It Takes A Church...

Atonement, Crabcakes, and the Mid Council Commission. #pcusa

John Vest and I really don’t agree on much theologically.  We figured that out over crab cakes in the Baltimore Airport right after our first meeting of the then titled “Middle Governing Body Commission” on which both of us served.   A recent post on John’s blog where he lays out his views on the atonement (and in the follow-up comments, the resurrection) only confirms what both of us know: we come from different “camps” within the PCUSA.

 I’m a Fuller Seminary Ph.D. who has been greatly influenced by the historical and biblical work of N.T. Wright.  John studied at the University of Chicago and McCormick Seminary and cites Dom Crossan and Marcus Borg as his biblical guides. 

If you put us at a bar and forced us to drink bourbon and talk theology (ok, we did that too), we’d keep coming up with a few conclusions:

1. Both of us enjoy our friendship.
2. Both of us know that the other is a Christian.
3. Both of us think that our respective theologies are right.
4. Both of us are hopeful that the PCUSA has room for both of us.
5. Both of us are pretty sure that we couldn’t work or would even be welcome to serve in the other’s PCUSA congregation.

I write this NOT as the usual “we are so blessed by the theological diversity and great conversation” apologetic for why “we should all stay together in our presbyteries and continue the dialogue”, because frankly, I’m not sure that accomplishes much beyond building friendships and affirming the kinds of things that John and I found out over crab cakes and bourbon (as beneficial as those are).

No, I write this as an explanation of why John and I both became convinced that a more flexible mid-council structure would ultimately lead to both more friendship and greatly enhanced MISSION.

Because mission, not theological discussion, is the primary purpose of our Presbyteries. 

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I believe in serious theological engagement.  Indeed, I believe we don’t have enough.  Theological discernment, especially around ordination and membership is a crucial task of a presbytery.  Theological discourse is a necessary practice for a healthy, faithful presbytery.  But many have insisted that theological diversity should be one of the goals and purposes of a presbytery. 

Theological diversity for a discussion’s sake is a truly good use of bars, crab cakes and universities, but not Presbyteries.  At least not as a primary function.  A presbytery’s PRIMARY function is serving the churches that make up its “covenant communion” so those congregations can fulfill their missional calling to witness to Christ. 

And while John and I may have deep disagreements about each other’s theological convictions and even the importance of theological consensus, point #5 above reminds us that there are communities of faith as theologically diverse as we are. Discerning the best way to serve the mission of those congregations is the primary task of a Presbytery.

Point #5 above is not a source of sadness for us, just acknowledging reality.  It’s not about some kind of ‘bias’ or prejudice, but ‘fit’.  John serves a church with a more progressive theology and missional convictions that flow naturally and well from that theology.  I serve a church with a more evangelical theology and missional convictions that are expressed in some ways that are similar and in other ways very differently than John’s.  While both of us appreciate, affirm and even argue that each other’s church is necessary in a world where many people are quickly leaving both church and faith behind, we know that neither one of us would be a good pastoral ‘fit’ for the other’s church. 

And when there is not a good fit, (as any functional presbytery COM will tell you), the mission suffers.

If you put me as a teaching elder in John’s church, I would be a distraction from the mission of the church (all it would take would be one sermon where I explain my convictions about sexual ethics).   And the same would be true for John in mine.  Theology matters—as we have affirmed many times—and it especially matters most at the local level where there is need for some significant degree of shared theological consensus in order to keep focused on the mission.  (Indeed, this is a crucial issue of discernment in developing new worshipping communities.)

And if that is true about churches, why wouldn’t it be true about Presbyteries too? 

Presbyteries are where teaching elders ‘have’ their membership.  Presbyteries are our ‘bishop’.  And to be sure, it is up to a presbytery to determine the theological ‘fit’ and fidelity of a teaching elder.  Presbyteries are where congregations and their teaching elders are called to ‘mutually submit to one another’, to exercise discipline and to give oversight and support to the mission of the congregations within its covenant communion.  We imagine that this may take many forms and that it could include different theological ‘orders’ within a greater theological tradition.

In our report, we have called for a season of experimental permission-giving that would allow Presbyteries to test some flexible models that would best serve the mission of its member churches.  The Presbytery would have the freedom (not requirement!) to discern and experiment with structure, alignment, agreements and membership requirements (within the larger constitution).  A church that would ‘fit’ better in a neighboring presbytery would be free to request a transfer.  A presbytery would be free to allow it even on a trial basis.  And if presbyteries wanted to divide, re-align, or create new presbyteries within its bounds or in conjunction with other presbyteries in its region, it would have the permission to do so.

In many cases, we believe that the organizing principles will be a matter of shared calling (like a presbytery of churches called to urban ministry, or church planting, or a particular justice cause) or shared structural preferences (like a preference for a very small presbytery with minimal structures or a very large presbytery with lots of staff and shared program or some creative hybrids).  But some may also want to experiment with a presbytery based around some particular shared theological convictions (like a kind of “order”) as a form of witness to the world.

That might mean that a church like John’s that is comfortable with a teaching elder who has written that “the historicity of the resurrection is pretty much a non-issue for me” may be best served in a different presbytery than a church like mine that absolutely would insist that its teaching elders believe that the historicity of the resurrection is about the biggest “issue” of all…or maybe not. 

In our current structure there is no flexibility for discerning it.  Geography is destiny.  You may be able to go to a congregation that is a good fit for you, but you MUST be part of the local geographic presbytery whether you or your church share the same theological or missional convictions. The arbitrary contiguous geographical boundaries drawn up by some committee the last time we re-organized trumps the discernment of the churches and its ruling and teaching elders trying to adapt to a rapidly changing world.  

And the unity of Christ, the peace of Christ and especially the mission of Christ suffers.

Our recommendations insist that in the larger unity that holds us together as the PCUSA--a unity that can include both John and me--we want to trust structural and theological discernment processes to presbyteries.  We trust that if you let ruling and teaching elders of churches work out their own specific “covenants” they’ll organize in the manner that will best serve the mission of the congregations in a new expression of a presbytery in a changing world.  

It may mean that we will disagree on some very important things.  It may mean that we will allow each other to belong to different presbyteries with different missional convictions and theological nuances, but we’ll also be free to stop arguing, affirm each other’s faith, enjoy some crab cakes, and focus on the mission of Jesus. 

