The Top 10 Things that Happened at the 222nd General Assembly

Anyone who’s ever been to a General Assembly knows it’s a rich feast. The business agenda of the Assembly alone is massive, and there are a host of auxiliary meetings and social events as well.

Boiling the work of the Assembly down to just a few items is a challenge, but I’m going to try. Here’s my list of the Top 10 Things that Happened at the 222nd General Assembly:

10) The most talked-about business in advance of the Assembly was the "Foothills Overtures," a collection of constitutional amendments and rules changes that would have radically altered the way the Assembly does its business. I’ve written about these overtures — named for the Foothills Presbytery of South Carolina, from which they originated — in an earlier blog post. The effect of these overtures would have been — by restricting how often certain topics could come up and by adding supermajority voting requirements — to eviscerate the Assembly’s ability to do almost anything related to social justice. In the end, the Assembly carefully considered these overtures in a special committee, then resoundingly voted them all down.

9) In the early twentieth century, Presbyterians could be found at the forefront of the Fundamentalist movement, advancing a literalist interpretation of scripture. We are very far from that place a century later, interpreting scripture with the full range of literary and historical tools available. In two separate actions, the Assembly stated definitively that science and faith are not enemies, that evolution — rather than a literal reading of the Genesis creation stories — is a reasonable explanation of how God created the universe, and that Christian disciples should not shrink from using the full range of their God-given intellectual abilities to advance scientific inquiry.

8) Could the “sex wars” really be over? Generally, the atmosphere at this Assembly was far less contentious than some of recent memory. This is largely due to the changes that took place at the last two Assemblies, allowing freedom for GLBTQ believers to assume ordained office, and a similar freedom for pastors and sessions wishing to offer same-sex marriage ceremonies where permitted by civil law. There was an overture to return to the “one man and one woman” language once present in the Directory for Worship’s section on marriage. This was resoundingly defeated by a more than a 4-to-1 margin. Another overture, coming from the opposite end of the theological spectrum, called on the church to formally apologize to GLBTQ Christians who have been marginalized by past church teachings. The Assembly declined to use the emotionally-loaded “a”-word, speaking instead of “regret.” This was in order to provide gracious space for those who continue to be dissent from the church’s tolerant stance on same-sex marriage, honoring their freedom of conscience.

7) After contentious debate, the Assembly rejected a call for aggressive divestment of the church’s stock-market holdings in two hundred corporations that produce fossil fuels. Instead, the Assembly opted for a less-confrontational strategy of engaging these companies in dialogue through stockholder resolutions.

6) The Assembly approved an amended report, “Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace.” This supports the two-state solution to that intractable conflict, taking particular note of the imbalance of suffering between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Assembly refrained from moving beyond phased divestment from Hewlett-Packard (the position of the last Assembly) to an outright boycott, continuing to work with that corporation to encourage them to do less to support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas.

5) The last two Assemblies have pondered the future of synods, opting for consolidation of our existing synods into even larger regional bodies — but not specifying exactly how this was going to take place. By a large majority, the Assembly rescinded that mandate. Commissioners approved the appointment of a high-level “2020 Vision Team” that will explore our governance structures at every level and make recommendations for change.

4) In a surprise move, the Assembly resoundingly approved an overture calling for a return to “minister of the word and sacrament” as the prevailing title for the order of ministry that has been called, since the adoption of our present Form of Government, “teaching elder.” Both terms will still be used, but - if a majority of presbyteries approve the change - “minister” will now be primary, as it has been through every other era of the church’s history. I have written about this issue previously in an article in the Presbyterian Outlook. In a related development, the wordy title, “ruling elder commissioned to limited pastoral service” (commonly called “commissioned ruling elder”) will now be called simply “commissioned pastor.”

3) New faces in leadership: for the first time ever, there is no Anglo male face among the senior leadership of the church. The Assembly elected the Revs. T. Denise Anderson and Jan Edmiston (of National Capital and Chicago presbyteries, respectively) as its first-ever co-moderators. It also elected the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson (formerly director of the church’s Washington Office) as Stated Clerk. Tony De La Rosa continues as interim director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. Look for great things, in particular, from J. Herbert Nelson. He’s a powerful orator in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a change-agent. While he has never been a stated clerk before at any level, he promises to be a quick study.

