Non-Geographic Presbyteries?

It's getting to be that time of year - well, every two years.  General Assembly will soon be upon us. One of the most riveting issues coming before the Assembly, for those who work with Presbyterian polity, is the report of the Mid-Councils Commission.

Now, I realize any non-Presbyterian reading these words - and, if truth be told, all but a small segment of Presbyterians - will gaze upon them and respond: "Say what?"

Yet, to those who regularly imbibe the rarified air of church governance discussions, the Mid-Councils Report is one of the most paradigm-shifting changes to come down the Presbyterian pike in decades - rivaled only by the 2010 Assembly's passage of the new Form of Government (nFOG) and, before that, nothing (not, at least, since the reunion of northern and southern Presbyterians in 1983).

That's because the Mid-Councils Report recommends that synods be abolished.

Yea, gentle presbyter, abolished. That entire section of the Form of Government will simply be cut from the good book - no, not that Good Book, the other one - as brazenly as ol' Tom Jefferson took scissors in hand and excised Jesus' miracles from the New Testament.

OK, I'll admit I'm waxing hyperbolic here.  But seriously, the reduction in the number of councils (née governing bodies, née judicatories, née courts) is a rather big change.  If this proposal survives the Assembly intact, and if its constitutional amendments are subsequently approved by a majority of the presbyteries, the only remaining councils above the level of the congregation will be sessions, presbyteries and the General Assembly.

Doing without synods is not a new idea. Our mother kirk, the Church of Scotland, has never had 'em.  Here on our side of the Pond, the idea's been kicked around for the past couple decades at least - but this is the first time it's coming to the General Assembly with the unanimous endorsement of one of the Assembly's own special working groups, complete with all the enabling amendments to - in the resolute words of galaxy-striding space Captain Jean-Luc Picard - "make it so."

Most seem to think the Assembly will indeed do its part to make it so (although, in typical parliamentary fashion, probably not without tacking on enough minor amendments to allow the commissioners to see their fingerprints upon it).

The Abolish Synods movement is all about the so-called shrinking planet, as "leaving on a jet plane" has become commonplace and burgeoning communications technology offers unprecedented opportunities for keeping in touch across the miles (et tu, Twitter).  The Scots never thought they needed synods because their entire country is no bigger than South Carolina.  Now that our trademark wide-open spaces are neither so wide nor so open, we're coming to realize synods are a luxury we can no longer afford.

While the abolition of synods has been commanding most of the denomination's attention of late, another of the proposed changes has barely shown up on the radar screen.  If the Mid-Councils Report passes the Assembly and the presbyteries, it creates an unprecedented opportunity to tinker with the structure and membership of presbyteries. The report proposes that, for a trial period extending until 2021, congregations be given the opportunity (with presbytery approval) to pull themselves out of their present presbytery and join another 10 or more congregations in forming a "provisional non-geographic presbytery for specific missional purposes" that's more to their liking.

A huge question - one that may or may not be asked explicitly at the Assembly, although it will be on the minds of nearly everyone - is whether the desire to flee theological diversity for a community of the like-minded constitutes a specific missional purpose.  Congregations inclined to follow the lead of the newly-formed Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (née Evangelical Covenant Order) will likely welcome this move, because it provides a mechanism for doing what they've long dreamed of doing: stepping away from those pesky liberals who are comfortable with the idea of gays and lesbians holding church office, and associating only with biblical literalists like themselves who believe the only place in the church for such reprobates is on their knees in tearful repentance.

There's a superficial appeal to this flexibility, to be sure.  Who doesn't want to be missional, after all?  (It's the denominational buzz-word du jour, even though there's little consensus on what it means.)  Yet, as Wilson Gunn points out, in a recent Presbyterian Outlook article, the "provisional non-geographic presbytery for missional purposes idea" has some hidden pitfalls:

"While 'Geography isn’t what it used to be,' geographic proximity is a value. When times are tough we need to sit beside each other in the flesh. Presence is incarnational. Geographic boundaries are not 'arbitrary.' Most were created to provide an intentional variety of congregations in each presbytery such that the small, resource-strapped congregations and the relatively robust, larger congregations share common resources within a presbytery. This self-selected non-geographic approach can quickly concentrate the larger congregations across several presbyteries, leaving the remaining smaller congregations, who rely significantly upon the encouragement and guidance of presbytery committees and staff, in a presbytery completely lacking the resources to be able to serve them. The rich are likely to get richer and the poor poorer in this design."