And we might even become friends, too.

 

(For more on our report, including the report itself, links to a video series that is being produced and a short Powerpoint slide show click here. )

The Mid Council Report: Experiments, Trust and The Adjacent Possible #PCUSA

This post comes directly from the Mid-Council Report (p.36-37).  In this section we discuss both the challenge and the incredible potential that we Presbyterians have--and that most of us don't even recognize--to truly see creative, innovative transformation of the church we love today and why we believe our recommendations are the first steps toward a brand new day. 

 A brief powerpoint The MCC Report Made Simple: Flat. Flexible. Faithful  and links to other resources are available here.

 

 In To Change the World, University of Virginia sociologist, James Davison Hunter wrote,

“Change is often initiated outside of the centermost positions. When change is initiated in the center, then it typically comes from outside of the center's nucleus. Wherever innovation begins, it comes as a challenge to the dominant ideas and moral systems defined by the elites who possess the highest levels of symbolic capital.” 

For true lasting change to occur (even within an institution) those in the “center” and those “outside of the center” must be engaged in the conversation.  It is the interaction of the margins and the center that creates the new possibilities.  And it is exactly that interaction—and the lively experiments that would come from it—that we recommend become the primary work of the church for the next season.

For a generation of Presbyterians who were reared on political, regulatory, and institutional approaches to problem solving, this recommendation will stretch us tremendously.  We will need to develop the capacity to learn from our rich diversity; to have hard conversations about competing values and often unspoken issues that keep us from health and growth; and mostly to trust each other enough to attempt innovative experiments—many of which will likely fail—in order to find successful adaptations that will take us into our future together. 

Historian and President Emeritus of Union Theological Seminary, Louis Weeks said, “No group of Christians has adaptation more in their DNA than Presbyterians.”  We concur.  A tradition that reconceived a communal function for what had been “bishops”; that adapted its polity from the European church-state models to a completely new context in a then new country; and rethought and reproduced its core values in numerous diverse contexts worldwide through its mission endeavors, has the capacity to revitalize itself for a post-Christendom and increasingly post-denominational context.

In his book on “the natural history of innovation,” Steven Johnson writes about the “adjacent possible.” The “adjacent possible” is the new innovation, the new discovery, that is only possible by first taking one step, or making one decision.  The only way to get from the phonograph to the iPod is through a series of steps.  Innovation does not come through giant leaps, but through one trial-and-error attempt at a time. That first step leads to more possibilities that could not otherwise happen, like how opening one door into a hallway offers more doors that could not be seen from the previous room.  The “adjacent possible” also always allows for the possibility of returning back through the one door we have passed through and trying a different option.

Our proposal invites the church to live into the “adjacent possible”. It invites us to be a people who together take wise, deliberate “provisional” steps; who experiment with ways of being together, who ‘try on’ relationships, who make temporary covenants without fully leaving behind the historical, geographical connections that have shaped our polity to date. 

Steven Johnson’s contention is that all innovation is “the story of a gradual but relentless probing” of what could come next given the pieces and parts at our disposal.  We advance, he writes, “by taking available resources and cobbling them together to create new uses.”  So, while the condition we find ourselves in is dire, our capacity for change has never been greater. As we will show you, not only is our situation urgently in need of all the wise creativity we can express, but the “available resources” available to us are significant, indeed. 

Questions to Consider

1. What theological and historical resources do we as Presbyterians have to draw on that will enable us to be more innovative today? 
2. Louis Weeks said, "“No group of Christians has adaptation more in their DNA than Presbyterians.”  What is your response to that?  What do you think hinders us from being more creative for the sake of the gospel today?
3. What do you think would happen in the church if we truly began to experiment with new ways of being church, new structures of supporting congregations, and new missional experiments in each of our local contexts?
4. In what ways could you envision the recommendations of this report becoming a spur for more trust-building, more connection and more interaction between the 'center' and those on the 'margins' in the church's life?

The Mid Council Report: Seeking a New Openness... #PCUSA

This post comes directly from the Mid-Council Report (p.33-36).  In this section we lay out the clear shared convictions that we find across the church spectrum--convictions that we believe offer us an opportunity to a new openness to experimentation and building trust by giving more authority, freedom and flexibility to presbyteries to reorganize for the health and mission of its congregations. 

 A brief powerpoint The MCC Report Made Simple: Flat. Flexible. Faithful  and links to other resources are available here.

 

 

In Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all creation, the Church seeks a new openness to God’s mission in the world…As it participates in God’s mission, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) seeks…a new openness to see both the possibilities and perils of its institutional forms in order to ensure the faithfulness and usefulness of these forms to God’s activity in the world (F-1.0404)

As we have listened to the church, we heard considerable yearning in every layer of the church’s life, from ordained officers to frustrated folk in the pews, to see these deeply shared biblical convictions flourish once again:

• To discover practices and ways of being church in a post-Christendom context.
• To engage in evangelism that sees people come to faith and be baptized as followers of Jesus Christ.
• To experience more relational and less regulatory ways of being connectional.
• To focus on mission to the world not denominational fights.
• To plant new congregations, to birth new worshipping communities.

We believe this is the voice of the Spirit in the church and we contend that if every structure of our church is committed to the health and vitality of local congregations as the locus of God’s mission in the world, then these convictions will become the practices that bring revitalization.

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. 

Maturing

By this we mean that we need structures for lifetime learners, for continually adapting disciples, for those who are restless to keep pressing on, growing, discerning, surrendering, and humbly staying open to the word of God and the voice of the Spirit. We need structures that give freedom to fail and encourage self and communal expression.  We need structures that will call us to live in mutual submission and growing trust as we grow in wisdom, understanding, faithfulness and fruitfulness.  We need structures that adapt to and accommodate those who are committed to building trust through transparency, accountability, and congruence of belief and life.  We need structures that allow for both clearly communicated convictions and the patience to respectfully be with others who we believe are in error.  We envision many more structures where the system honors, values, rewards, invests in and even adapts to those who are willing to take responsibility for shaping the healthy and the good; permission-giving structures that are built around shared agreements, covenants, values and convictions rather than around top-down enforced alignment. 