2) The Assembly approved a draft of a new Directory for Worship that will now go out to the presbyteries for approval. The changes have to do mostly with making the Directory for Worship more concise and usable, although it does offer new flexibility to welcome unbaptized inquirers to the Lord’s Table, as long as the invitation to be baptized is made clear to them.

1) And now, the number-one thing this Assembly did was to complete the process of adding the Belhar Confession as the twelfth confessional document contained in the Book of Confessions. While this was pretty much a foregone conclusion — since more than three-fourths of the presbyteries have already given their required assent — still, it is of great historic significance. After the positive vote, theologian Allan Boesak of South Africa, one of the authors of the Belhar Confession during the apartheid era, addressed the Assembly. He ended his remarks by saying, “We may not know what tomorrow may bring, but I know this: tonight, we have overcome. I know this: because of Jesus, we shall overcome. I know this: whatever may come in our world, we shall overcome.” In a moving moment, the Assembly responded by spontaneously breaking into song, singing — what else? —“We Shall Overcome.”

"Take a Chill Pill," Says This Canadian Pastor

There's been a lot of Chicken Little talk among PC(USA) folk in recent years. Church membership has been declining for decades, and worship attendance as well (although not so rapidly).  Add to that some clueless news coverage - like the "death of the Church" articles that followed the Pew Research Report, "America's Changing Religious Landscape," of about a year ago - and some of us are left wondering if, one day, we may be the proverbial last ones left to turn off the lights.

Well, Mark Twain was a Presbyterian, so I guess his church is entitled to borrow his famous line, "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

Recently I ran across a blog post by a Canadian pastor, Erik Parker. He wrote it about a year ago, in response to the hand-wringing of his neighbors south of the border. It's one of the most insightful reflections I've ever read, explaining our changed circumstances as the church in a rapidly secularizing culture.

Take a chill pill, he's saying to us. You forget, we Canadians are ahead of you when it comes to dealing with the effects of secularization. Sure, the church is changing, but it's not - I repeat - it's NOT dying. Or, if it is, it's the sort of fruitful dying that prepares the way for rebirth.

That's a paraphrase. What he does say, in broad outline - and you should read his column for the full story - is:

1. The Golden Era of Church attendance in the 1950s was the abnormality.  

2. What we are seeing is the death of Christendom… not the Church. 

3. We like to think that we are the ones who can finally do the church in. (We shouldn't flatter ourselves; it's Christ's church, not ours.)

My formative childhood experiences of church took place in the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson presidencies. I can still recall walking down the sidewalk with my family to the old Presbyterian Church of Toms River (the one that became the County Library headquarters, after the congregation relocated to a larger building). My mother wore white gloves and a pert little Sunday hat. My father wore a dapper Mad Men suit. My brother Jim and I were outfitted with clip-on bow ties and crew cuts. It was all very Mayberry.

Everybody who was anybody in our little town went to church or synagogue on Sundays - if not our Presbyterian Church, then one of the other houses of worship. It was just what you did.

As I grew up, going to college and seminary, then eventually returning to Ocean County to pastor another congregation, I had a ringside seat to view the great decline of American civil religion. I didn't know it at the time, but that's exactly what was happening.

I remember the time, a few years into my ministry in Point Pleasant, when a bunch of us pastors got together to lobby the leaders of the local Pop Warner football league. We were trying to get them to move their games to a time other than Sunday mornings, so parents wouldn't have to choose between Sunday School and sports for their children. That sort of scheduling would never have happened when I was a kid of pee-wee football age. It wouldn't even have been considered. We got absolutely nowhere with those football dads, for whom elusive dreams of college scholarships for their kids trumped any value that could come of belonging to a church. We didn't know it when we walked into that room, but we had lost the battle before the conversation even began.

