Mid Council Commission releases
introduction to General Assembly report
By Jason P. Reagan, The Layman, February 3, 2012
DALLAS – The Mid Council Commission (MCC) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) released a sneak preview to a report that could change some of the denomination’s bedrock structures.
On Friday, the commission broke off into small groups to edit and revise an initial 76-page report that will recommend sweeping changes to the 220th General Assembly later this year.
While the MCC won’t vote on the report until Feb. 13 during a telephone conference call, the group released the first 13 pages of the report to the media, including an introduction, vision statement and guiding principles.
In 2010, the GA created the MCC to “develop models that reflect the roles of middle governing bodies in [PCUSA] polity and the changing context of [the denomination’s] witness in the United States and their relationship with other governing bodies.”
The MCC approved two major components to the report on Thursday. First, the commission agreed to add a recommendation to its final report that would effectively eliminate the denomination’s 16 synods, replacing their ecclesiastical functions with five regional administrative commissions of the General Assembly as well as establishing a number of regional judicial commissions.
Second, the MCC approved an experimental plan that would create non-geographic presbyteries and allow churches to be dismissed to other presbyteries under certain conditions.
Critics of the presbytery plan say it doesn’t give sufficient authority to proposed non-geographic presbyteries. Opponents also claim the plan changes little of the current structure and will only delay the increasing flight of disaffected churches exasperated with the widening theological rift within the PCUSA, pointing to the recent formation of a new Reformed body, the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians.
The plan could address concerns within the denomination about the future growth of presbyteries. According to a 2010 report by PCUSA Research Services, only seven of 173 presbyteries recorded membership growth from 1999 to 2008.
Both proposals – as changes to the PCUSA constitution – will have to be presented to the General Assembly and approved by presbyteries. The changes would likely not go into effect for at least four years.
The introduction to the final report frames the MCC’s main goal as a question: “How are [middle] governing bodies best organized to be responsive both to the Spirit of Christ and the changing opportunities for discipleship?”
In addition to offering the two major proposals, the MCC’s report will also, according to the draft, “offer some further perspectives and recommendations for creating the best conditions possible for equipping the whole church to create the councils and support the kinds of congregations who are enthusiastically proclaiming and demonstrating the gospel of the mission of Jesus Christ.”
On Friday morning, the commission discussed one of those secondary proposals, a recommendation to the General Assembly to form a National Racial Ethnic Ministries Task Force that would report directly to the General Assembly.
Originally intended as a separate proposal, the commission decided on Friday to include the proposal as part of the final draft of its omnibus report.
In the report’s introduction, the commission pointed out that its recommendations require “no one to change anything at the congregational or presbytery level, but allows for the flexibility and freedom for those who so endeavor.”
The MCC listed some of its guiding principles as follows:
- “We live in a post-Christendom context that calls for continual reconsideration 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.
- “The missional congregation in a healthy, faithful covenant community is the center of the mission and faithful life of discipleship of Jesus Christ.
- “Councils exist to serve the mission of the congregation in their local context.
- “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ model … Structural changes should ordinarily come from the local context, not the ‘national office.’”