Motivated

Creative people in presbyteries all over the country are experimenting and innovating – aligning around shared missional passions and faith convictions – giving a fresh expression to their deepest beliefs. We are constitutionally called to be an elder-led, context specific, collaborative church. While we need regulations that enable us to fulfill our fiduciary responsibilities, provide accountability and insure that all decisions that are made are consistent with our theology and polity.  We also need room to try new things, to affirm risk-taking and give space for discernment.  We need structures that reward passion and motivation; that generously celebrate innovation; that respectfully collaborate in one creative leap of faith after another; that encourage big risks, big failures and the deep learning that comes from them

Missional 

Missional congregations are those where the central organizing principle is personal and communal participation in the mission of God in Jesus Christ to redeem and heal all of creation.  To be a missional congregation means that the discerned calling of a community of believers to serve in the world as Christ’s witness is the result of their gathering, worship and sending.  To be a missional PC(USA) means that we live in the conviction that every structure beyond the congregation exists so that congregations can fulfill their mission.

In today’s culture, many are weighed down by endless debates, issue politics, and suspicion of other’s motivation. The church is hindered from being missional within this environment. As a result, many congregations and councils are not thriving because they have turned inward, focusing on survival.  

If there is one clear missional conviction that is growing into a chorus of shared enthusiasm throughout many diverse contexts in the church, it is making a fundamental priority of new church development.  A church-wide initiative envisions 1001 new worshipping communities. We contend that number is way too low.  Can we imagine mid councils that would enable us to conceive birth, nurture and mature new generations of missional worshipping communities? How would seminaries and other entities charged with the development of leaders support this conviction? 

At the heart of adaptive change is the requirement to “give work back to the people most affected.” We believe that the constitutional changes we propose are an expression of the conviction that health and vitality, faithfulness and fidelity will only come about through more congregational engagement, more personal responsibility-taking, more passionate convictions, more freedom and creativity within safe, clear shared boundaries than ever before.  We must have structures that encourage adaptation toward health and faithfulness, toward those who are willing to keep maturing, who are motivated to take on the mantle of calling and personal responsibility by continually re-engaging and re-committing to each other, and who are from start to finish utterly committed to the missional principle of the local congregation as the primary locus for participating in the mission of Jesus Christ in every context.

To that end we offer these questions to encourage this larger conversation:

• What if presbyteries were formed and shaped by diverse and multi-dimensional relationships and missional convictions with the purpose of serving missional congregations?
• What would it look like, what would change, how would we reconfigure our presbytery life if the very essence of it was relational, communal, and covenantal?
• What if the only purpose of regulations (which are indeed necessary) was to safeguard those defining values?
• What would it look like if we had structures that encouraged each congregation to discern whatever configuration of presbytery would nurture its unique and shared missional calling as it lives its life in mutual submission to other congregations? 
• What would be the possibilities for presbyteries shaped around specific callings, including birthing new missional communities, the unique challenges of a particular context, or shared partnership in specific mission endeavors?
• What if we allowed change for our denomination to come NOT only from a centralized strategy of a GA Commission, but instead from every locale of the missional frontier, the congregations and presbyteries that are actively engaged in the mission of God in particular contexts?

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Mid-Council Commission Report: Beyond Quick Fixes #pcusa

This post comes directly from Mid-Council report (p. 32-33).  In the next few posts, I will build on Commissioner John Vest's good series that highlighted the dramatic changing cultural contexts that we face in the church today.  In this post, I want to highlight the rationale behind our key "adaptive shift": Giving presbyteries the authority and flexibility to recreate themselves in anyway necessary to serve the missional health of its congregations, including allowing them to grant permission for a congregation to join another presbytery within the larger geographic region or to create new presbyteries beyond traditional presbytery boundaries.

A brief powerpoint The MCC Report Made Simple: Flat. Flexible. Faithful  and links to other resources are available here.

 

The American Protestant church is in a wholesale struggle about what it means to be a denominated group of Christian believers…Doing traditional functions in new ways is likely inadequate. Eileen Lindner

Beyond the congregation, however, mainline Protestant institutions are in a state of deep crisis and desperately in need of renewal. After this journey, I am more convinced than ever that if American religious institutions are to regain their spiritual grounding, they will need to listen to and learn from the spiritual practices of local congregations.  Diana Butler Bass

As we have already demonstrated, we are living in a moment of rapid, intense, global and cultural change.  Every sector of public and private life–every institution, every organization and, for our purposes, every church–is facing a moment of intense transition. (Indeed, even our Commission was renamed in the middle of our work because the denomination adopted a new Form of Government.)  In this report, the Mid Council Commission of the 219^th General Assembly sought to answer one looming question that was at the heart of our very formation:

“How are governing bodies best organized to be responsive both to the Spirit of Christ and changing opportunities for discipleship?”

To answer this question, the Mid Council Commission offers two bold recommendations that will require the engagement and assent of the whole church and changes to our constitution.  This is not a quick fix.  Nor is it anything near a final or perfect answer.  But these recommendations alter the way we address our deepest challenges and engage the church in processes of learning and reinvention that could shape the church for decades to come. 

We believe that the changing cultural contexts of our day require deep adaptation as opposed to anxious striving for simple solutions. Our proposal creates the conditions for adaptive change at the mid council level–change that is consistent with our theological values and for the express purpose of revitalizing missional congregations in a post-Christendom world.

Scholars and practitioners of adaptive change call for an approach that has large scale, group learning as the core practice.  As disciples (literally, “learners”) of Jesus Christ, this is an expression of our most treasured identity.  Adaptive change requires creating organizational “safe holding environments” where experimentation and risk taking can take place.  As members of communities founded on the grace and forgiveness of God, this is familiar terrain. Adaptive change requires group transformation in order to address our greatest challenges. It addresses underlying and competing values, and especially “giving the work back to the people who are most affected” to experiment with new approaches for addressing their biggest challenges.

If we can recapture our own conviction that, as theologian Emil Brunner stated, the essence of the congregation is the fellowship of believers who are joined in love for the mission of God in its local context, then the essence of the presbytery is the covenant relationship of those congregations, (which Darrell Guder helpfully defines—and will become our working definition—as “Covenant Communities of Missional Congregations”). 

Further, if the essence of the presbytery IS the covenant relationship of the churches that are joined together for missional ends, then exploring and experimenting with the practices and possibilities that arise from this understanding will be at the heart of any faithful and lasting adaptation.

