"Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment"...have y'all read this???

[Stephen Baldwin]

came across this paper, "Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment", from the Office of Theology & Worship:

http://www.pcusa.org/re-formingministry/papers/rebuilding.pdf

will rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment of the 50's grow our church deep and wide? the author thinks so. i anticipate our community here may disagree. thoughts on the paper?

[Barry Ensign-George]

Kimberly,

I'm not sure how to read your note. I got lost somewhere between "Weston certainly does have some ideas which would benefit the church . . ." and "Do any of the suggestions in "Rebuilding . . ." really help the church adapt to its context . . .?" (it seems to clear to me that your answer is a decisive "no").

What ideas do you have for "better ways"? Perhaps a discussion of such ideas would be a good way to move the conversation forward?

Barry

[Skip Dunford]

I read the paper. Credit where credit is due: Dr Weston has got us talking- grousing and grumbling included!- about "Topic A" in the church. He also makes some important points: about Synods; about the need for identifying leadership (could it be that the "tall steeple" Sr Pastor is the only one who has the time these days to study the functions and organizational intricacies of the denomination?); about the need for a creedal foundation (but Westminster? It pronounces usury as a sin. We have just been informed that our economy runs on usury, and nearly everyone has usurious instruments in his or her billfold.!) and i do agree with is suggestion about returning to smaller presbyteries. But my question would be, do they need to be set up geographically?

With all due respect (Dr Weston is well-informed, well-published, and a dedicated servant of our Lord and his church; and might I add, on faculty at my Alma Mater!) but I wonder how this message would preach to other establishment organizations who are suffering the same plight as our beloved denomination. How would this advice and counsel go over with the "big 3" automakers? Or maybe returning to a previous establishment model is the remedy for the failing newspaper industry. And just now I heard a report on NPR about the plight of the network TV industry. Do they need to return to the organizational model that has brought them precisely to the point where they are today?

My point is that there is a major shift taking place among established structures, mainline denominations included. What once served them well no longer works. Do we fall into the fallacy of trying harder to do the same things to make it work? Or do we pursue a different path?

If a return to a previous establishment is in order, perhaps we should refer to the church establishment manual- a.k.a. the B-I-B-L-E. I have been reading with wonder George Barna and Frank Viola's book "Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices." It's amazing to learn how much of what we do today has no foundation in Scripture. Acts and Paul's letters cover the period of history when the gospel exploded from a few scared disciples in a locked room in a backwater province of the Empire to be preached right under the very nose of the Emperor in Rome, and all within one generation! Maybe we should mine that literature to see what it was that made the church grow in "spirit and in numbers." Somewhere it begins to come to light that it was people sharing with family and friends something they had found meaningful in their lives.

Following Dr Weston's advice would take us down the road to being the "Church restored and always being restored." In other words, nowhere fast. What we need is to discern what God is doing in this latest round of the Church reformed and alwsy being reformed" and get on board with that. It seems to me that God is reforming the church around a righteous remnant who remember what our Lord Jesus came to say: "Love one another as I have loved you." Perhaps a bit of shrinkage is just exactly what God thinks we need right now.

But then, what do I know?- I'm just a small-town journeyman Pastor.

[Deborah Fair]

50's style of meeting the needs of our community will not work today nor fill our pews.

[Bobbie Giltz McGarey]

I only had time to skim the paper but read page 18+ about Big steeple pastors having proven themselves as leaders. Really?
Because I know some people dedicated to small membership churches that have even more wisdom than some of the ones in the bigger pulpits. I have some doubts they understand the PCUSA as it is today with smaller membership congregations and their 'insights' would be from a whole different ethos.

[Trabajar en Internet]

Two days ago, I opened an envelope from Louisville to find a copy of a new occasional paper from the Office of Theology and Worship: William Weston’s Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment. I cringed. Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment? So I began to read, and my fears were confirmed. “It is time to rebuild the church’s Establishment,” he writes. “Decency and order require it.” (p.12)

Weston’s thesis is this: The anti-establishment attitude of the 1960s is what led to the decline of the denomination. Our preoccupation with political correctness (“a straightjacket for the church” p.12) has removed from power the “tall-steeple” pastors who should rightly lead the denomination, and thus contributed to the PC(USA)’s lack of influence and authority in society. The solutions: remove representation rules, “abolish all the current advisory delegate categories”, and reinstate the core of tall-steeple pastors who lead the Presbyterian Establishment.

