In a couple days’ time, the denominational press managed to show me both the best and the worst of the PC(USA). On the one hand, there was a deeply inspiring story from Flint, MI about three congregations—from different parts of the city and different backgrounds; two were predominantly white, one mostly black—that voted to merge and build a new church together. What they’re doing isn’t easy; it involves a lot of sacrifice and a lot of time and a lot of unselfish hard work to set aside your comfort zones and your old identity and culture and come together to grow a new identity and culture. The fact that they’re doing it, and committed to doing it, for the sake of the gospel is a truly beautiful thing.
On the other hand, I also saw a depressing story of the institutional greed that drives too many of the decisions of this denomination: the Synod of the Sun voted to establish an Administrative Commission to take away some of the responsibilities of the Presbytery of South Louisiana. Specifically, they’re taking away the presbytery’s right to make decisions regarding the property of its congregations. Why? Because the presbytery was showing too much grace to congregations which wanted to leave, and too much concern for the welfare of the church of God as a whole, and not enough two-fisted insistence on keeping everything of value it could possibly lay a claim on. As Bob Davis wrote in his post today, “If ever there was a statement of institutional distrust, this would be it. Presbyteries are not to be trusted with the decisions the constitution specifically entrusts to presbyteries.” And why are they not to be trusted? Because they follow their own best judgment, not the diktat of the party apparatchiki.
(Update: according to a letter to Presbyweb from Greg Coulter of Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery, on the request of the presbytery council of the Presbytery of South Louisiana, the Administrative Commission was not given the authority to assume original jurisdiction. This is good to know, though I don’t think it ameliorates the picture as much as Mr. Coulter thinks it does. He categorizes this as “one governing body invit[ing] another governing body to partner with them”; but given that the presbytery had, potentially, a gun to its head, and knew it, it seems to me that categorizing their letter as an invitation is dubious.)
This sort of thing is the reason why, as Davis also writes in that post, the effort to make the PC(USA) more missional by revising our polity is completely wrongheaded and doomed not merely to failure but to actively worsening the problem: it’s an effort to use structure to fix a behavior problem. As someone has said, no constitution can withstand those charged to administer it; changing our constitution without changing the hearts of those in positions of authority may change their justifications for their actions, but it will not change those actions. To quote Davis, “polity reflects behavior. Polity does not initiate behavior.”
In the end, it all comes back to that quote from David Ruis: “The worship God is seeking relies completely on His initiative, knowing that the only true expression of worship is through the abandonment of all our agendas for His, as we trust in His sovereign power and unlimited grace.” The mission to which God calls us flows out of the worship to which he calls us. Until those who govern the PC(USA) are willing to abandon their own agendas for his, trusting in his sovereign power and unlimited grace—as those folks in Flint did, to their eternal credit—they will never be agents of his mission, no matter what else they do; and until that changes, the part of God’s church for which they are responsible will never prosper.
HT: Presbyweb