Erik Parker, and other Canadian pastors, have been through this transition already - the transition to to a church without the secular props we have come to depend on for so long. We're panicking, he reassures us, "about a society and culture that is no longer evangelizing for us." That's all. We've had it soft for a very long time, and now we've got to start pulling our own weight: as the church has always done, through most of its history.

Most of us long-experienced pastors have never known anything different. Today's Millennial pastors are graduating from seminary with wholly different expectations.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It does, evidently, appear to be God's thing, so who am I to complain?

Join the Churchwide Conversation

What does it mean to be Presbyterian? Who is the church called to be in this current day and time? How should the denomination serve into the future?

There's been much turmoil and hand-wringing in the PC(USA) of late. While some have rejoiced in the last General Assembly's decision to remove impediments to the celebration of same-sex marriages - but only for those ministers and congregations who feel called to do so - others have not been happy with that decision. There's talk of congregations leaving (with the permission of their presbyteries, of course, because that's how it has to happen in our system of government).  There's also talk of staying within the denomination, but in a dissenting way.

In preparation for the next General Assembly (June 18–25, 2016, in Portland, Oregon), the Office of the General Assembly has issued a call for churchwide conversation on where the Lord is leading the PC(USA).

These discussions, which will focus around denominational identity, will take place both online and in-person, in groups that will be forming around the church.

The process begins on October 23, with an invitation to go online to share thoughts and comments. Those who are interested in being a part of these online conversations are invited to sign up here.

“We’re inviting Presbyterians to dream big dreams, hope big hopes, and share them with their brothers and sisters,” says Margaret Elliott, moderator of the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly. “The fruit of that dialogue will then be used by the General Assembly — an expression of the church’s core — when it gathers. Together the body will discern a way forward for the church."

Undoubtedly, we'll be organizing some dialogue groups here in Monmouth Presbytery, For now, however, signing up for the online process is a great place to start.

Movin' On Out

Today I ran across a provocative blog entry by Marcia Myers, who studied in the M.Div. program at Princeton Seminary the same time I did, and now serves the PC(USA) as director of the Office of Vocation.

Reflecting on the growing national dialogue in our denomination about the need for Presbyterians to think outside the box with respect to ways of growing the church - part of which is the much-heralded 1001 New Worshiping Communities challenge - Marcia encourages local congregations not only to reach out, but to move out.

Yes, move out.  Right into the places in our local communities where religiously unaffiliated people gather.

"If you build it, they will come" may have worked for Kevin Costner in the film, Field of Dreams, but that's about the only place it works. Far fewer people these days are looking for a church community with which to affiliate than has ever been true in the past.

They're not going to come to us. We've got to go to them.

That's one of the hardest insights for those of us who lead established churches to wrap our minds around. Most of us grew up in a world in which the church was a respected organization in society. It was natural for us to assume that church membership offers such abundant advantages that a great many neighbors in the larger community think kindly of the church and would be honored to become a part of it.

Dream on. For growing numbers of our neighbors, those days are over. And they're not coming back.

Here's Marcia's response to this new reality:

"I think about all of the energy and hours we spend in church and on internal church activities. What would it be like if Presbyterian leaders – ruling elders, teaching elders, and everyone – were turned loose to be the church instead of run it?  What would it be like if we invited our neighbors to join us in being church rather than inviting them to “come to church”?  What would it be like if we worshiped in multiuse crossroads facilities through which people (believers and non-believers) come and go regularly so that the walls between “church” and “life” were very porous?"



If she's right about that, the question then becomes: "How on earth do we lead a bunch of tradition-minded church officers to think not in terms of the congregation's glorious past, but rather its beckoning future?"

How, indeed? What do you think?

Big Changes Are Proposed for the Synod

The future of Synods has been a lively subject of discussion in the church in recent years.  Although the most recent General Assembly declined to adopt a special committee's recommendation to eliminate Synods from the Book of Order completely - they pushed that proposal down the road, for the 2014 Assembly to deal with - it certainly seems like the church is on the verge of some big changes at the mid-council (presbytery and synod) level.

