjoying the barbeque. Our prayers are with you for your deliberations and work.

Running The Numbers — Dismissals From Tropical Florida And Mississippi Presbyteries

5 Replies


Over the last couple of weeks a big deal has been made about how the recent dismissals of churches in the Southeastern US have removed about one-third of the members out of a couple of presbyteries. Some examples of this media include the articles on the Layman site (Florida, Mississippi) and an article on the Christianity Today site. Well, I decided to drill down into the data a bit.

First my data set: The latest from the PC(USA) are the 2010 comparative statistics and the congregational reporting also for 2012. I looked up the stats on each congregation in each presbytery and used Table 4 from the Comparative Statistics as a comparison. The list from the PC(USA) Find A Congregation when searched by presbytery was compared to the list each presbytery has posted of their churches (Florida, Mississippi). At the time I ran the numbers the dismissed churches still appeared on each list. Interestingly, the PC(USA) list by presbytery misses churches in each presbytery (First Pompano Beach in Tropical Florida and First Pascagoula and Vernal Presbyterian in Mississippi). In addition, the PC(USA) list includes Wiggins Presbyterian in Mississippi which no longer appears on the presbytery’s list. Finally, one church in Tropical Florida, Korean Central Presbyterian Church, has no data in the PC(USA) statistics. Working through all these differences does result in a list of churches that agrees in number with Table 4.

I checked with Jason Reagan, the Layman reporter who wrote the articles, and he confirmed that the numbers in his articles are current numbers supplied by the churches and the presbyteries. For the analysis I did the 2010 numbers provide a consistent database with a specific snapshot date for comparison both within the presbyteries as well as between them.

Presbytery of Tropical Florida
With 55 of 56 churches reporting data for the close of 2010 the membership of the churches in the Presbytery was 13,291 based on adding all the individual churches and 13,425 from Table 4. The average size of a church was 242 members with a median of 127 members. For the 47 continuing churches the total membership is 10,137 with an average of 221 members per church and a median of 113 members. The nine dismissed churches have a total membership of 3,124, an average membership of 350, and a median membership of 188. Seven of the nine have memberships above the Presbytery median. As a percentage, 16.1% of the churches in the presbytery and 23.7% of the members in the presbytery were dismissed.

For comparison, the Layman reported that the total current membership of the Presbytery was 13,525 and the total current membership of the dismissed churches is about 3,800. This total membership number that is slightly higher than the PC(USA) number may reflect slight growth in the Presbytery or information on the missing numbers for the one church. The difference for the number of members dismissed is significantly larger and using the current numbers from the Layman results in 28.1% of the members being dismissed.

Presbytery of Mississippi
For the 43 churches in the Presbytery at the close of 2010 there is a total membership of 4,425 from adding the individual congregations compared with 4,485 from Table 4. The average membership is 103 members and the median is 47 members. The five dismissed churches have a membership of 1297 (29.3% of the total membership) with an average membership of 259 members and a median of 361. Three dismissed churches have memberships higher than the median of the whole group and are the three largest churches in the Presbytery. One church is the median of the whole group and one is below. The 38 churches remaining have a total membership of 3128, an average membership of 82 and a median of 43.

According to the Layman article the current total membership of the Presbytery is about 4,300 members from which the dismissed churches will remove 1,400 members or about 32.5%.

Since collecting the data and running the numbers above another presbytery in the area, Central Florida, has dismissed two churches.  I am not going to do the same comprehensive analysis for the presbytery right now (they list 75 churches so it will take more time than I have at the moment) but Table 4 lists a total membership of 27,193 giving an average per congregation of 363 members. The table lists the median church membership at 206. For the two dismissed churches Trinity of Satellite Beach has 877 members and First Presbyterian of Orlando has 3521 members. These 4,398 members account for 16.2% of the presbytery membership.