How much longer will we continue trying to preserve Christendom? This paper seems to me to be an example of the church failing to rightly interpret its context: Christendom is over, and the national structure of the denomination is never going to have the authority it thinks it once had. Weston certainly does have some ideas which would benefit the church: actual parity of ministers and elders, smaller presbyteries, smaller (or non-existent) synods. But the very term “Presbyterian Establishment” connotes a desire to preserve the institution for the institution’s own sake. Do any of the suggestions in “Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment” really help the church adapt to its context in the mission field of post-Christendom North America? Are there better ways to renovate the PC(USA) than by re-roofing a building whose walls are crumbling? Online Business

[Rebeca henderson]

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18244292338 Credito

[Charles Kennedy]

How about switching the issue from demographics and church politics to growth? Those people who lead should be those persons who have actually lead a congregation in growth. Growth defined by persons baptized (transfers by church letter should not count as growth) and growth spiritually by the members of the congregations led.

Have the members in the congregation become more active in ministry?

Have the members in the congregation begun serving the poor, the powerless and the lost more effectively and more often than prior to the pastor's service to that congregation?

Do the members of the congregation display the spiritual aspects of a true disciple of Christ: humble, loving, giving, active in service to the church and the surrounding community?

If a church is not baptizing new members then I find it hard to believe that the pastor is doing more than moving people around and managing what is in place.

[Uncle Max Bialystock]

I just read the thing. It is a mixed bag. I do NOT "hear" him calling for us to return to the '50s. Some specific excerpts, and my own rebuttals:

He writes: "There is no constituency anymore in the denomination representing the old doctrine of the 'spirituality of the church'---that the church, as a spiritual body, should not be involved in political movements..."

....I disagree. Insofar as economics is an extension of our collective political life and processes, I see the vast majority in the PC(USA) deliberately divorcing issues of economic justice from the way they hear the Gospel Word and live-out their Christian lives. Faith is still understood on an individualized basis. (This of course applies less to those who are serving in many or all of the various special -interest groups which hold quasi-official status in the denomination.) Due to that simple fact, they are unable to see how the gospel of Christ must be interpreted (a verb which is currently over-used) and applied SOCIALLY, not just to myself and my neighbor down the street, as discreet and private (privatized) INDIVIDUALS...Add to that, I think it's safe to say that a goodly number among the whacko, nut-jobs on the conservative Right are more than likely PC(USA) members. Anyone care to challenge me on that? Not my characterization, but the accuracy of my impression that without its PC(USA) cohort, the nut-job "teabaggers" and such would be much smaller in number.
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With regard to his use of the terms, "Ruling Elders" and "Teaching Elders:" I don't like this, whether or not there is historic precedent for it. In my experience, our Ruling Elders are clueless. They rule because at the congregational level, they always outnumber the single "teaching elder," who is alone in her/his role. I think the writer does a good job of stating the way in which the "teachers" and "rulers" ought to be complementary. That assumes that the Ruling Elders are actually willing to be instructed, taught and CONVERTED by what the teaching elders have to offer. The gospel is a living Word, and our journey of faith necessitates that we be open to CONVERSION on a daily basis, to have our horizons stretched, to be shown and embrace something NEW. The gospel is THE alternative to the world's "common wisdom." Our whole and entire orientation toward living must be completely and utterly different from the way the world operates, with its own sense of priorities. What I continue to see is Elders bringing "the world" INTO the church--- not rejecting the world and learning about the new life we are to lead "in Christ."
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As for his phrase that "Youth Elder" is an oxymoron, he just plain CORRECT.
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On some of his other points, I agree with him, though I cannot agree completely with his concluding general assertions. We need to be, and along with him, I think we genuinely ARE much more aware and accepting of diversity of all sorts. (But gay/lesbian folks will note that it's still not OK to BE what they are and not have to hide it if they are called to leadership in our denomination!) To mandate racial and gender and age quotas is truly nuts, if the truth be told. Likewise for requiring representation of differing theological opinions, before you can move on something...Yet it is "prudent," he says, to have opposites represented. I guess that makes sense to me in organizational terms, but it flies in the face of where I stand, theologically: God is on the radical LEFT, isn't S/he? (Yet mind you, I don't swallow and support absolutely EVERYTHING that comes from out of the ultra-radical LEFT. Some ideas were just never meant to see the light of day.)