Knowing that change is in the air, and aware that our region of the country is one where the inclination to eliminate synods is strongly felt, the leadership of the Synod of the Northeast has appointed a Transitions Working Group (TWG) to do some creative thinking on the subject of the Synod's future and report back with some recommendations.

I've been privileged to serve on the Transitions group. I'm one of only two presbytery staff members to do so (the other is Cass Shaw, General Presbyter of the Presbytery of Albany). In putting together the membership of this group - in consultation with the Synod Council, who called for its formation - Synod Transitional Leader Harold Delhagen intentionally sought out people who have not been deeply involved in the Synod's governance, but who have been active in the church in other ways. There is a larger-than-usual complement of people in their 20s and 30s (of which I am, obviously, not one). The result is what we hope is a fresh perspective.

Our group has just issued our report to the Synod. We're hoping a great many Presbyterians within the Synod will read it and comment on it.  The TWG's Transitions Blog has been, for some months now, the most prominent feature of the Synod's home page.

So, what's in the report?  If I had to boil it down into a single sentence, it would be something like this:

We are encouraging the replacement of rigid Synod governance structures

with both open-source and inter-presbytery networks,

and encouraging a Synod-wide dialogue among presbyteries about redrawing their boundaries.

That language does not come from our report.  It's my own shorthand summary of its principal recommendations.

A capsule summary like that inevitably comes out sounding like bureaucratic gobbledygook, so let me use the rest of this post to unpack that a little.

Foundational to our report is the recommendation that the Synod become what the Book of Order calls a "reduced-function synod" (G-3.0404). The Synod, after seeking approval of two-thirds of its presbyteries, would have to petition the General Assembly to make this change. Under the reduced-function guidelines, the Synod Assembly would be reduced in size to one ruling-elder commissioner and one teaching-elder commissioner from each presbytery, and would only meet once every two years. The principal function of the Synod Assembly would be to appoint members of the Permanent Judicial Commission, approve whatever limited budget the Synod would have, and to conduct whatever other financial or legal business is necessary.

Having recommended that move, however, we also think more needs to happen at the Synod level than the minimum required under the reduced-function model.  We're calling for some of the Synod's functions to be passed on: both to a variety of new "networks of passion, interest and need" that would function on a flexible, open-source model, and to the presbyteries.

We're making just two recommendations:

RECOMMENDATION #1

That the Synod reduce its governance functions and refocus its resources, creating two types of networks to support the role of presbyteries in strengthening the mission and ministry of its congregations:
a. networks of passion, interest, and need such that our connectional nature and our diversity can be used to enrich and grow the capacity of all;
b. networks of presbyteries (mission areas) collaborating to assure adequate leadership within their bounds

RECOMMENDATION #2
That a portion of those resources be used to foster presbyteries to engage together in a study of their own boundaries, particularly with regard to their capacity to sustain long‐term leadership commensurate with their needs. It is anticipated that this will require the appointment of a Boundaries and Leadership Commission, the provision of consultants, and the planning of a Synodical Convention. The purpose of the Convention would be to facilitate and coordinate presbyteries’ requests to the General Assembly for such boundary changes as may be necessary for the future strength of their witness and service.

One of the things we learned as we went about our work is that the Synod of the Northeast is blessed with substantial financial resources - well over 10 million dollars, much of that undesignated - much of which can (and ought to) be distributed to the presbyteries, should the Synod reduce its functions. In that event, we have a rare, one-time opportunity to strategically direct those funds in order to establish and strengthen the ministries of both types of networks, so the mission of the Synod may be strengthened as well.

Consequently, we're recommending that funds be made available to foster the growth of open-source networks of passion, interest and need. These networks would bring like-minded Presbyterians from throughout the Synod together to accomplish important work for the good of all. Here are some examples of the sorts of networks that could be formed (not an exhaustive list, by any means):

     ‐ Early Ministry Institute (EMI)
     ‐ Racial Ethnic (language-based or other emerging identity) Caucuses
     ‐ Northeast Collegium (executive presbyters group)
     ‐ Advocacy
     ‐ Stated Clerks group
     ‐ Interim Pastors group
     ‐ Mentoring and/or Coaching groups
     ‐ Support/mutual resourcing for leaders of presbyteries and congregations in distress or “survival mode”
     ‐ Prison Ministry support
     ‐ New Worshiping Communities
     ‐ Tentmakers (bi-vocational pastors) group
     ‐ Emergent Leaders group
     ‐ Young women pastors group
     ‐ Presbyterian Women of the Synod