Questions to consider:

1. The focused goal of the Mid Council report recommendations is to “create the conditions for adaptive change at the mid council level” in order to “revitalize missional congregations in a post-Christendom world.” What is your response to this goal?
   
2. This report calls for long-term adaptive change rather than a quick fix approach.  What do you think hinders us from engaging in this type of experimentation, learning and communal transformation?
   
3. What conditions are necessary for the kind of experimentation, ‘bottom-up’ flexibility and shared authority that the report envisions?
   
4. If the essence of the presbytery is the ‘covenant relationship of its congregations’ then what do you think would best help us renew and strengthen those covenant relationships?

 

How Twitter is Transforming the Church: A Shout Out to #NextChurch #PCUSA

Doug Pagitt calls it the “Inventive Age”.  Rex Miller refers to it as the “Digital Age”.  Thomas Friedman calls it a “flat” world.  Our Mid-Council Commission uses the language from “adaptive change” theory and calls it ‘giving the work back to the people”…err…pew.

Whatever it’s called, it’s happening. I encountered it last year at the Next Conference in Indianapolis.  Perhaps the most important conversation about the future of the church was not happening on the platform but literally in the pews.  It was not the conversation that was being broadcast through the microphones, but was being engaged through the twitter feeds.  It was the conversation of the “Next Church” that was already happening. One famously said, “The Next Church looks a lot like the Last Church”.  And by all accounts, the platform and voices this year at Next is very different.

The same thing happened at the Fellowship Gathering in Orlando.   But this time, it wasn’t a tweet, but a text.  A pastor who was in the “under 45” gathering sent me messages while I was across the state speaking for another gathering.  He told me that the energy amongst the younger leaders was NOT primarily about changing ordination standards, but about whether the PC(USA) was too stuck in its old forms to really change.

Across the theological divide there is a growing generational consensus.  An ‘emerging generation’ wants a different conversation and even more than that, they want the opportunity to actually try something different.

Our Mid Council Commission Report suggests a flattened hierarchy and a season of reflective experimentation.  It seeks to create the conditions for exploring the ‘adjacent possible’ (a term I first learned at NEXT last year) and re-engaging the pew to the presbytery.  It mostly seeks to give the ‘emergent generation’ room to create the kinds of ecclesiastical structures that will serve the emerging forms of church that we need in a changing world. 

An brief excerpt from our report:

At the heart of adaptive change is the requirement to “give work back to the people most affected.” We believe that the constitutional changes we propose are an expression of the conviction that health and vitality, faithfulness and fidelity will only come about through more congregational engagement, more personal responsibility-taking, more passionate convictions, more freedom and creativity within safe, clear shared boundaries than ever before.  We must have structures that encourage adaptation toward health and faithfulness, toward those who are willing to keep maturing, who are motivated to take on the mantle of calling and personal responsibility by continually re-engaging and re-committing to each other, and who are from start to finish utterly committed to the missional principle of the local congregation as the primary locus for participating in the mission of Jesus Christ in every context.

This week, John Vest is at NEXT looking for conversations.  Next month I’ll be leading up one at the Fellowship Gathering on the West Coast.  Our Commission members are eager to go anywhere, speak to anyone, start a conversation and stimulate a new one.  We believe that our report is a conversation starter, and if adopted, could create a wildly wonderful season of creativity and collaboration, of missional experiments and worshipping communities, of neighborhoods and ‘networks’. 

And it all started with a tweet.

The Mid Council Report: It's about Healthy, Vital, Missional Congregations #PCUSA

Congregations.  healthy. vital. missional. congregations. 

Not congregationalism, but congregations in 'covenant communities' seeking together to discern the connectionalism that will enable them to thrive and further the reign of God in the local context.

Here is a word-picture of our guiding principles.

The whole report can be found here. 

More to come.  Much more.  We are very hopeful that a good conversation that could transform an entire denomination is just beginning.  Please come join us. 

 

Mid Council Report is now posted #PCUSA: The Guiding Principles

Our final report is now posted. John Vest and I will be blogging about it over the next few weeks trying to keep a good conversation going. The report is lengthy, but there is a 15 page executive summary within a 43 page section that lays out our argument for a "season of reflective experimentation" to bring genuine adaptive change to the denomination for the sake of missional congregations. In addition, there are full reports on the data we collected, the best models we discovered and the work of a racial ethnic task force. We hope this will encourage lots of good creative conversation.

http://oga.pcusa.org/media/uploads/oga/pdf/mgb_commission/mcc_final_report.pdf

To begin the discussion, it seems best to lay our cards on the table.  After a long season of listening to the church, when we moved to the 'experimenting' and 'discerning' phases, we developed this set of Guiding Principles.

• We live in a post-Christendom context that calls for continual re-consideration of our mission, our structures and our practices in order to be faithful to Christ and fruitful participants in God’s mission to the world.[i]  This reality is now undeniable.  We live in a new day, a new epoch.  It is as significant as it was for the Reformed tradition to be transported from Europe to America, and it requires no less a reconsideration and reformulation of our way of being the church.  And if we do not do so, the will eventually die.
• The missional congregation in a healthy, faithful covenant community is the center of the mission and faithful life of discipleship of Jesus Christ. Congregations are the “basic but insufficient” form of God’s mission in the world.  (G.10101) The Congregation is the basic form of mission, but for congregations to be faithful to their mission also requires them to be in covenant relationships with other congregations for shared authority, accountability, edification and missional support.
• Councils exist to serve the mission of the congregations in their local context.  In the words, of Louis Weeks, president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary, “The highest council in the church is really the Session. The rest of the governing bodies serve the Session.”  Presbyteries are “covenant communities of missional congregations”[ii] and the center of our corporate life, governance and mission together connecting congregations to each other and the larger witness of the Church.  It is a “collegial bishop” charged with preparing and ordering the ministry of teaching elders, it is a covenant community of missional congregations, it is the “balcony” that offers a broader perspective to congregational leaders so that they might serve wisely and well in their specific contexts.
• This report and our recommendations are committed to refocusing the mid council structure on one goal: serving fruitful and faithful missional congregations. To that end, our structures, especially our mid council structures, must engage and serve the mission of God in the world through missional congregations and partnerships, not our institutional or denominational concerns.
• There is no “one size fits all model”. Ecclesial structure follows missional function and is always marked by a commitment to being covenantal and contextual. The best ecclesiastical structures are discerned by those who live in it together.  They will be contained within the frame of our shared constitutional life, but those structural changes should ordinarily come from the local context, not the “national office”. The new Form of Government and the passage of Amendment 10A indicate a shift of authority to the local contexts for discerning the shape of a mission and we want to affirm and build upon that shift.
• Our structures must serve and support healthy, shared, spiritual and collaborative leadership between ruling and teaching elders.
   