Therefore, I further agree with the author that theological diversity makes for a good and healthy denominational culture, but LOUSY denominational STRUCTURE. He writes that the parity between Ministers and Elders should be the ONLY structurally mandated representational rule---at all levels above the individual congregation, of course.
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I do not approve of his blithe conception of church leadership as a whole. I take exception to his assumption that the natural church leaders will be (and perforce should be) the "tall steeple pastors" who have "worked their way up through the status-market in the denomination." Such a thought is foreign to what we are all about. If there are some, or even most of the big city tall-steeple church pastors who find themselves in those positions due to an abundance of leadership skills, so be it. But to say that they should naturally be the leaders among us ignores the reality that 99% of the rest of us never had the opportunity to serve in such circumstances, whether or not we ever desired to do so. No, many great leaders serve in West Cupcake or East Nowhere--- serving Christ's people, no less than those who are among a tiny handful who are pastors in big city, huge congregations.

...Smaller presbyteries might just be a better way to go. I concur in this. Still, would it be just more of the same, but on a smaller scale? I wonder... So my agreement about the usefulness of creating smaller presbyteries must be less than wholehearted. We have presbyteries now which are known to be Left-leaning or Right-leaning. Beaver-Butler in Pennsylvania is well-known for its reactionary conservatism. Would smaller presbyteries serve as an even more efficient means to control which theological outlooks are even ALLOWED into them?...And SYNODS no longer needed? Well, alright. I've been thinking that myself, for a long time.
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He writes: "The mistrust that Presbyterians now bestow on our leaders, especially at the national level, is among the chief reasons for the decline and dysfunction of our denominational structure."

That distrust IS widespread. That mistrust is a true and vivid reflection of the divorce between the thinking/orientation of leadership at the national level and the sort of agenda which people cling to--- the ones who come to church and fill the pews. I do not celebrate everything and anything that gets published or broadcast or printed and distributed from the national-level entities. I am particularly tired of "celebrating diversity." That's like "celebrating air." To RECOGNIZE that we are diverse is good and natural. To CELEBRATE it just keeps us preoccupied with what makes us different from one another. What does that accomplish? It keeps us partying, working hard to feel good about how DIFFERENT we are, even while everything else is crumbling and falling down around us. WASPS are not the same as African women, nor are Asians who come to the PC(USA) either from Roman Catholicism or from a non-Christian religious tradition of the sort that predominates in their home country. Yes. Sure. True. Right. OK. Let's move on, shall we? Political correctness as a structural and institutional norm is fine, but it is self-defeating as a RULE, a modus operandi.
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He writes: "Authority in the church ultimately rests on (the) trust (extended by the rest of us toward our leaders,) that they are doing the task that God called them to do."

Such trust is not there right now, not these days. There is a big disconnect between the congregation---including its Elders--- and the national-level PC(USA) leaders. And to the extent that the pastor is imbued with a less-insular and more socially conscious outlook, then even the churches' own pastors are not granted the kind of trust referred to in that quotation, above. I came from a Roman Catholic background, myself. Forever, I will have to face the suspicion that I am really STILL a Roman Catholic. We follow the recommended worship format offered in the Book of Common Worship on Sunday, here at my current church. For that, I am told that I have "Catholic-ized" the worship service to a great extent. When I reply that we are following the RECOMMENDED Presbyterian worship-format, they don't wanna hear it. ("I don't know much about Art, but I know what I like.") If I had the nerve, I would simply refuse to create an Order of Worship, and require the Session's Worship Committee to produce one. But of course, in spite of the fact that the Order of Worship is the Session's responsibility, they still want ME to keep reproducing something they know is technically legitimate, but which they don't appreciate and are suspicious of. Lovely state of affairs.
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Finally: He says that the best sort of new Presby. "Establishment" would consist of "tall-steeple pastors, EPs, Stated Clerks, and lay people (Elders?) devoted to the work of the church both locally and regionally."

