Presbytery Sentinel

It is dark Advent time.  For me it started on November 12th.

I have sadness over the events at our Presbytery meeting that day.  As one who knows almost all of you I am aware of many of the wounds each of you carry.  The rebuke of one of our teaching elders that was delivered and the way some responded to the rebuke caused further injury and rubbed salt in old wounds.  I was saddened by the hurt many of you felt and my spirit cries for your pain.  Although our leaders seemed to handle the circumstances with grace and calm, it felt to me that our Presbyterian system and way of doing things did not work well.  That system was good for its time, but in today’s world it feels broken and inadequate for dealing with the complexity of the issues and dynamics of today.

So I am feeling grief, and perhaps you are too, for all that has been lost, and for the woundedness of people that are our brothers and sisters in Christ. I am feeling the stages of grief in ways unique to our current circumstances:
• Denial – in saying that the Church isn’t falling apart
• Anger – in feeling that “they” are destroying the church
• Bargaining – in trying to do something to make it all go away and be solved
• Depression – that nothing seems to stop our injuries and decline
• Acceptance – that the church as we know it will die, but something else will be born.

I am feeling lost.  That may be nothing new for God’s people: we were lost in the wilderness and in the exile.  But it is not a comfortable place to be.  However, that is where we are and with some confidence I can say that I believe that this is the era into which God has called us.  To wish for something else, or even to try to take charge and change our current place, simply isn’t going to make our pain go away.

I’m left with a question: “Who do I choose to be for this time?”  I’m coming to some answers.  I choose to lament our losses as Jeremiah did.  I choose to repent of the way I have hurt others and the Body of Christ.  I choose to look at the God in the burning bushes of this wilderness (and there are many!).  I choose hope in the God who has a new land for us somewhere down this long journey.  I choose to be thankful for the manna that appears, the companions with whom I walk, the opportunities to love the places and people around me, and the chances to sing and dance a hymn of praise.

“Who do you choose to be for this time?”

Your servant in Christ, Dana

Two creative new fellowships were mentioned in the sermon at the recent Presbytery meeting:  Cathedral in the Night in Northampton, MA (cathedralinthenight.org) that meets with homeless people on the street for worship and food, and Jacob’s Well
in Vancouver, BC (jacobswell.ca) where believers have converted empty city lots
into vegetable gardens.

Here are two new emerging fellowships:

Common Table in Bend, Oregon is a Public House because it is open to the public for food and drink seven days a week. They make their food available in the
following ways: $10 Tokens (Common Table currency) are distributed into
the community to be redeemed toward a purchase, and Grace Bowls are given
away to people without money or tokens. Food served there, when possible, is
locally sourced and organic, prepared and served by volunteers and paid staff.
At the Common Table they also have educational forums; prayer and meditation
gatherings; and they host a once a month communion service called Supper at the
Table where the meal is shared, songs are sung, Scripture is read, and the Word
is preached.

Bare Bulb Coffee in Kathleen, Georgia is similar.  It is a coffee house funded by Presbytery, Synod, and GA.   During the winter, one of the teenaged patrons asked about collecting blankets for the homeless. Bare Bulb decided to collect 50 blankets in 50 days. They put the word out on Facebook and announced it at open mic night. After 10 days, they’d collected 107 blankets. Blankets turned to backpacks as Bare Bulb began to supply food for children who receive free school lunches during the week but often don’t have enough to eat over the weekend. They started with helping five children, which turned into 24 children in two schools.  Bare Bulb has begun to host a weekly fellowship that meets on Sunday evenings, with singing and Scripture reading, and always with conversation and dinner.

The past norm was congregations in church buildings. Is the new norm fellowships in creative spaces doing worship, and mission, and fellowship?  Sounds like all the Great Ends of the Church are there!

Other new fellowships?  See http://www.pcusa.org/resource/ten-dynamic-new-faith-communities/

Nothing frees creativity more than being stimulated by options. At the recent Fellowship of Presbyterians meeting of conservative and evangelical folk one congregation struggling with whether and how to stay or leave the PCUSA outlined eleven (!) options for them.