• This report continues, builds upon and lives into the decisions made by the church to accept a new Form of Government and place the discernment of fitness for ordination on local churches and presbyteries.  Our proposal is a next step in a trajectory that we believe will result in further collaborative creativity by the whole church in every context.
  
• We envision a “big canvas with a clear frame”.  While remaining securely within the “Foundations” of our theological and governance tradition, we call the church to create the conditions to energize collaborative creativity, missional innovation and relational accountability with permission for many different models of middle councils to emerge that will foster the vitality and fruitfulness of missional congregations. 

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[i] Guder, “The Presbytery as Missional Context”, p.3 “Perhaps the most pervasive and powerful reduction made in the course of the western church’s gradual establishment, as it became more dominant in its social and political context, and as the assumption took hold that everyone born and reared in this territories was Christian, was the fact that the essential character of mission in the biblical sense gradually faded away.  Mission is not needed if everyone is already a Christian!...The contemporary exploration of the church’s essentially missional vocation challenges unquestioned attitudes formed over centuries that the church is to be defined more in terms of its maintenance than its mission.  What is meant is, of course, the concern for the maintenance of the church as an institution.  That concern turns the church inward, centers its attention upon itself and its members, upon its survival and their religious needs.  The institutional inwardness of western church contradicts the clearly missional calling of the church in the New Testament defined by Jesus on the Mount of the Ascension: ‘You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).  Thus, Newbigin’s question can be paraphrased: How does the church truly regain its understanding of itself as called and sent, remembering that the term mission means, in fact, “sending” (see John 20:21)?  How does the church move beyond the idea that Christian identity is basically a geographical or cultural or organizational concept? (emphasis ours).

[ii] This definition is from Darrell Guder, “The Presbytery as Missional Context”.

 

Why I'm Staying... an open letter to my friends in the #PCUSA

Like many who will gather in Orlando, I share many concerns about the state of our denomination.  But, like some, I am still called to work within the covenant of relationships that have shaped and formed my life and faith for 25 years. Recently, I was engaged by a friend in a conversation about the reasons for staying in the PCUSA. This post is my response.

I realize that for some leaders leaving the PCUSA at this time is an issue of conscience.  For them, being members of a denomination or Presbytery where some would condone what they find to be in contradiction to the Scriptures is a violation of their consciences.  I too have deeply struggled with this and continue to wrestle with it, so it is not difficult for me trust them to their convictions.  I would guess that my opinions on this will matter little to these who for conscience's sake feel as if they must withdraw from the denomination, and frankly that is the way it should be. But, I offer this rationale in a spirit of inquiring conversation to any whom would be interested in perhaps finding a different way.

The small bit of perspective that I bring to this conversation is influenced significantly by my role as Moderator of the General Assembly Mid-Council Commission (formerly the Middle Governing Body Commission).  This work has led me to consider the discussion through two lenses:

1. a genuine curiosity and struggle in ecclesiology and
2. a genuine call to reconsider the mission of God in a post-Christendom world. 

First, I believe we are desperately in need of a post-Christendom Reformed ecclesiology. It goes without saying that we are in a season of deep cultural change. This moment allows us to reconsider many of the organizational and ecclesiological assumptions that have been shaped more by Christendom than by our theological tradition. Historically, Presbyterianism in America was itself an adaptation to a new world and a new context beyond state-sponsored churches.  Today, with the decline of Christendom and the rise of globalization, we have an opportunity to re-consider and even re-conceive that ecclesiological structure again.  Because of my work with the Mid-Council Commission, I have been able to engage in conversations about ecclesiology with other branches of the Reformed family, have seen models of mid-councils that are different than our own, have learned about other ways of 'being Presbyterian' in other national churches and have learned from our own rich history with historically All-Black Governing bodies and Korean non-geographic presbyteries.  I have come to recognize that there are lots of ways to “adapt” our theological "DNA" for a post-Christendom context that we have yet to even consider very deeply. 

Personally, my faith has been nourished by the western stream of Presbyterianism that is far more independent, at times more congregationally-identified and is very comfortable with the kind of generously ecumenical evangelicalism for which my alma mater, Fuller Theological Seminary, is known.  My “evangelical” colleagues within the Presbyterian Church have made significant contributions to the theological discussions around justification, sanctification, missiology and spiritual formation, but we really haven’t engaged in the theological discussion of ecclesiology very deeply.  We struggle with clearly talking about the unity of the church in genuinely practical ways, instead often defaulting to either ‘spiritual’ or ‘regulatory’ categories.  I believe that the broader church needs our voice in this discussion of ecclesiology and that we need the broader church to sharpen our ecclesiological thinking.

Even more, part of this rapidly changing context is a very regrettable polarity and incivility of issue politics.  We see this writ large in our government, and we tend to replicate it more than offering an alternative form of discourse, an alternative model of collaboration, and alternative practices of being diverse yet truly one.

Across the spectrum, we Presbyterians hold up "connectionalism" as one of our heartfelt, shared values.  Yet, I contend that we have yet to truly explore what that connectionalism could be in a less regulatory, more relational structure; or what it would like to express a clear theological, ecclesiological and constitutional unity that allows for real diversity, and genuine dissent without division.  For many of us, including me, this is as much a crisis of imagination as anything else.  We really can't conceive a way forward, we have yet to engage in the kinds of 'experiments' that would allow us to discover something new and we are stuck in mental models that seem to limit our choices to either regulatory uniformity or painful separation.

I am concerned that the anxiety of the moment and the drive to bring ‘relief’ from our tensions is keeping us from doing the hard work of truly defining and experimenting with a Reformed, Presbyterian ecclesiology in a post-Christendom, missional context.  If nothing else, staying within the PCUSA keeps me squarely in the middle of that critical ecclesiological conversation and exploration. 

Second, I am more energized by what could be than what is.  My perspective is framed more by the larger changes that are required of every church, every community of faith, and every theological institution that endeavors to remain culturally engaged and prophetic for the gospel of Jesus Christ today than any particular issue, no matter how important.