My response: Maybe so, but not for the reasons he offers.
---"Uncle Max Bialystock"

[Beau Weston]

Uncle Max:

We are mostly in agreement.

I think the idea that we have a de facto doctrine of the spirituality of the church when it comes to economics intriguing. This seems at odds, though, with the many pronouncements the GA makes on economic matters, the fact that we have an active responsible investing committee at the national level, and, most importantly, the leading role that many Presbyterians take as stewards of their community's economy.

Your final comment pulls the punch. What reasons would you offer?

[Uncle Max Bialystock]

The author writes: "The best sort of new Presby. "Establishment" would consist of "tall-steeple" pastors, EPs, Stated Clerks, and lay people (Elders?) devoted to the work of the church both locally and regionally."

My response: Maybe so, but not for the reasons he offers.

...Then you wrote: "Your final comment pulls the punch. What reasons would you offer?"

I meant to say that an unofficial (yet by definition influential) new Presby. Establishment might include the people who fill those positions, but not BECAUSE they fill those positions. It is a truism that there are always to be found people who fill positions of authority and leadership who are living illustrations of "the Peter Principle." They have worked their way up the ladder (or been awarded such positions, and not by virtue of any merit or ability at all!) and are day by day demonstrating that they have been promoted beyond their own individual level of competence. In a different slot, they'd be great, but serving in Position X, which requires more knowledge, savvy and deftness, they simply suck at the job they've been given. They haven't got what it takes. This is true of countless pastors, elders and deacons, Sunday School teachers---you name it.

...And yet, I suppose, just like anywhere else, the internal Presby. "Establishment" would glean-out such people, and the ones best suited to any given task would grab it and get it done. What I'm talking about is largely procedural. Actual policy decisions and disciplinary decisions and the like are never handled and decided upon by a single individual in our system. We're too much in love with committees, which is why not much that is actually very satisfactory gets done in the final end. Everything is a compromise. And you've heard the expression that "a camel is a horse put together by a committee."

What he's describing by way of a new Presby. Estab. on the surface sounds like a throw-back to a good-ol' boys' network. But that's impossible to re-create now, in 2009. I believe the author can see that, too. What purpose would such an Establishment serve? It would fill the current political power-vacuum.

But how? Here's my take on that: Things have been balkanized in the denomination, with a great deal of local (presbytery) control of things---because we're really not a unified denomination any longer in terms of what we think we're about, what our focus should be upon; what should be allowed or not allowed, etc. We can become more and more diffusely connected on paper, as long as higher governing bodies don't ever try to impose anything HERE where I LIVE, in MY presbytery. That's where a lot of Presbyterians are at. Our national structure, our appearance as a nation-wide denomination holds less and less water as time goes by. And so we have recommended policies or resolutions that are promoted and encouraged but never imposed. Thus national-level priorities are never implemented across the board. Not only don't many items get introduced in the Presbyteries and congregations; it is often the case that such priorities are OPPOSED by the folks who fill the pews. Even the PUP report sidestepped the issue of unity by deferring it (or referring it) to the presbyteries. In short, the PUP report declined to offer any specific guidance about what might be expected of us for the sake of unity. Instead, it is as if they said: "Let us pledge to stay united." Great, OK. United around what, exactly? But PUP refused to go there. Every presbytery is free to decide what is "essential." If something is "essential" then by definition, it can't be OPTIONAL somewhere else---- not as long as we insist upon being a SINGLE, UNITED denomination. There's a big contradiction there.