The second type of network, by its very nature, may look a little more familiar, because it's actually a system of networked presbyteries. In the initial stages, the Synod would facilitate the establishment of networks of three or more presbyteries that the report dubs "mission areas." The Synod would accomplish this by making a major, up-front grant to each presbytery consenting to enter such an arrangement, followed by a five-year program of diminishing grants. Those grants would start at something like 90% of the cost of a full-time staff person serving three presbyteries, diminishing to around 10% in the final year. Presbyteries could use these grants in whatever way they wished, as long as they supported the goal of establishing inter-presbytery cooperative leadership.  Presbyteries could keep whatever paid leadership they presently have; or, they could move, over time, to save funds by migrating their paid leadership positions into the multi-presbytery arrangement. Networks of more than three presbyteries would receive proportionately higher grants in the aggregate, because each individual presbytery would bring essentially the same amount of money to the mission-area table.

If the proposal makes its way through both the Synod Council and the Synod Assembly, gaining approval in its present form, what difference would that make to us here in Monmouth Presbytery?

We're already in a partnership with New Brunswick Presbytery. If we found at least one neighboring presbytery to join our partnership (for example, West Jersey Presbytery), each of us would then, as part of a mission area of three, be eligible to receive the one-time initial grant (which the report suggests could be $50,000).  That would be followed, in subsequent years, by the five-year diminishing grants supporting shared leadership. In the first year of the five-year period, we'd collectively receive, as a three-presbytery cluster, a grant in the neighborhood of $108,000 ($36,000 each), then a steadily-diminishing amount in each of the four years thereafter. Over the five-year period of the grant, each of our three presbyteries would need to make whatever budgetary or program changes we felt we needed to make, in order to contribute our steadily-increasing share of the cost of mission-area leadership.

The end result would be that, after seven years (two years for initial organization, followed by five years of the leadership grants program), we would have consolidated many of our professional-leadership expenses  at the mission-area level, while retaining whatever individual professional staff we felt we needed and could afford.

At the very least, some presbyteries would likely decide to have no staff other than a part-time stated clerk and perhaps a part-time support-staff person. At most, others would retain their own executive presbyter, supporting professional leadership at the mission-area of a more specialized nature (stewardship consultants, Christian education consultants, etc.).

The Synod would not prescribe in any detailed way what sort of staffing patterns or structures the mission areas would ultimately adopt; there would continue to be a high degree of autonomy at the presbytery level. The mission-area boundaries themselves could shift over time, as well. As creatures of the presbyteries rather than the Synod, the mission areas would serve the needs of their member presbyteries, as well as offering them ways of joining together in common mission.

It's possible that the New Jersey presbyteries could decide to come together in a larger, statewide mission area. Some have suggested that recreating something similar to the old Synod of New Jersey would be a good thing. According to that scenario, this New Jersey Mission Area would then consist of seven presbyteries (West Jersey, Monmouth, New Brunswick, Elizabeth, Newark, Newton and Palisades), which would be able to pool their leadership-grant money  to recruit a somewhat larger number of resource specialists than any three-presbytery cluster could support on its own. It's possible that some New Jersey presbyteries would prefer to retain their own executive presbyter or other professional staff; others could decide to throw their lot in with the mission area for everything, even committing additional funds to make that happen.

The plan is gently directive that way, but not prescriptive.  It uses the grants program as a positive incentive to invite the presbyteries, in this era of diminishing resources and heightened missional needs, to consider covenanting together in some new and mutually-beneficial ways. It does that without requiring presbyteries to fully merge, which could result in presbyteries so large that present traditions of intimacy and community could be lost.