As we struggle in our Presbytery with how we might stay together or dismiss congregations, the list of eleven options may free our creativity to find new ways that would be right for our context and theological composition. Here is the list re-written with the name of our Presbytery in the place of Mission Presbytery where the originating congregation belongs.

1. Remain in PSNE, incorporating open ordination guidelines into the congregation’s nominating process and examinations for its officers and new pastors.
2. Remain in PSNE, taking a “wait and see” approach as the Session remains in a
   season of prayer and discussion to discern God’s will and timing for possible
   responses.
3. Remain in PSNE and take no formal action to leave the Presbytery or the denomination, instead choosing to maintain the previous ordination standards within our congregation.
4. Remain in PSNE and press for the Presbytery to return to previous ordination standards that include “fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness.”
5. Remain in PSNE but request to become a “union” church with the Cumberland
   Presbyterian Church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, or a new reformed
   body.
6. Request that PSNE recognize each local church’s “statement of expectations for
   church leaders” to be used by the individual church for nominating candidates for elder and deacon, and by the Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry in examination of candidates for Minister of Word and Sacrament for that congregation.
7. Request that PSNE (a) adopt a proposal coming out of the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly’s office which would create “affiliate memberships” for persons and congregations with a crisis of conscience in presbyteries, or (b) adopt a proposal authorizing the Presbytery to establish separate commissions (called “ecclesiastical orders” by some) to perform the functions of the Committee on Ministry and the Committee on Preparation for Ministry, etc.
8. Request that PSNE transfer the congregation to an adjacent presbytery, which holds to traditional ordination standards. (A pastor may also transfer membership to a separate presbytery, while laboring in the bounds of PSNE, with the approval of the participating presbyteries.)
9. Join with other churches in seeking to organize a new presbytery working with the Presbytery, the Synod, and the General Assembly’s Administrative Commission on Middle Governing Bodies, and remain within the denomination but develop a new formal structure separate from PSNE. The new presbytery would hold to traditional ordination standards.
10. Request dismissal from PSNE to join another reformed body that is more conservative theologically (such as the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Church in America, or a new group that may be formed by Presbyterian congregations across the nation.)
11. Request dismissal from PSNE and become an independent church with no formal
    denomination affiliation, but open to possible informal association with other
    theologically aligned congregations.

Dana

Is it time to think about splitting the Presbytery?  Maybe the time has already come as we now have three congregations in the “Discerning the Way” process (Old Greenwich, Christ Springfield, Cranston).  But there are ideas other than dismissal out there about how the future might look.

Our last General Assembly created a commission to examine middle governing bodies like presbyteries.  The highest energy issue is reflected in this comment on that commission’s blog:

So far almost every proposal that is trying to make its way to our commission is about gaining permission to reorganize presbyteries around shared missional or theological commitments instead of geographical bounds. (http://pcusa-oga.typepad.com/mgbcomm/)

Say what?  We have Korean and Native American non-geographical presbyteries, so the reality is already out there.  But what if presbyteries were comprised only of congregations engaged in inner city ministries (the RCA does this already), or a shared sense of theology?  The congregations in these presbyteries could be spread over a wide geographic area, overlapping other presbyteries.  Would this free both congregations and presbyteries to be focused and effective in their mission?  Would the result decrease the benefit of our diversity?  Are there ways these presbyteries could be in mutual conversations or events with other, less similar, presbyteries?

What if our Presbytery were split in two halves, with two COMs and two CPMs, with both separate and joint Presbytery meetings?  Would that help all of us maintain our integrity, our sense of collegiality, our focus on what we can do together rather than what we must fight about? Or what if such presbyteries spanned congregations across New England?

I’m not advocating this, but these are questions being asked around the country, and questions we can address.  Please let me (and others who read this blog) know what you think about this idea.  Share your thoughts and leave a comment below.