In my work with the Mid-Council Commission, I have been exposed to the overwhelming data that confirms what we all know intuitively.  The church as we know it is in decline.  Precipitous, decades-long decline. This is not just us as Presbyterians; it is the entire mainline tradition.  Until about 2001, it could have been said that there was a theological distinction in the conversation.  During the end of the last century, those with more evangelical theology were doing better generally speaking than our more progressive friends.  But not for the last decade.   We, with very few exceptions, are all in decline.  Indeed, that, not ordination standards, was the concern that inspired the now-famous ‘deathly ill’ letter.  Since the adoption of 10-A , that focus has been largely pushed aside. Some insist that the division on ordination standards is important enough to warrant this change of focus.  But, I believe that the central issue for our denomination is how to create the kinds of conditions that will equip and encourage congregations to work together in mission and discipleship in this rapidly changing context. 

To be sure, the PCUSA needs significant change and continued organizational and spiritual transformation.  Our Mid-Council Commission report will raise up the need to reengage the missional necessity to

• reengage the pew with presbyteries;
• for presbyteries to be “balconies” that offer naturally provincial people (aren’t we all?) larger perspective for wisdom, discernment and challenge;
• for the development of leadership capacity that can create communities of continual transformation and collaboration to faithfully adapt in each local context; and
• to rebuild trust in a world where there is so much cynicism and skepticism.

All of this is beyond structural changes that can be implemented within or by leaving the denomination.  As one who has spent the last 18 months charged with trying to find 'structural' and organizational 'models' that are 'responsive both to the Spirit of Christ and the changing opportunities for discipleship", I am concerned that the focus of creating of yet another denomination, at this time, can become a way of avoiding addressing the deeper issues of ecclesiology, discipleship and mission in a post-Christendom world. 

I am most hopeful that those in the Fellowship who remain within the PCUSA could be significant contributors to this conversation. Indeed, we need the voice and perspective they bring. I am deeply supportive and appreciative of the Fellowship as a kind of "order" within the PCUSA. I am hopeful that a broader conversation by leaders across our theological spectrum will enable us to do the necessary work of learning how to re-engage the whole people of God, creating genuine elder parity, developing new ways of functioning as leaders, rousing our stilted organizational imagination and raising up and supporting transparent leaders who will engender the slow (it’s always slow) restoration of trust.

Yes, there are significant frustrations that cannot be minimized. Yes, there are significant theological differences that cannot be ignored. Yes, there is a history of bad behavior and even worse rhetoric on all sides.  At the same time, perhaps the urgency of this moment--if we could be patient enough to stay together and at least attempt to experiment with new ways of being the church--could give rise to a new season of mission together.

One closing thought.  Next week, I will NOT be in Orlando.  Over a year ago, I was invited to be one of the speakers at a denominational conference on Disciple-Making Churches.  I will be addressing how discipleship in a changing world is an issue of developing adaptive leadership capacity within missional congregations.  I will also be consulting with a group of New Church Development Coaches on tools to help them do likewise.  It promises to be a rich time…for the 100 of us who will be there.  Meanwhile 2000 people will gather less than two hours away at the Fellowship Gathering to address these internal issues of strife and the possibilities of division.  

So where is the energy in our system focused? 

This is what must be addressed within the PCUSA, within the potential NRB, within the Fellowship, within every congregation, presbytery and denominational office. How could we create the conditions for the day when 2000 highly motivated and deeply engaged people will gather to learn together about forming disciple-making churches and planting new ones?

Again, I know there are some who believe that can only happen by breaking away from the denomination.  I understand and respect their decision. But, I believe the vital question of our day is “What does a MISSIONAL CHURCH in a post-Christendom world look like?” 

And while “Missional” has been a good, engaging (albeit often confused) conversation for the past decade and a half, the “Church” part is in need of much more reflection, at both congregational and ‘higher’ levels.  While the circumstances could change as rapidly as the world is changing around us, and while I respect the decisions of those who differ, I believe that we can still engage this question much better within the context of remaining in the PCUSA rather than by starting a new denomination.

NEXT Fellowship of Presbyterians? Could a Maturing, Motivated, Missional middle be emerging? #PCUSA #MGBcomm

As one of the few people who is on both the Fellowship of Presbyterians and the NEXT Church mailing lists, I read the NEXT Church recent “Open Letter to the Church” with great interest.  Especially the opening section that read as follows…

“We share many of (The Fellowship of Presbyterians') perspectives about our beloved church:

• They grieve our often ineffectual ways of being church. We agree.
• They grieve a loss of meaningful evangelism in the church. We agree.
• They speak of new ways of being connectional which are more relational and less bureaucratic.
• They grieve that only 12 new congregations were established in 2010. We agree.
• They speak of the need for a missional church. We agree.
• They say the time for fighting must end. We agree.        
•  They say, “We are not leaving the church; our church has left us.”  While we hold them accountable for their decision to leave, we agree that the church is not what it used to be.”

As the Moderator of the Mid-Council Commission (formerly Middle Governing Body Commission), I have been spending a lot of time “on the balcony” watching the evolving ‘dance’ in this amazing and confusing season of life. But, perhaps most interesting and engaging to me are the common themes that are arising in both of these large groups and in many, many other conversations around the church.  From GA staffers, to EPs, to Synod Leaders, to ruling and teaching elders across the country, to frustrated folk on the sidelines, I hear

• We want effectual ways of being church today.
• We want meaningful evangelism today
• We want more relational ways of being connectional today.
• We want our focus to be on mission to the world not denominational fights.
• We want to plant new congregations.

I believe it is the voice of the Spirit in the church. You could even call it “likemindedness.”  

Yes…there are some significant differences between and even among these groups.

But could there be in these shared values something truly of the Spirit? Can we discern, in the middle of the swirl of change and anxiety a way forward together?

Perhaps it’s just me… But I am beginning to see

The outlines of a way of re-capturing our identity.  
A way of adapting our theology, history and tradition to a new context.
A way of renewing our vows to each other. 
A way of engaging a new generation. 
And especially and most hopefully, a way back into the world with the mission of the gospel. 

