I’ve been to six General Assemblies in a row as a Record staff member. Even for a preacher’s kid and lifelong Presbyterian like me, that’s a lot of assemblies. I hope there will be many more. But I’ve never known a growing church or a full Sunday school or a congregational budget that wasn’t declining year after year. I’ve heard people talk about days gone by when things were different, but I was born and raised in a world of empty pews. According to the Haynes Report (see the Record’s June 2013 issue), our own stats suggest there will only be 65,000 of us by 2020. That’s a decline of about a third over the course of this decade. It’s a big change.
We like to pretend our church isn’t changing quickly (or at least we like to complain that it isn’t). But as Rev. Dr. Dale Woods pointed out during his Sunday morning session at assembly, change isn’t something we get to choose. Every time someone leaves a congregation or passes away, that’s a change. And each time someone joins a congregation that’s a change, too. The issue is not whether or not we will change, but whether or not we are going to be intentional about it.
I’m not convinced we will be. It’s easy to keep pressing on, talking all the while about how much we need to change and debating what that change should look like. We can pretend we have time. We can keep bringing up the idea of biennial assemblies—it’s come up twice in the assemblies I’ve gone to—until we’re forced to move to biennial meetings because we can’t sustain the annual expense anymore. We can justify it by reminding ourselves ministry isn’t about the numbers and we should make decisions based on theology rather than finances.
But can’t we do both? Can’t we, for theological reasons, make sure there’s going to be a Presbyterian Church for me to participate in down the road?
There have been some incredible moments at General Assembly when something happened and the Spirit seemed to break in for a moment past the motions and amendments, between the cracks in Roberts’ Rules of Order.
When Rev. Dr. Clyde Ervine stood up at the 2012 assembly and made a plea for the denomination to focus on congregations, “the basic, fundamental fabric of our denomination” which “we too often assume … will always be there,” it was a powerful moment. Commissioners applauded. One asked that the whole speech be recorded in the minutes. And Ervine’s plea has been mentioned at each assembly since.
But for each Spirit – filled moment that has made people sit up straighter, there have been many hours spent nitpicking motions and doing routine business. And I must admit, it’s frustrating.
At an assembly it’s easy to become focused on the minutiae of motions and amendments and lose sight of the bigger picture. Who are we really doing this stuff for? Whose life will be impacted by the reports and recommendations that fill 400 pages each year? What effect will it have on the future?
There were times when it felt like we were going in circles. The 2011 assembly thought we needed to have a clear vision for the future before we could address issues like national restructuring, so it asked the Assembly Council to “discern, define and articulate the vision” of the denomination. The council did a national survey, put together a mission and vision statement and brought it to the 2012 assembly. That assembly referred it back because the statements were too general. The council tried again. It presented a new vision to this year’s gathering and, after a flurry of amendments and discussions, (and after years of time and effort) the assembly ended up defeating the recommendation entirely. Apparently it wasn’t that important for the church to have a new vision statement after all.
Yet during those discussions, both at Assembly Council and at assembly, it seemed so important to people that we get these statements right. If only we could find the right words and put them in the right order, if we could perfectly articulate who we are, then somehow we would know what we should do and where we should go. It was easy to get wrapped up in the process and the details. And it was easier to talk about the wording of a statement than to have a frank discussion about the future.
Although General Assembly is a great way to gather people from across the country, its format makes it primarily reactionary and detail – oriented rather than proactive and big – picture. It’s structured to deal efficiently with reports and recommendations from its committees (many of which are responding to a request or overture from a session, presbytery or synod), and to allow orderly discussions of those matters. It’s not set up to explore big questions, or nurture creativity, or think intentionally about the future.
This year the vision statement was rejected, but another motion in essence replaced it. It wasn’t painstakingly crafted by a committee, but came from a commissioner, Rev. Sean Howard, who wanted to echo the sentiments Ervine expressed in 2012. It declared congregations to be a critical priority for the denomination, and called for that priority to be woven into the work of all national agencies, committees and staff. (You can read it on page 49.)
I kept thinking back to something Rev. Dr. Rick Horst said to me when he was Moderator of the 2011 General Assembly. He said we tend to think of the Presbyterian Church in Canada as a ship. But it’s not a ship; it’s a flotilla. And you turn a flotilla around one boat at a time.
Most Presbyterians are not elders or ministers. They will never attend (and, to be honest, may never care about) a General Assembly, and probably won’t set foot in a presbytery meeting. They’re not going to pick up a copy of the Acts and Proceedings for a little summer reading. The work of assembly is an important piece in the machinery of the denomination, but much of what it does will never touch their lives.
We’re all part of this changing church. And it is changing whether we like it or not. What churches and assemblies do—and what they leave undone—will be handed on to the next generation of church leaders. So let’s figure out what we’re doing and who we’re doing it for.