Pastors of larger congregations are disproportionately represented among the leadership of the ECO.  Whether intentional or unintentional, the "missional" similarities they claim as justification for their separation will in many cases have the consequence of robbing neighboring smaller congregations of the sort of support, encouragement and leadership-training resources they could otherwise obtain from their larger neighbor - not to mention the lost per capita and mission funding they would otherwise have contributed to their former presbytery, to the mutual benefit of all.

Furthermore, Gunn sees such significant progress being made already by traditional presbyteries in the direction of becoming more missional that he questions the need for such presbyterial vivisection:

"The proposed purpose of these non-geographic presbyteries is being accomplished without reconfiguring presbyteries. Presbyteries, as noted in the commission report, are already experimenting. Presbyteries are already on the way to flat, flexible and faithful. Connectionalism has already taken a different shape than the former regulatory, centralized control. Mission dollars go directly from congregations to the local and international mission field. Once upon a time, 90 percent of a congregation’s undesignated external mission giving routed up through the denomination. Now we see about 10 percent of that mission dollar, yet National Capital Presbytery has over 100 different international mission projects that are sponsored by our congregations. I see just as much missionary energy, it’s just decentralized now."

Does "non-geographic" truly translate into "missional"?  It's for the General Assembly to decide.

The 80/20 Rule

With over 20 years’ experience running annual stewardship campaigns in the local church, there’s one rule I’ve found to be reliably true – in every church I’ve known, of every size and description.  A wise and experienced pastor shared it with me years ago.  Knowing this rule goes a long way towards dispelling the anxiety ruling elders feel about money, as they wonder how it is that stewardship campaigns still fall short of the glory of God.

It’s called the 80/20 rule.  It goes like this:

In any church, 80 percent of the money is given by 20 percent of the people.

“What’s that?” you say.  “That doesn’t sound right.  Why, it’s downright unfair!  Everybody oughta pull their weight.  We’ve got to fix that.”

Good luck on that one.

Every once in a while, some well-meaning church member will stand up in a congregational or session meeting and say: “I know the solution to the church’s financial problems.  Let’s just divide our budget deficit by the number of members, and ask everyone to pay his or her fair share.”

Nice idea, but it ain’t gonna happen.  It violates the 80/20 rule.

We’ve tried just about every flavor of stewardship campaign over the years (except the every-member canvass, an artifact of the 1950s that scares most contemporary churchgoers to death).  After the dust settles and the pledge cards are safely gathered in, that golden percentage survives pretty much unscathed.  80/20 rules!

Sure, we’ve had some successes over the years.  Some years we’ve had significant increases in overall giving.  Yet, always those increases come more heavily from the 20% who are already giving generously than the 80% who aren’t.

“Well, that’s no mystery,” you may be thinking.  “Surely the 20% are the wealthier members of the church.  They’ve simply got more to give.”

Wrong. Any experienced pastor will tell you that generosity in giving doesn’t track very closely with how much money givers have in the bank, or the mutual fund, or wherever else the propertied classes are parking their simoleons these days.  Some of the most generous contributors – the people who reliably come through in the clutch, year after year – are the last people you’d expect to be giving at those levels.  They’re people who live modestly, but they’ve also learned the grace of giving sacrificially.

Conversely, the wealthiest people in the typical congregation – the fortunate few who could easily dip into their more-or-less liquid assets and write a check to accomplish some wonderful things for the Lord – are more likely to be numbered among the 80% than the 20%.  Go figure.

Yes, that’s it precisely.  Go figure.  Lots of wealthy people have gotten to be wealthy because they spend a whole lot of their waking hours doing just that: figuring.  They’re good at it.  They’ve learned how to use money to make money.  They’re justifiably proud of what they’ve accomplished.