Discussion
One reason for undertaking this analysis is because these are large enough samples to try to quantify something that some of us have noticed – that the churches leaving the PC(USA) are on average larger than most of the other churches in the denomination.  With the past pattern of one church from a presbytery here and one from another presbytery there arguments could be made that this was not typical or comparisons were weak.  Now, however, with five churches from one presbytery and nine from another being dismissed in groups there is a more coherent data set.

As I note above, the churches dismissed in this round are larger than the average church in the presbytery based on both the average size and the median. For Tropical Florida the dismissed churches are on average 45% larger (350 versus 242) and for Mississippi 150% larger (259 versus 103). Similarly, the median is 76% and 668% larger for the dismissed churches.

It is worth noting that the average size congregation in the PC(USA) nationally in the 2010 data set is 191 and so while Tropical Florida has a larger average (242) and Mississippi a lower average (103) the average of the churches dismissed from each presbytery are larger than the national average (350 and 259). Similarly, the national median is 95 and all these relationships hold for that measure as well.

What first caught my attention regarding these numbers was the claim that one-third of each presbytery had been dismissed. I have noted previously that one-third/two-thirds splits seem to be one common division in Presbyterian divisions. In this case it is a bit lower than one-third, but still in the neighborhood and so it may hold in this case.

The problems with identifying this at this present time are however numerous. One issue is that additional churches may request dismissal so it is only a snapshot and not a completed process. Another is that while the churches have been dismissed there are likely some members who will be in a continuing church or who will remain in the PC(USA) joining neighboring churches. Another complication is that the dismissed churches are not all leaving together but some are going to ECO and some to the EPC. Finally, is it a reasonable thing to just look at individual presbyteries in isolation and ignore the big picture of the whole denomination.

What we can document from this is the fact that on average the churches that are requesting, and being granted, dismissal are larger churches. I can come up with numerous reasons for this but further work would be necessary to document whether there is one dominant reason. One possible explanation is that conservative churches tend to be more vibrant and viable and therefore be in a better position to attract and retain members. Another possible explanation is that larger churches simply
by virtue of their size are in a better position to strike out on their own, or join a fledgling group like the ECO, while smaller churches are dependent on some of the resources of the larger denominational structure, including monies paid into the pension plan. Those are just two of the several possible explanations.

It is worth noting that this trend does present challenges for the PC(USA). As we see in Tropical Florida it amplifies the membership losses when 16.1% of the churches leaving means that nearly one quarter of the members are dismissed with them. And in each presbytery you will note that the average size of church and the median size dropped after the dismissals.

While churches have been leaving for the EPC for a number of years now the dismissals to ECO have only just begun. It may be too early to reliably consider these numbers so we will see if this trend continues or if it changes with time. We shall see.

79th General Assembly Of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church

Leave a reply

Last evening in Wheaton, Illinois, the 79th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church convened.

On the one hand, this is always a very easy General Assembly to follow since a great daily narrative is traditionally posted by the church.

On the other hand, if you are trying to follow along “live” this is usually not a meeting that provides a lot to follow. There is no live streaming, I have not detected any Twitter chatter (please let me know if I am missing it and I will update) and the reports and business the Assembly will be considering are not posted to the web, at least I have not seen them.

If you want the background info you can find their Confessional Standards, Book of Church Order, General Assembly Papers (white papers on various topics) and the Standing Rules on the General Assembly page.

And with that, I look forward to following along on the Daily Update and extend our prayers for the meeting and for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in your deliberations.

208th Stated Meeting Of The General Synod Of The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

3 Replies
  In just a couple of hours the 208th Stated Meeting of the General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church will begin. The meeting will be held at Bonclarken, as it usually is, and will continue through Thursday. Resources for the meeting can be found on the Resources page. Specifically, the Standards are there or you can get the Form of Government section as an individual download. There is also the Manual of Authorities and Duties and a jumping off point for the Synod Minutes Archive. The reports for this meeting should be posted tomorrow, June 6, according to the notice on the page.