As our Mid-Council Commission prepares for our next meeting in Indianapolis next week, we are readying ourselves with reports, theological papers and lots of conversation around the church.  We have worked long and hard this summer and we are hopeful to come out of this meeting with some conversational starting points to put before the church for a fruitful dialogue months in advance of the next General Assembly.  After a long, helpful “listening phase” we are looking to begin the “experimenting and discerning phase”.  We have been exhorted, urged and even chided to “be bold”, to “think outside the box” and to draw from the wisdom of our history to re-conceive a new way of being Presbyterian in a changing world.  From the very beginning we had sensed that God was already at work in the church, and perhaps today we are beginning to see a new thing that God is bringing out of the ashes of conflict.

As I have talked to and listened to leaders across the church, I am beginning to see—for perhaps the first time in almost 300 years when the Presbyterian faith was contextualized on this continent as something other than a "state church"--an opportunity to utterly re-conceive what it means to be Presbyterian in this post-Christendom context. 

(This is indeed what we mean by saying that we are “Reformed and always reforming”, isn’t it?  Think about it: Just being Presbyterian means that in our “DNA” is the kind of adaptation that said, “Hey instead of having one guy be the bishop, we could have a collegial bishop.  What do you think of that?”)

I see a meaningful, maturing, motivated and missional middle coming together to draw upon the historic values of our past and faithfully reinterpret them to engage a far different world than any of our forebears could have considered. 

Let me say a bit more about each of those traits:

Maturing. Notice I didn’t write “mature”, but “maturing”.  We need a structure for lifetime learners, for continually adapting disciples, for those who are restless to keep pressing on, growing, discerning, surrendering, mutually submitting, humbly staying open to the word of God and the voice of the Spirit..  We need a structure that gives freedom to fail, and encourages self and communal expression.  We need a structure that will call us to live in mutual submission and growing trust as we grow in wisdom, understanding, faithfulness and fruitfulness.  We need a structure that adapts to and accommodates those who are committed to building trust through transparency, accountability, and congruence of belief and life.  We need a structure that allows for both clearly communicated convictions and the patience to respectfully be with others who we believe are in error.   I envision a much more “open spaced” structure where the system honors, values, rewards, invests in and even adapts to those who are “passionately willing to take personal responsibility.”  I envision a permission-giving structure that is built around shared agreements, covenants, values and convictions rather than around top-down enforced alignment.  And I envision a structure where those who can calmly and clearly express their convictions (even deep disagreements) also exhibit Gamaliel-like patience with each other and room to live out their own convictions.

Motivated. One of the rules of “Open Space” organizing is that you can convene anything if you are “willing to take personal responsibility” and are “passionate.”  Passionate Presbyterians may seem like a oxymoron, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In so many ways, the regulatory models of the past half-century have sapped us of our entrepreneurial spirit, our buoyant collegiality and our joyful communal identity, but in Presbyteries all over the country there is a well-spring of creativity where motivated people are giving room to experiment and innovate, to align freely around shared passions and convictions, to come together in the name of Jesus and give a fresh expression to their deepest beliefs.  At their worst, our Presbyteries are like family gatherings of sullen teenagers who are being forced into arranged marriages.  We need a structure that rewards passion and motivation.  That seeks to be not only “open space” but “open source”.  That generously celebrates innovation; that respectfully collaborates in one creative leap of faith after another; that encourages big risks, big failures and the deep learning that comes from them.  As Presbyterians, that means that we are also motivated by a vision of the church that exists beyond a congregation.  We are motivated to express the greater unity of the church through a passionate engagement in communities of missional congregations.  We are passionate about demonstrating the wisdom and fruitfulness of an elder-led, collaborative way of being the church that has clear theological convictions, is in submission to Jesus and in mutual submission to each other, is obedient to the scriptures and looks to the wisdom of our confessions… and we are willing to set aside anything that drains our motivation, that creates too much constraint, regulation and defaults to old mental models. 

Missional.  We are having lots of discussion around this term, but in a nutshell what missional means is that the mission of God in Jesus Christ is the central organizing principle for the church and that the local gathering of believers is the strategy of the Spirit for extending that mission.  To be missional requires personal and communal participation.  To be missional means that the unique, specific, contextual, communally discerned expression of a community of believers’ shared values is the reason for being for any congregation.  To be missional means that we live in the conviction that every structure beyond the congregation exists so that congregations—who are in covenants together--can fulfill their mission.

And if there is one clear missional conviction that is growing into a chorus of shared enthusiasm: 

Being missional to Presbyterians at this season of history means making a fundamental priority of new church development.  

The GAMC envisions 1001 new worshipping communities.  I think that number is way too low.  How about 10 times that many? How about DOUBLING the number of congregations in PCUSA in the next generation?  They will NOT look like “First Presbyterian of Anyplace”, but to be missional must mean that first, foremost and the primary priority of every structure (including seminaries and other groups charged with developing a new generation of leaders) is the conception, birth, nurture and maturity of a whole new generation of “churches”.

Adaptive Change requires “giving back the work to the people most affected.” I believe that whatever models we offer and constitutional changes we propose they must be about more personal engagement, more personal responsibility-taking, more passionate convictions, more freedom and creativity within safe, clear shared boundaries than ever before.  We must have a structure that insists that we adapt toward health and faithfulness, toward those who are willing to keep maturing, who are motivated to take on the mantle of calling and personal responsibility by continually re-engaging and re-committing to each other, and who are from start to finish utterly committed to the missional principle of the local congregation as the primary locus for participating in the mission of Jesus Christ in every context.

If we can create this NEXT Fellowship… count me in.

The View from the Back Ballroom and The Question I Kept Asking at the Fellowship Gathering. #pcusa #mgbcomm #mn2011

It’s been almost two weeks since I arrived home from Minneapolis.  Since then I have been in lots of conversations, lurked on Facebook discussions and answered emails about the impressions of the Fellowship Gathering.  I’ll spare you a “conference review”, there are plenty out there that seem to capture the proceedings from various angles. 