A financial-services company recently bought a series of TV commercials that portray people going about their everyday lives.  The good citizens of Commercialtown - an appealing, affluent suburb - all have a financial figure floating like a halo over their heads.  Each person's number is in the hundreds of thousands – in a few cases, even millions – of dollars.

“What’s your figure?” the voiceover asks.  How much money will you need in retirement, to maintain the sort of lifestyle you've come to enjoy?

I see what they’re getting at, but this sort of thing doesn’t do a whole lot for the cause of Christian stewardship.

For many 80-percenters, a whole lot of their personal self-esteem is wrapped up in that imaginary net-worth figure floating over their heads.  Asking them to put a small dent in that figure – even to advance the work of Christ – is sort of like handing sledgehammers to a roomful of diehard antique-car enthusiasts and suggesting they go out and start whaling away at the fenders of their classic Corvettes and Mustangs.  Not likely to happen.

The sad truth of it is: to wealthy 80-percenters, stewardship appears to be a losing game – no matter how big their net-worth figure has become.  That’s because there’s always someone trimming his hedges or washing her car outside the house next door, whose figure is sporting more zeroes than theirs.

Jesus may say “Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin,” but lots of wealthy eighty-percenters devote oodles of time to making themselves more like “Solomon in all his glory.”  They know how to read the Wall Street Journal (from back to front, because that’s where the stock listings are found). They go online several times a week – some, even several times a day – to monitor how their investments are doing.  They’re forever figuring out new and creative ways to reduce their tax liability.  Heck, some well-heeled 80-percenters – most, in fact – actually hire people to help them do these things better!

Is it any wonder that, when it’s time for their church’s annual stewardship campaign, so many of them respond as though we were asking them to turn their fiscal canoe around and start paddling upstream?  (In point of fact, we are, but that’s neither here nor there.)  It all sounds so counter-cultural to them, so contradictory to their workaday (investaday?) values.  The Sermon on the Mount will do that for ya, every time.

The sad truth is, despite their impressive financial achievements, a great many wealthy 80-percenters are deeply fearful people.  Would that they could have more heart-to-heart conversations with a risk-taking 20-percenter!  Would that a neighbor in the pew (from whatever income level) could take them aside and witness to the peace and joy that comes of transforming a closed fist to an open hand!

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter a whole lot what flavor-of-the-year the Session has picked for the stewardship campaign strategy – as long as it contains three elements:

The first is prayer. That goes without saying.

The second is preaching on a stewardship theme, ideally for more than one Sunday.  (It also helps if the preacher is a 20-percenter.)

Third, and most important, the campaign has got to include some way for one or two of the church’s 20-percenters to witness publicly to how much fun it is to lick and seal an offering envelope with a sacrificial gift inside (or to click their mouse on the “Pay” button, as the case may be).

I say “most important” because what we’re really up to in running a stewardship campaign is not raising money for the church.  We’re about the business of conversion.  Not only are we trying to convert a few more 80-percenters into 20-percenters, we're also trying to convert fearful, hesitant disciples into risk-takers who practice their faith with boldness, in every area of life.

Considering that money is, far and away, the most persistent and insidious idolatry of our culture, conversion often has to start there.  But it won't end there.

It won’t happen to every one of the 80 percenters, not all at once.  No stewardship campaign strategy is that good.  But it doesn't have to be.  Just a few conversions a year will do it.  Relying on the gracious and often surprising interventions of the Holy Spirit, slow and steady wins the stewardship race.

We're All Called Into Mission

Today I was reading a missionary letter by Dr. Karla Koll, a university professor who is one of our PC(USA) overseas mission workers in Guatemala.  (These mission letters, posted on our denominational, website, are well worth keeping up on, by the way; they're a treasure trove of stories for interpreting to our people how their contributions are put to good use for Jesus' sake.)

Dr. Koll was telling a story that highlights one of the problems we're having, these days, helping Presbyterians feel connected to mission:


"A few years ago I was talking with an elderly woman who was a member of a Presbyterian church in the United States. I asked her how she was involved in mission. 'I can't be involved in mission,' she told me. 'I'm not able to go on a mission trip.' Her answer broke my heart. How many churches have reduced involvement in God's mission to a particular mission practice in which only active adults and teenagers with sufficient resources to buy a plane ticket can participate?