If you want to follow the meeting on Twitter there are official accounts for ARP Church (@ARPChurch) and the ARP Christian Education Ministries (@ARP_CEM). I don’t see a hashtag yet (#gs208?) but there is a low level of traffic about the meeting. Will update as appropriate. UPDATE: The hashtag is #synod2012 (Thanks Seth) UPDATE 2: It turns out the official Tweeter to follow is @ARPMagazine and they use both the #synod2012 and #arpsynod

As the meeting progresses there is the ARP Church official news feed. There are a couple of unofficial sources that you may want to follow as well, including stories from The Aquila Report and Dr. William Evans’ articles on the Reformation 21 blog as well as the very focused ARP Talk blog.

A couple of ARP bloggers who I regularly read who may be blogging about the meeting include Brian L. Howard (Twitter @BrianLHoward), Seth Stark on his blog The Ruling Elder (Twitter @TheRulingElder) and Tim Philips on his blog Gairney Bridge.

For a good rundown on the business before the Synod I would refer you to Dr. Evans’ Reformation 21 article “2012 ARP General Synod Faces Tough Decisions.” One of these topics is a Memorial (read Overture for those in many other Presbyterian branches) that affirms the Creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 as history and not mythology. This topic is being tackled by some other branches as well and I hope to make some unified comments about it later.  This Synod will also be reviewing a proposed new Form of Government section to the Standards.

But the real potential lightning rod at this meeting is the continued discussion, some might characterize it as a battle, between the ARP Church and its college and seminary – Erskine. The church has for a couple of years now been looking for ways to strengthen its relationship to the school and some interpret the actions of the school as an attempt to not only ward off the church’s interest in strengthening the relationship but weakening what is already in place.

At last year’s Synod meeting the college was asked to consider bylaws revisions which would allow the General Synod more direct control over the membership of the school’s Board of Trustees. Back in February a report was presented to the Trustees and they voted not to change the bylaws but affirmed, in a response to the church, that they appreciated the support of the church and needed to continue the dialogue.

But the decision by the Trustees was not unanimous and eleven trustees have submitted a minority report (published by The Aquila Report) to the Synod. In fact, the trustees signing the minority report include some who voted for the original response and changed their minds after finding that the report on which it was based was factually incorrect. I won’t try to summarize the minority report here but simply note that the minority wants all parties to recognize that Erskine is an agency of the ARP Church and its Board should recognize that it is not authorizing the church’s role but recognizing it. They also discuss the impasse and the reasons for it:

In saying this, we readily acknowledge that responsibility for the
current impasse lies with both the Board (for its resistance and failure
to implement the Synod’s mission for the Erskine institutions), and
with the Synod (for its failure to require ongoing accountability of the
Board to the mission). Furthermore, the Synod’s own structure has
hampered its efforts to respond to a more recent well-organized and
determined opposition by those wanting a more independent Erskine, and
especially to the vigorous public relations campaign mounted by those
opposing Synod’s authority to remove trustees.

The minority report recommends two things – First, that the Synod reaffirm the under the Manual of Authorities and Duties the Erskine Board has direct responsibility for operating the college and seminary. Second, that the Moderator of the General Synod appoint a special committee to study and make recommendations about the relationship between the two bodies.

So, with this and other weighty decisions before this deliberative body we offer our prayers for this meeting of the General Synod and await what decisions you make under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

138th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada

2 Replies
  Well, the Assemblies and Synods on the other side of the pond are not quite finished yet, but this week we can turn our attention to the first of the North American meetings.

Beginning today, 3 June, the 138th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada will convene at Durham College and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Ontario. The meeting will conclude on Thursday. If you are interested in following along with this meeting here is information you might find useful

One interesting item to pay attention to is the special question session that was held this afternoon called Q&A@GA. This event is designed to help commissioners focus on particular questions they have about specific items of business. They describe the event like this: “In a marketplace setting, commissioners will be invited to meet
committee conveners and staff to seek clarification and raise questions
or concerns they may have about the reports and recommendations to
General Assembly.”

