(By Leslie Scanlon, The Presbyterian Outlook). The executive committee of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board is recommending that the full board renew Tony De La Rosa’s contract as interim executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
Tony De La Rosa
The executive committee took that action in the closed portion of a conference call meeting on Nov. 17, and announced its vote after the meeting had adjourned. The recommendation is that the board renew the contract “under the terms of the current agreement.”
De La Rosa, a lawyer and ruling elder, started work in December 2015 – with the board choosing him to fill the interim role after former executive director Linda Valentine resigned in July 2015.
Here’s more of what was discussed during the meeting:
March meeting in Puerto Rico
Both the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly will meet in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March 2017 – a decision made to express support for Presbyterian churches and mission work there, and because hotel space was not available in Louisville when those groups plan to meet.
De La Rosa told the executive committee that “our goal is not to have us continually meet in a hotel the entire time we are there,” but to visit local Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations and ministry sites.
The executive committee will meet March 21 and the full board March 22-24.
If board members can either stay longer or arrive earlier and preach in local churches, “that would be a welcome and wonderful way to connect with Presbyterians who sometimes feel distant from national leadership,” De La Rosa said, and to “extend a word of grace in preaching the Word of God.”
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So why would an organization with documented and identified issues with trust, organizational management competency, and well stated financial cash-flow concerns, choose to go off site to the warm Caribbean during later Fall and engage once again closed door meeting? To what purpose and whom are they in service of, if not just themselves and their own relative comforts? Most curious indeed. Do they actually think smart phones, web sites, the internet does not exist and they could sneak this one through without anybody noticing? Has the OGA booked the same hotel for their next gathering? I know life is rough in Louisville, and maybe the water and electric is not as reliable as one would have hoped.