PCUSA moderator, stated clerk present ‘State of the Church’ to Covenant crowd
By Jason P. Reagan, The Layman, November 11, 2011
“It’s pretty messed up.”
That was the diagnosis of one the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s top officials last Friday when asked to speak about the state of the church.
During a speech at the Covenant Network National Conference, PCUSA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons told a packed audience at the First Presbyterian Church of Durham, N.C. that, while the denomination faced many challenges, he found encouragement in looking at the PCUSA’s history and its future.
Parsons, along with General Assembly Moderator Cynthia Bolbach spoke around the conference’s theme of reconciliation, reminding the group that the process may take at least a generation.
The Covenant Network of Presbyterians (CN), a group representing around 400 like-minded churches that has advocated inclusion of gay and lesbian people into the PCUSA for the past 14 years, invited the two top PCUSA officials to comment on the aftermath of the passage of Amendment 10A in May.
The amendment deleted ordination standards addressing explicit chastity and fidelity requirements from the PCUSA constitution. The deleted standard required that ordained officers be faithful in marriage between a man and a woman, or chaste in singleness.
Opposition to the constitutional change has led many churches to leave the PCUSA, removing members and potential offerings from a denomination that has been hemorrhaging both for decades.
Bolbach said that if being “fat and happy” were signs of a good church, then the PCUSA was not.
She disagreed that such a standard defined the church, however, and said “if the church is being the church, it is always at the edge; always at the margin; always worrying about what tomorrow may bring.”
“I am certainly finding anxiety across the denomination — anxiety caused by the economic climate, anxiety caused by the fact that, people realize that we need to change the structure of our church … but we don’t know what we need to change it to. “
Earlier in the day, Bolbach stated the church needed to shed its larger, corporate structure in favor of a leaner model – a model she said may be accomplished with the recent passage of the New Form of Government (nFOG). However, opponents of the change say nFOG weakens the authority of the local session in favor of upper governing councils.
“We’re trying to change our black-and-white set into a flat screen HDTV,” she said. “All the while doing mission and ministry.”
In light of the increasing loss of member churches, Bolbach said the PCUSA will need “everyone across [the] denomination to contribute ideas, thought, imaginative creativity – things that [the PCUSA] can do to proclaim the Gospel.”
“We need to be reconciled one to another,” she said, referring to the growing rift in which many churches – at least six in October—have left the denomination.
Bolbach suggested that groups on both sides of the liberal and conservative aisle should engage in more face-to-face meetings and that in the process of “getting to know each other” subtle changes and reconciliation might happen.
Both speakers urged members to be patient and not expect reconciliation to come quickly and to not allow the weakening of the denomination to cause dejection.
“The state of the Presbyterian Church – I think generally it would be pretty honest to say that it is pretty messed up…and I find that tremendously encouraging,” Parsons said, adding that splits and contention have been a large part of the history of Reformed churches but reconciliation had also been such a tradition.
“We’re not chained to our history…but we can’t ignore our history,” he said.
“Church unity is not based on the fact that we are Presbyterians – church unity is based in Jesus Christ,” he added.
Parsons expressed little support of the recent formation of the Fellowship of Presbyterians, a group formed to “call others of like mind to envision a new future for congregations that share our Presbyterian, Reformed, Evangelical heritage,” according to the group’s website.
At its recent gathering in August in Minneapolis, Minn., the Fellowship met with around 2,000 attendees and drafted and discussed possible options disaffected churches may want to consider, including the formation of a new Reformed body, non-geographic presbyteries or outright withdrawal from the PCUSA.
Using imagery from the Star Wars science-fiction franchise, Parsons said that, as the Fellowship began to meet, he jokingly “felt a great disturbance in The Force” while he was visiting Geneva at the time.
“My reactions are some anger that some people have said very painful, hurtful things about people I know and love,” he said, apparently referring to the Fellowship’s diagnosis of the denomination’s health. “There is sadness that some people want to go away and not be part of our denomination. There has been hurt, you know, that people have made promises they haven’t kept,” he said, without providing details. “The desire to reconcile is not always my first impulse,” he added.
He said one emotion he did not allow himself to have was surprise.
“This is what [we were] told would happen if [fidelity-chastity ordination standards] ever left the [Book of Order]. This is what happened to the Episcopalians. This is what happened to the Lutherans and this is the chapter we are in – the chapter we are called to lead in and to live in and to love in,” he said, adding that the goal for the PCUSA would be to “find our way through it.”
Parsons said that, although things looked bleak for the PCUSA in a numerical sense, the current changes in culture and economics may allow the denomination to reach new people groups.
“We may finally break out of the niche we have been frozen in since the Second World War and really relate to all of God’s people that are on the earth,” he said, adding. “We’re not just the Presbyterian Church of the store owners and bankers and doctors and lawyers, which is a great thing, but ultimately the church that is open to all of God’s people.”
Parsons said he found encouragement in emerging church models that don’t depend on “red-brick…pulpit-in-the-front” paradigms.
“We’re a little broken-hearted about our church. We’re a little broken-hearted about seeing things not quite turn as beautiful as we wanted them to be. There’s more room there for something to happen,” he added.
Not everyone in the audience shared Parsons’ desire for reconciliation. A commentator in the audience said: “My heart isn’t broken. I feel as though we are shedding … in our denomination. It isn’t a pleasant thing. It isn’t an easy thing but I think we are ridding ourselves of a weight that clings to us.”
The commentator said such a “shedding” process would allow the PCUSA to be more focused and effective.
He added that, since many in the PCUSA had spent time and money to remove the fidelity-chastity ordination standards: “now, it would grieve me to think we are going to spend time, money and resources placating people who put [the ordination standards] in place. “
“I would like to see departure – gracious or otherwise – and let us get on with the work of being the church,” the commentator added.
The Covenant Network National Conference continued through Saturday. Organizers say the conference theme was meant to inspire discussion about how the PCUSA can remain united despite the variety of opinions concerning Scriptural interpretation and authority recently highlighted in the ordination-standard debate – a debate that has resulted in an increasing exodus of dis
affected churches. The title of the conference was “Reconciling Voices, Visions, Vocations.”