There was a time, near the start of my ministry, when the only staff many (most?) presbyteries had was the stated clerk. Synods had a few more people, but not many. Now, even the smallest presbyteries have an executive and usually an administrative assistant. While many of these people, and especially OUR people here in Winnebago, are fine folks who do their jobs excellently, we should consider whether it is time to dismantle this executive culture. The church has changed over the generations, but it thrived without these offices for its first three centuries on this continent.
In an ironic way, the main functions that executive presbyters were supposed to fulfill may be hampered by the existence of the office. Keeping churches and pastors connected is the most obvious example. Formerly, those connections happened through committee work, presbytery meetings and ordinations and installations, and also at synod meetings which most ministers attended in their own states most years. Now, we connect to our synods and presbyteries through their offices and staff, which is very different from our historic ethos. The staff syndrome also confuses the issue of who talks to whom. We still say that we don’t have bishops, but in most presbyteries, people don’t believe a thing is “real” until the exec gives imprimatur.
One possible outcome of our current discernment is a season in which we reduce the number of MGBs by expanding and combining in order to reduce staff. That won’t work unless we change the culture so that we rely less on our offices than we have learned to do. Better that we should learn again to work at connecting directly with our neighbors around the presbytery, rather than needing the mediating and authorizing presence of a staff person.

Well, I’m replying to myself, apparently. I attended Presbytery Council meeting yesterday, where we heard an in-person report on this conversation from two who attended the Albuquerque consultation. 4 observations:

1. One of our speakers essentially dismissed any talk about “missional” or “apostolic” understandings of the church with an off-handed remark, then went on to talk about understanding context; while GA level leaders including Cliff Kirkpatrick are very conversant with these concepts, this suggests that some of the people who are already deeply enmeshed in our structures are really the wrong ones to lead the conversation.

2. It’s obvious at every level of the conversation that what we are really worried about is money and members to insure institutional survival, even if we say otherwise. This was true in the speeches and answers to questions by all of the Moderator candidates at the last GA, and it is clear in the conversation now.

3. In a “conversation” about the need for leadership to change, acknowledging the changing context, we are still operating in a top-down, problem-solving mode, e.g.:

4. This presentation was pushed to the start of the meeting and crammed into a time limit to accomodate the schedule needs of one of the leader/presenters, and the agenda allowed no time for any conversation about what we had heard. Instead, an opportunity was offered to sign on to be part of a broader group to continue exploring the questions the leaders had presented us, implying agreement that these are the right questions AND that our leaders had understood them correctly.

I fear we are running the wrong way, still mostly concerned about how to keep synods and presbyteries in business pretty much in the form they exist now, when the question may be, should they even exist? There was brief allusion to the idea that we need to be clear about purpose, but the one presenter’s suggestion that “missional” and “apostolic” were language he couldn’t connect to well indicates that at least some are not really prepared to examine that most basic question.

Stephen, Thanks for your comments. I agree that it the presentation was rushed and I wish that we had more time for discussions like this one. I had hoped that a time of question/answer/discussion after I left but it sounds like that did not happen. I have a couple of responses to your comments.

First, I don’t want to speak for anyone else but my reaction to the comments about ‘missional’ and ‘apostolic’ language is that the words themselves are church jargon. Church jargon may be fine for those of us who have Presbyterian blood running in our veins but as we become the church in the postmodern world I think we need to be careful about the language we use to describe what we do. I don’t think “apostolic” means much to GenXers or even many Boomers.

Secondly, I am not out to preserve presbyteries or synods but my question is, ‘Who will do the work of pastoral transition, congregational conflict, and presbytery gatherings of all kinds if the volunteer pool continues to shrink and average work week of a pastor continues to grow?’ Everywhere I go I hear about overworked people who cannot possibly take on one more thing. I find it difficult to believe that if presbyteries disappeared there would be a willing and able group of people to step in to this work.

If the most basic question is, “Do we need middle governing bodies?” then let’s have that conversation. Consider this an invitation. Perhaps it could be a pre-presbytery event? Perhaps a stand alone gathering? Or maybe as the Council continues to work on the question “Why presbyteries?” we can plan for more substantial discussion.