But one perspective that I haven’t heard revolves around the question I kept asking in the back of the ballroom. You see, I was seated in the back room with the bureaucrats (which is what they called themselves as they teased me about where I was placed.) I am not a member of the Fellowship, though I pastor a church with a lot of pro-Fellowship leaning and tend to run in the same theological circles as the leaders. I was asked to lead a seminar on Adaptive Change because of consulting work that I do, but I assume that because I am the Moderator of a General Assembly Middle Governing Body Commission I was seated in the backroom with the GA staffers, the Synod Execs and the GP/EPs of Presbyteries. I have gotten to know a number of these folks this past year through this work and I have experienced—just as it was repeatedly reported at the Fellowship Gathering—that the national staff out of Louisville are very fine, very competent, deeply committed and genuinely eager to serve whatever God is doing in this church in this most turbulent time.  The same is true of the vast majority of the Synod and Presbytery Execs.  (Oh, I have heard some horror stories of heavy handed regulatory types wielding the Book of Order and threatening “original jurisdiction” at the drop of a hat, but mostly they seem to be the ghosts of Presbyteries past that continue to haunt us.)

As we broke into discussion groups to talk about the Fellowship and the various “tiers”, I expected the backroom of bureaucrats to be seething in defensiveness and roiling in anger over the possibilities of a rabble-rousing ground-up group of church leaders suggesting that they had better ideas for running a denomination.

But there wasn’t.  (At least not that I could tell.)

Indeed, I experienced exactly the opposite: Deep, appreciative inquiry: Lots of interested and grateful conversation.  An honest wrestling with issues about both what divides us (Yep, the ordination issues are huge) and what unites us (EVERYBODY embraces the missional conversation of “Tier 1”.) There was serious and thoughtful consideration of ideas both widely agreed upon and those that seemed like sad foregone conclusions (without question, a lot of churches really are preparing to leave regardless of what the “Seven Dwarfs”, The Covenant Network, Gradye Parsons or any Commission does.) And while a number of Synod Execs and Presbytery officials winced at the generalized criticisms leveled at Presbyteries, most agreed that this kind of conversation is exactly what they hoped to have “back home.”  They too are looking for new models of being in covenant community together.  They too are aware of the decline of the churches and the dwindling resources.  They have taken on calls to enter the fray and many of them are passionate about finding a way in the wilderness.  (You could almost see the EPs pining for this kind of creative, enthusiastic engagement at a Presbytery meeting. There was a kind of wistful longing in the backroom: It’s so great that so many are gathered to talk about the future of the church, why did it have to come to the threat of schism to bring us together?)  

But perhaps the most interesting thing to me was the discussion around the question that I kept asking over and over again:  “Is there anything in the New Reformed Body that we wouldn’t want in our OLD reformed body?” Most heartily agreed: This is--with some caveats on some important things that we need to talk through--exactly what we want the “old” PCUSA to be. 

Now, to be clear the Fellowship is NOT synonymous with the “New Reformed Body,” But when John Crosby said, “The purpose of the Fellowship is to unite like-minded churches connected for common ministry and mission” most agreed that--with some genuine urgency to clarify and even qualify the definition of “like-mind”--this would be a good working definition of a PRESBYTERY.  (Not a complete definition, but a pretty functional one.)

So, as the moderator of a Commission charged with discerning if “our historical structures the best platforms for carrying our mission into the future” I sensed—even in the” backroom of bureaucrats”—that there is an emerging awareness that a conversation about organization around covenants, relationships, mission and yes, even some degree of like-mindedness could actually stimulate and inspire more mission and creativity that the structural assumptions of our past.

So, please take this post as my attempt to continue the conversation that was happening in the backroom with the bureaucrats.  As I prepare to Moderate the next Middle Governing Body Commission meeting in October, I’d ask the broader church help me with my thinking about this. Some questions I have been asking?

1. What does “like-minded” mean?  Jim Singleton has clearly and repeatedly said that the Fellowship is not interested in “same-minded” subscriptionism.  But, how “alike” do our minds have to be to “connect for common ministry and mission”? Could there be different “layers” of like-mindedness within a greater unity?  (My next post…)
   
   What does our ecclesiology (not our politics) demand of us?  What does the missional challenge of a post-Christendom, open-sourced, flat world require of us in terms of shared values, convictions and thinking?  If we are organized from the “ground up” through our RELATIONSHIPS and for MISSION what structure would we use?  If the Presbytery is the “corporate Bishop” that points to the unity of the church, could there be room for missional and theological covenants within an even greater, broader unity.  (The conversation about the “orders” of the Roman Catholic church sparked lots of interest as a way of thinking about all of this.)   
   
   
2. What does “likeminded” do?  Or in other words, what does the word “common” mean in Crosby’s definition?  Can we have a denomination that is broad enough to include people who have different convictions leading to different expressions of ministry and mission furthering the reign of God in on different fronts?  Wouldn’t an “incarnational missional model” for a congregation look really different in urban San Francisco or rural Kansas than in the southern California beach town full of retired Marines that I serve in San Clemente?  And why not allow those who have a “common” call to an expression of mission make “covenants” to be a community of mutual accountability, support and leadership development? Wouldn’t at least this degree of “like-mindedness” allow for less conflict and greater missional engagement?
   
   
3. And perhaps most pointedly, why is the historical organizing principle of our denomination geography? Why is the organizing principle of the ROMAN EMPIRE considered to be God’s sovereign decree for establishing communities? (Yes, we have a document on principles of church order that says this.)  We don’t tell members that they have to go to their neighborhood congregation.  We don’t tell candidates that they must serve in the church that they grew up in (indeed we tell them most of the time that they cannot.)  Instead we affirm that calling and fit are part of the wise discernment processes of both members and ministers, because when there is not a clear sense of discerned calling and a good “fit” conflict arises and mission is thwarted.  If we assume that in order for the church to minimize conflicts and be able to focus on their mission, pastors should be a good theological fit and share similar missional convictions and values with their congregants, why not assume the same for churches, pastors and ruling elders in Presbyteries? 

So, after spending a good deal of time at our tables and in lots of other discussions on this topic, I’d like to bring this topic out of the back room of bureaucrats and open it up to the wider church.  Help me probe with all seriousness in a wide- open, transparent, all-the-cards-on-the-table, “beginners’ mind” sort of way:

Why NOT organize “covenant communities of missional congregations” (Darrell Guder’s fine definition of a Presbytery) around COVENANT-making, missional-calling and relationships rather than geographical locale? What would we lose? What could be the unintended negative consequences?  What could be the “adjacent possibilities” for both mission and unity that we might discover in experimenting with giving permission to allow some to reorganize this way?

Next Post: Layers of Like-Mindedness: Unity and Mission as Competing Values.