Let me conclude with the note that the sharp-eyed may notice that Colin moved down down into the category of “other observers” on Twitter this year from his previous position in the Official category. Colin recently stepped down as the Associate Secretary for Communications.  There is a Minute of Appreciation for him in the Life and Mission Agency Supplementary Report. I want to add my own word of thanks. I have deeply appreciated Colin’s ministry in that position. When I have had a question about the nuances of PCC polity he has always quickly responded to my inquiries (exempli gratia). He has also been proactive about promptly alerting me to news items I would be interested in. Colin – THANK YOU VERY MUCH for all you have done for the church. And to the PCC – I really hope you do appreciate him for his ministry and good luck finding a replacement equal to him.

And with that – best wishes to the whole Presbyterian Church in Canada and prayers for your 138th General Assembly this week.

Presbyterian News Headlines For The Week Ending May 26, 2012 — Assemblies, Departures and Arson

Leave a reply


This past week the headlines seemed to be dominated by General Assemblies, particularly the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

Ministers attending General Assembly told to ‘clock in’ or lose expenses

Scotsman, 19 May 2012 (yes, slightly out of range but I wanted to keep the GA news together)
The Church of Scotland has a new electronic voting system which doubles as an attendance system at each session. Commissioners, not just ministers, must attend 10 sessions to get expenses reimbursed. A motion to change the Standing Rules to make it 12 sessions next year was defeated.

A move to restrict the use of Church of Scotland buildings to activities not in conflict with the religious principles of the Kirk led to a couple of different stories

General Assembly: Church accused of facilitating worship of ‘false idols’

Scotland on Sunday, 20 May 2012

Hindus object labeling of their deities as ‘false idols’ in Church of Scotland assembly

South Asia Mail, 26 May 2012

In other Assembly News…

General Assembly: Cash-strapped congregations told to donate more to Kirk

Scotsman, 25 May 2012
Insurance costs are rising dramatically

General Assembly: Pay day loan firms ‘doing great damage to society’

Scotsman, 22 May 2012
Related to the major economic report presented to the Assembly

At the same time the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland was meeting and their work generated a couple of headlines

Free Church of Scotland study sees same-sex marriage as ‘social experiment’

STV, 22 May 2012
Reporting on the marriage report the Free Church adopted

New ministers admitted to Free Church of Scotland

Stornoway Gazette, 25 May 2012
Two ministers that left the Church of Scotland over the choice of trajectory to move towards the ordination of active homosexuals were received by the Free Church GA.

In other news around the world

Southern Presbyterians Lose Third of Members, But Amicably

Christianity Today, 24 May 2012
In a commentary piece it is noted that in the church dismissals I mentioned last week two presbyteries, Mississippi and Tropical Florida, each graciously dismissed about one third of their membership.

And two high-profile congregational votes to request dismissal

Church votes to join new denomination

WYFF Greenville, 21 May 2012

Texas Presbyterian Church Splits Over Vote to Leave PCUSA

Christian Post, 23 May 2012 – Although in this case there was a large enough minority that a continuing group will be organized

Mixed reactions over Malawi’s plan to repeal anti-gay law

Christian Science Monitor, 21 May 2012
The proposal by the new president of Malawi to repeal laws banning homosexual practice and same-sex marriages is opposed by, among others, the Nkhoma Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian.