All Christians are called into mission. In the local church, each and every believer, from the kindergarten children in Sunday school to the folks whose health keeps them shut in at home, should discover the ways in which they can participate in God's work in the world. Some of the most faithful supporters of my work in mission are women who faithfully pray for me and my colleagues at CEDEPCA, even though they are no longer able to participate very actively in their local churches."


It's a great thing that so many of our churches are planning short-term  mission trips that take members of the congregation to areas of need, in this country and overseas.  These can be life-changing experiences, and can revitalize a congregation's attitude towards mission beyond the local community.


Yet, as Karla's story indicates, mission trips can easily become the proverbial tail that wags the dog.  If our congregation becomes so enamored of the short-term mission trip that they stop feeling connected to general, undesignated Presbyterian mission, then we've got our priorities askew. It's a great thing if the youth group can travel to some storm-ravaged community for a week and learn how to hang sheetrock, or even fly to a two-thirds-world country and install a water pump for the community well, but when the week's over, they're back home again and the mission work is ended.  Mission workers like Karla are the ones who stay behind, who immerse themselves in the lives and culture of Christian communities overseas.  They do things, for the glory of God, that no short-term mission tripper could dream of.


Both the short-term and the long-term mission outreach are important.  Yet, they're fundamentally different, and we need to keep a balance between them.


Yes, I realize designated mission giving is all the rage these days.  Yet, let's not forget the value of learning about what mission workers like Karla are doing, and telling their stories to our people every chance we get.


We are all connected.  We are all working together.  We are Presbyterians in mission.

Encouragement from Cuba

Some Monmouth Presbyterians may remember Edelberto Valdes Fleites, a pastor from the Central Presbytery of the Presbyterian and Reformed Church of Cuba.  Edelberto itinerated among churches of our Presbytery several years ago, as an International Peacemaker sponsored by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.  Some of us also had the opportunity to meet him in Cuba, as well, on mission trips our Presbytery conducted in coordination with the Central Presbytery.

In addition to serving as a pastor, Edelberto is currently Executive Secretary of the Central Presbytery, with which we continue to be in mission partnership.

I just saw Edelberto's name in a Presbyterian News Service article, in which he was being interviewed about signs of hope he sees for the renewal of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), growing out of the denomination's 1,001 New Worshiping Communities emphasis.  This view of our church from an overseas vantage-point is worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

What did you do in Cuba when it became difficult to be a Christian? 

First we did everything we could to give our churches tools to help them live our faith in the world and be willing to pay a price to be a Christian. We produced many theological documents about how to live in a socialist society, trying to have our church be strong in its faith in the here and now, rather than thinking about life in heaven. We discovered that if you want to be a Christian, you have to live it by actions, instead of just talking about it.

What did you feel as you read about the 1,001 new worshiping communities, which you refer to as “signs of hope”?

I felt that the Presbyterian Church isn’t wasting time, resources, and life discussing items that aren’t important. It’s as if the church decided to be an alive church, instead of a comfortable one that waits for people to come. It is good to hear of these communities that are involved with people, searching for them, walking with them and the problems they have. To me that is a sign of hope. I visited PC(USA) churches five times. Often I found buildings with lots of stuff, nice conditions to work with, but without passion for people. I could feel that.

What would you like to say to these new worshiping communities?

Be encouraged, continue on! I share with you my strength and hope, that you are becoming like Jesus, who walked on the roads many times, being close to people’s problems, giving them holistic healing.

What kind of experiences would you talk to them about?

The experiences we had here when we couldn’t talk openly about our Christians faith in our schools, jobs, or even in our families because it could be the beginning of serious problems. But we survived as a church because we decided to serve Jesus by serving the people. Not with good speeches, but with actions that declare the Christian faith is more than words.

Tell me more about the meaning of your last words “go ahead” and the exclamation points?

In the Old Testament, when Moses was with the people in front of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army behind them, God told him, “Tell my people to walk!” It sounds like a crazy phrase, but if you think about it, many times life paralyzes us. It is so good to know that God is pushing us to continue struggling even when we are surrounded by bad situations. Isn’t that the meaning of resurrection?