The "Establishment" which that particular writer/professor envisions would be a fish out of water, really. The theo-political landscape has changed too much. His paper was an interesting read, but I think a new Presby. Establishment would have to be rather a different sort of animal, anyway. Things DO get done already anyway, though often in spite of ourselves--- but they do get done. I suppose as a closing thought, I might just offer to say that we've got so many checks and balances in our polity that you can't swing a dead cat without running into some requirement or prohibition or another. I agree with him on this point. SOME of those rules actually make sense and serve a purpose. Yet I have seen for myself that congregations and presbyteries can always find a way around the "inconvenient" ones. One example: It is mandated in the Book of Order that the COM counsel and require PNCs to thoughtfully and fairly consider all people for the open position, whether male or female, green or purple or black or white-skinned or Martian. (Gal. 3:28.) But PNCs will make up their own minds whether or not a woman---ANY woman--- is going to seriously be considered. If their "group conscience" tells them that women should not even be ordained, no female has a snowball's chance in hell. This goes on all the time.

Finally, I'm not clear---I'm MYSTIFIED, really, about what you had in mind, referring to "a de facto doctrine...when it comes to economics..." Wanna go further with that? I understand you meant "principle" for "doctrine," not a doctrine in the classical sense... Let me further narrow-down for you what I'm asking and not asking: I DO understand when you note the difference between where our church-goers are theologically and politically as opposed to national-level GA pronouncements, even about the subject of economics... But "stewards of their community's economy?" That doesn't do anything for me. I dunno what you mean. What DID you mean?

I lean Left, politically and theologically. But I'm a Lefty who is often amused and frustrated, not to mention disgusted, by so much of the need to be "politically correct" all the time, as in: "Let's make sure that when we compose document X, we are careful not to offend those poor, unfortunate, bisexual, unborn, ambidextrous, five-legged, carnivorous, impotent sperm whales." And while we're at it, how about all those left-handed doorknob installers? ---"Uncle Max Bialystock"

[Beau Weston]

To start at the end and work up ...

Since we did have an actual doctrine of the spirituality of the church in the southern stream of the Presbyterian Church, I said doctrine rather than principle. That doctrine held that the church was a spiritual institution which should not be mixed with the political issues of this world - specifically, slavery and segregation. We don't have any such doctrine now. But I can see how, to a Lefty, anyway, it might seem that the church does not talk economic structures/liberation theology as much as conditions warrant - which could be a de facto new application of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church.

But I don't think that idea will really fly. If anything, the church addresses, pronounces on, even promotes direct actions in many economic matters all the time, sometimes way beyond its competence (see political correctness).

Which leads to the next point, Presbyterians as stewards of society. We have always been a minority in the nation, and a shrinking one. Yet we have always been disproportionately involved in creating and running the infrastructural institutions of our communities, states, and the nation as a whole. I don't think that is just because we got here early, or are white, or are rich. I think that comes directly from the Presbyterian doctrine of being God's stewards on earth.

On the tall-steeple pastors, we are also in agreement. I don't think all tall-steeple pastors should be leaders of the church ex officio. Some are incompetent, or egomaniacs, or uninterested. Today things are probably worse in that regard than they were decades ago, because people who head to those positions these days know they are more likely to get excluded from denominational leadership, whereas the opposite was true in, say, 1925. But within the group of tall steeple pastors are still to be found the kind of people who can run large things in the church. And, as you say, the Establishment would glean out which are which.

Finally, "he" is me. I wrote Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment, and welcome these comments. I understand that the publisher is about to bring out a collection of responses.

[Uncle Max Bialystock]

What a nice surprise, to find out that I'm talking to the author of the paper under discussion. What you just wrote above makes too much sense to me to argue with, except one thing.

You wrote: "But I don't think that idea will fly...... beyond its competence. (See political correctness.)"

(WHAT is wrong with the cut-and-paste protocol on this stupid computer today?!)

I want to reply this way: The church doesn't need to be "competent" in the field of economics in order to make distributive-justice statements about the the country's or the world's economy, any more than Jesus himself was. The same goes for medical insurance or nuclear weapons. Everyone deserves health care, just because we are HERE. And as for nuclear arms: we want those ---ideally--- eradicated. Our standard in making pronouncements about these and other issues is the gospel we seek to live by, not any claim to be experts in this discipline or that discipline. You see what I mean. ---"Uncle Max Bialystock."