Church daycare fire ruled arson

WAVY, 23 May 2012
A fire at Royster Memorial Presbyterian Church of Norfolk, VA, on May 9 was ruled to be arson

2012 General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church In Ireland

Leave a reply
  After a two day break we now turn our attention to the other side of the North Channel and the activities in Belfast. At 7:00 PM tomorrow evening, Monday 28 May, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will convene in the Assembly Hall. If you are interested, here is some helpful information:
  • The Church has produced an excellent narrative of their docket as well as the more standard programme of the meeting on the same page.
  • The narrative contains links to the reports in order of discussion and you can also get them in alphabetical order on the reports page. I don’t see a link to the complete Blue Book although some reports have been issued after publication of the Blue Book. At some point it should appear on the Archives page.
  • The Assembly meeting is typically livestreamed. I don’t see a link yet but will update as appropriate – UPDATE: Live Streaming
  • Likewise, there are usually news reports from The Press Office. There is the news page or I will update if a separate page is used.
  • If you need a polity refresher you should check out their unified document, The Code
  • In the past the PCI has done a wonderful and prolific job of tweeting the Assembly at @pciassembly. For the meeting the hashtag is #pciga12
  • Other Twitter accounts related to the church that could be interesting are @PCIYAC from the Youth and Children department and @pciSPUD from the Youth Assembly
  • Other observers of the GA to keep an eye on include Alan in Belfast (Twitter @AlanInBelfast, blog Alan in Belfast) and the local news site Slugger O’Toole with their Twitter @sluggerotoole

The preview of the Assembly acknowledges that this year’s meeting will be a bit quieter than several past meetings as restructurings are implemented. One of the interesting reports should be the Financial Crisis Panel formed in response to the Presbyterian Mutual Society issue. They will report under the General Board report and be highlighting lessons learned and recommendations for the future.

One of the other interesting items under the General Board report is the Doctrine Panel which will be presenting a report on marriage. This has definitely been a consistant theme across General Assemblies this year and like the others this has its own particular nuances.  Consider the remit from the 2009 GA:

The terms of the 2009 General Assembly remit to the Doctrine Committee were as follows: ‘That the Westminster Confession, chapter 24, paragraph 3, states: “It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who are able with judgement to give their consent; yet it is the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord”. Within the Church, there is a variety of interpretations held concerning what is meant by “to marry only in the Lord”. Such confusion arising from a variety of interpretations is unhelpful and is giving rise to pastoral difficulties and clarification is therefore required’.

A draft was presented last year and has been commented upon by the presbyteries and in response to that significant rewriting and restructuring occurred. In particular at the end of the introductory material the Panel says

In the present report, we have altered the order in which we present the material. The report presented in 2009 was divided into three sections: (a) the Confession; (b) Scripture and (c) pastoral issues. It began with the Confession not because we regarded it as having priority over Scripture, but because the remit referred specifically to the Confession. However, Presbytery responses revealed that perceived deviation from the Confession was a cause of concern only to the extent and on the assumption that this was also a deviation from Scripture, a principle which, we assume, is shared by both the Doctrine Committee and the General Assembly. We have therefore judged it advisable to begin this revised report with biblical materials and proceed to make brief remarks on the Confession after that.

After considering these issues the Panel states a general principle based on the Apostle Paul’s writings that “those who truly seek to follow Jesus Christ should marry only those who also truly seek to follow Jesus Christ.” In their conclusion they state three things:

  • It is important to uphold marriage, understood as a relationship between man and woman, in the third millennium…
  • It follows that teaching about marriage and relationships is important in the churches. When this is done to the exclusion of wider teaching on a range of social issues, ministry becomes unbalanced, but we believe that it cannot be neglected in any congregation.
  • The imperfection of the church, like that of the people of Israel, for all the differences between them, results in a situation with which we are bound to wrestle: God’s requirement, on the one hand, that we should be holy and blameless; the reality, on the other, that we are not like that. We find Paul, in particular, wrestling with this in his epistles and instructing the churches with both things in mind – the need to be holy and the necessity of being realistic.

Each of these are only excerpts of the conclusion so check the report if you want the full discussion. And much more detail and discussion is available in the full report which begins on page 38 of the General Board report. The General Board reports on Wednesday.

So we look forward to another GA and our prayers are with the Assembly and the incoming Moderator, the Rev. Roy Patton. May the Holy Spirit indeed be moving among you.