Thought for the Day: Jimmy Carter on Church Unity

Christians who truly follow the nature, actions, and words of Jesus Christ should encompass people who are different from us….It is not easy to do this. It is a natural human inclination to encapsulate ourselves in a superior fashion with people who are just like us – and to assume that we are fulfilling the mandate of our lives if we just confine our love to our own family or to people who are similar and compatible. Breaking through this barrier and reaching out to others is what personifies a Christian and emulates the perfect example that Christ set for us.

- Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values, America’s Moral Crisis (Simon & Schuster, 2006), p. 31.

Along this same line, you may want to check out a thoughtful blog entry by my friend and former colleague on the staff of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Gene Straatmeyer. These are his thoughts on the subject of schism in the church.  Gene is an evangelically-minded retired Presbyterian minister, who's had long years of mission involvement with Native Americans, and, more recently,  a year of volunteer service in Malawi, Africa.

New Ways of Believing, Behaving & Belonging

Following up on my March 18  "Gutenberger or Googler?" post, I'd like to share this, which is from Diana Butler Bass, a Christian sociologist whose studies of the mainline Protestant churches are incisive, but also notably lacking in the "sky is falling" panic some other commentators display.  Monmouth Presbytery leaders will remember Diana from the leadership-training event she led for us several years back.

I find Len Sweet's distinction between Gutenbergers and Googlers to be a useful distillation of a whole lot of more complicated material about generational differences in religious participation, most of which has been out there for some time.  It may be useful to consider Diana's three sets of questions (below) as a template, and lay them on top of Len's Gutenberger vs. Googler distinction.

The first set of questions, I'd say, are those typically asked by Gutenbergers, and the second by Googlers:

***

Three deceptively simple questions are at the heart of a spiritually vibrant Christianity--questions of believing, behaving, and belonging.

Religion always entails the "3B's" of believing, behaving, and belonging. Over the centuries, Christianity has engaged the 3B's in different ways, with different interrogators and emphases. For the last 300 years or so, the questions were asked as follows:

1) What do I believe? (What does my church say I should think about God?)
2) How should I behave? (What are the rules my church asks me to follow?)
3) Who am I? (What does it mean to be a faithful church member?)

But the questions have changed. Contemporary people care less about what to believe than how they might believe; less about rules for behavior than in what they should do with their lives; and less about church membership than in whose company they find themselves. The questions have become:

1) How do I believe? (How do I understand faith that seems to conflict with science and pluralism?)
2) What should I do? (How do my actions make a difference in the world?)
3) Whose am I? (How do my relationships shape my self-understanding?)

The foci of religion have not changed--believing, behaving, and belonging still matter. But the ways in which people engage each area have undergone a revolution.

- Diana Butler Bass,  "A Resurrected Christianity?" , The Huffington Post, April 7, 2012.

***

I'm of the same mind as Diana: that, of all the different categories of churches that are part of the American religious scene, we in the mainline Protestant churches are probably best-positioned to offer the Googlers an alternative to religious practices and traditions they find stifling.  To do so, we're going to have to change, too, of course - but the changes we need to make in denominations like the PC(USA) are not nearly so game-changing as they would be for the Conservative Evangelical, Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches.

All this reminds me of a pithy little quotation I came across recently.  It's by General Eric Shinseki, the former U.S. Army Chief of Staff. Remember him? He's the one who abruptly went into retirement, after standing his ground against political pressure from civilian hawks like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, who were urging him to soften his prediction that several hundred thousand ground troops would be needed to secure Iraq, following the invasion by Coalition forces.  History has proved Shinseki was absolutely right; the number of troops that had to be committed to stabilize Iraq was pretty much what he'd predicted.

All this is to say he's a person who tries to base his prophetic statements on actual facts, not on what's politically expedient in the short term.  Coming from him, therefore, the following quotation is all the more enlightening:

“If you don’t like change,
you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

 - General Eric Shinseki

We in the Mainline Protestant churches have a window of opportunity, in the next few years, to save not only ourselves, but also our particular version of the gospel proclamation, from irrelevance.  Let those who have ears, hear...

One Foot in the ECO?