(By the way, the Korean-speaking congregations in our area belonging to the non-geographic Eastern Korean Presbytery could continue to associate with one another, as they presently do, in a single Korean-language presbytery. They would be eligible for grant funding comparable to that of an individual presbytery, although they would not be required to join a mission area in order to receive the grant.)

That's Recommendation #1: a significant deployment of Synod funds to establish two types of networks. Recommendation #2 stands on its own, regardless of what happens to #1, but could very well complement it. It is a one-time, major study of presbytery boundaries.  As the report explains:

"Our system of presbytery boundaries belongs to a much earlier era, when there were more than twice as many Presbyterians and when communication and transportation resources were less efficient than they are today. The original standard used for drawing some presbytery boundary lines, in the era before automobiles, was the placement of certain communities along railway lines; many of these trains stopped running and the tracks were torn up half a century ago. Communities belonging to the same county are often split among two or more presbyteries, negating the collective influence the churches could have in advocacy and in community mission coalitions. Massive population shifts have taken place as well. Yet — largely out of institutional inertia — the old boundaries persist, unexamined, in many cases to the detriment of effective ministry. The lack of capacity within some of these historic boundaries to find and support the leadership necessary to maintain the church has lifted this issue to a critical level.

A comprehensive redrawing of presbytery boundaries is long overdue, but can only be accomplished by bringing presbytery leaders together at the same time, to share their perceptions of local needs and to discern the Spirit’s leading, as they jointly prepare proposals to bring back to their presbyteries for vote."

This post has already gone on long enough, so I'll simply suggest that you read the report for full details on how this consultation would be accomplished. It involves a process of preparation and study guided by some expert organizational consultants, followed by a one-time Synodical Convention, at which specially-appointed representatives of the presbyteries would come together to discuss possible changes. They would bring their recommendations back to their presbyteries, which would then vote on whether they wanted to request the General Assembly to make those boundary changes.

As with Recommendation #1, in this second recommendation the initiative and final decision remains with the presbyteries.  The Synod's role would be as a consultant and a broker, providing the presbyteries with the information and resources to undertake these discussions thoroughly and faithfully.

That's what's in the report.  It's now in the hands of the Synod Council, which meets from September 21-22, and after that the full Synod Assembly, which meets from October 19-20. As with any report presented by a working group, once it gets to the deliberative body, anything can happen.

Whatever happens, though, you heard it here first!

The Open Door

The 220th General Assembly is unusual in that its Sunday-morning worship was not in the familiar cast-of-thousands, stadium-style format.  Rather, local congregations of Pittsburgh Presbytery invited their ecclesiastical visitors from afar to come worship with them.

This morning, along with two others – my roommate, Paul (stated clerk colleague from Elizabeth Presbytery), and Doug (campus minister at Eckerd College) – I drove to one of the churches not on the official list.  Turns out, the only reason this church hadn’t rolled out the red carpet along with others from Pittsburgh Presbytery is that, at the time the local arrangements committee was putting the list together, this congregation didn’t have a Sunday morning service.  They used to meet only in the evening.

You’ve probably figured out by now that this bunch is “not your father’s Presbyterian Church” (to paraphrase that old car ad).  The Open Door is a self-described “missional church community.” It meets in a churchy-looking building that is, technically, no longer a church.  It’s a former Baptist Church that’s now a community center, from which the Open Door rents space on Sunday mornings.

In many ways, their worship looked and sounded familiar.  It followed the typical Presbyterian order of worship, although in a very informal way.  While there were no hymnbooks, the words projected on the wall came from traditional hymns.  The singing was accompanied by a single guitarist (I understand this isn’t always the case, and that they often sing other songs besides).  Still, this decidedly younger crowd did fine with the traditional hymns, which are obviously part of their repertoire.

The sermon by Pastor B.J. Woodworth – who on this sweltering summer day was clad, like most of his congregants, in baggy shorts and a loose-fitting shirt – was on the Kingdom of God, and was quite good.

The Open Door folks are pretty mission-oriented (true to their motto).  Today’s service included the laying-on of hands – not to ordain officers, but rather to commission several interns who are working in an “urban farming” vegetable-garden project.