Many of us have been following with keen interest - and, in some cases, deep concern - the news of the formation of the Fellowship of Presbyterians, and especially the newer group calling itself the Evangelical Covenant Order, or ECO.  Periodically throughout our history, disgruntled Presbyterian conservatives have formed such breakaway denominations, but their history is not encouraging.  The new denominations have tended not to flourish in the long term, and they have often been subject to repeated splits.  Our history has demonstrated, over and over again, that the habit of schism, once indulged, is a difficult one to break.

Unlike earlier breakaway movements, the ECO, in its published statements, seems reluctant to use the “D” word - “denomination” - in describing itself.  It prefers the word "order," and in using it, has drawn parallels between itself and religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church like the Jesuits and the Franciscans. This is troubling, because the woolly language may mislead some congregational leaders into thinking they can vote to affiliate with the ECO without involving Monmouth Presbytery in the decision-making process.  ECO leaders may prefer to speak of “affinity groups” and “a new way of being the church in a post-denominational era,” but such vague language doesn’t alter the fact that the ECO is, in fact, a new Presbyterian denomination.

Despite its leaders’ hesitancy to use the “D” word, the ECO looks, walks and quacks like the proverbial duck - the “D” referring to “denomination,” of course, not “duck.”

This is not true of The Fellowship of Presbyterians.  Congregations who are so inclined may affiliate with The Fellowship without involving the Presbytery - although it would certainly be courteous to inform their Committee on Ministry liaisons of their intention to do so, and even to invite them to come speak to congregational leaders before a vote is taken.

The ECO, however, is a horse of a different color. While the “Polity” document of the ECO welcomes both congregations that wish to be "graciously dismissed" from the PC(USA) and become outright members, and those who wish to remain in the PC(USA) but have dual affiliation, the PC(USA) Form of Government has some very explicit provisions relating to the formation of “Union Congregations” - those that are affiliated with the PC(USA) and another denomination simultaneously.

Our Constitution does not permit congregations to simply vote to affiliate with the ECO – nor any other denomination – without first obtaining the permission and support of their PC(USA) presbytery for doing so.  This is true even of those who envision themselves maintaining dual affiliation: one foot in the PC(USA) and one foot outside it.

The PC(USA) Office of Constitutional Services in Louisville has recently issued Constitutional Musing #25, “Joint Congregational Witness,” on this very topic.  Ruling elders and teaching elders of any congregation who are considering establishing a relationship with the ECO would do well to read this document very, very carefully, and then to officially notify Monmouth Presbytery, in writing, that they are contemplating such a step, well in advance of any Session or Congregational votes on the subject.  A Session or Congregation who votes to affiliate with the ECO without bringing the Presbytery into the decision - even under the understanding that they will have “one foot in and one foot out”of the PC(USA) - is in violation of the Form of Government and could be subject to ecclesiastical discipline.  The Form of Government is clear that such Union Church relationships may only be established by explicit consent of the PC(USA) presbytery (G-5.05).

“But, aren’t we living in a post-denominational age?” some may counter.  “The ECO is simply ‘pursuing a new way of being the church.’  This is merely a ‘mission partnership’ we want to be involved in. We want to be nimble and flexible, ever open to the Holy Spirit’s leading. We mean no harm.  In fact, we mean to do a great deal of good, for the sake of the Lord!”

That may well be - and in that case, those interested in the ECO should easily be able to convince the Presbytery, through its Committee on Ministry, that their motives are pure, and that they wish to pursue their decision-making process with total transparency.

In John 12:36, our Lord encourages us to be “children of light.” Ephesians 5:8-13 says: “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light.... everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.”  If a decision to affiliate with the ECO - with both feet, or just with one - truly belongs to God’s light, then it can certainly withstand the light of scrutiny by the Presbytery at every step along the way.  The Presbytery is, after all, but a group of brothers and sisters in the Christian faith who are likewise striving to live in the light.

We never do agree on everything, in the church – haven’t, since the days of the Apostle Paul – but at least we in the Presbytery of Monmouth ought to be able to agree that, for the sake of our common relationship in the Lord, we owe one another clear communication and full transparency on anything and everything relating to the Fellowship of Presbyterians and the ECO.