The Passing of the Peace was something else altogether.  The actual “Peace-be-with-yous” were over pretty quickly, but the interlude continued for probably 10 minutes, with folks moving around to visit with one another, fetch cups of coffee, etc.  Obviously, fellowship is a big part of what this church is all about, and the boundary between worship and the rest of congregational life is pretty porous.

The biggest eye-opener for me, though, was personal. Two of the worshipers were dead ringers for our son and daughter, both twenty-somethings.  Not only did they look like Ben and Ania, they also dressed like them. (Readers who have met our kids will probably be able to pick these young adults out in these pictures.)

Knowing that, at this stage of their lives, my kids – whose names remain on the roll of the church I serve for the sake of good old dad – don’t make congregational worship a regular part of their week, it was a powerful thing for me to see their döppelgangers so actively involved here at The Open Door.

It made me wish there were an Open Door worshiping community in their neighborhoods, so I could point them in that direction.

Maybe we’ll just have to start one in Point Pleasant.

A statistical presentation at the General Assembly this afternoon reported that the average age of Presbyterians is 60 and climbing. Obviously, we’ve got to rethink some of the things we’ve long been doing in worship.

It’s becoming more and more evident to me that the future of the denomination is in church-planting efforts like The Open Door.  So, what are we waiting for?

Report from GA: We Have a Moderator

NOTE: My posts from the General Assembly are mirrored on the New Jersey GA participants' Blog, "Walking, Running, Soaring in Hope."

It’s always a fascinating exercise to observe the election of a moderator at the General Assembly – particularly so in light of the national Presidential contest, whose relentless lack of civility has all the appeal of fingernails scratching across a blackboard.

We Presbyterians do so much better. Are there differences among us? Of course. But there’s a common value of unity that’s so much stronger. That gives me hope for the church.

I’ve watched a number of these question-and-answer sessions over the years, but I never tire of marveling how unpredictable the process is, and how it so often happens that front-runners emerge only after the Q&A has begun. Sometimes it’s one clear choice. Sometimes, as happened tonight, it’s two or three – which means several ballots. It’s all about thinking on one’s feet, being gracious, showing compassion, having theological integrity – and, most of all, displaying a love for the church that’s natural and in no way affected.

Symbolism is also important. Who the successful candidate is, demographically speaking, has an influence. If the person looks the way most commissioners would like the church of the future to look, that’s a significant – but by no means deciding – factor.

Even though there were several front-runners, we had four outstanding candidates. Any one of them could have done the job admirably. That’s usually the case. People just don’t get the endorsement of their presbyteries to try for this crazy job if they don’t have a lot going for them.

I always feel for the unsuccessful candidates. Some years back, one of them made up a bunch of campaign-style buttons that said “Member of the Almost-But-Not-Quite Moderators Club,” and handed them out at General Assemblies for a few years after that. They’re a distinguished bunch, and I always feel sad that we as a denomination don't find a way to tap more of them for other national leadership positions.

One of the popular parlor games at the General Assembly is to speculate on how each Assembly’s choice of moderator may or may not be a bellwether of which way the Assembly will go on the big issues before it. Neal is clearly in favor of making some space in the church for those who would like to perform weddings for same-gender couples (at least in the several states where this is legal). I wouldn't read too much into that. I’m not so sure this is the reason he got elected. It’s more about what he symbolizes: the younger, more multicultural church we Presbyterians wish we were.

They say if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, but my wish is that Neal’s moderatorial tenure will be more than just a symbolic expression of our desire to be well-positioned to serve the needs of 21st Century America – demographically speaking, the country we actually are and are becoming.

Here are the vote totals, in case anyone’s interested in the nitty-gritty...

FIRST BALLOT

Robert Austell - 26%
Randy Branson - 9%
Susan Krummel - 25%
Neal Presa - 38%

SECOND BALLOT

Austell - 27%
Branson - 4%
Krummel - 27%
Presa - 42%

THIRD BALLOT

Austell - 25%
Branson - 2%
Krummel - 26%
Presa - 47%

FOURTH BALLOT

Austell - 22%
Branson - 2%
Krummel - 24%
Presa - 52%