General Assembly

This what is going out to my congregation in this week's newsletter:

A retired pastor friend of mine from the Lutheran tradition is fond of saying, “the word ‘Lutheran’ is an adjective and should never be used as a noun. And the word ‘Christian’ is a noun and should never be used as an adjective.” There’s wisdom in those words. In our context the same can be said of the word ‘Presbyterian’. We could probably stand to be reminded that we are not baptized as Presbyterians, but baptized as Christians- as people who are claimed as Christ’s own and called to follow him as his disciples. In the same way we don’t properly belong to a ‘Christian’ church, we belong to God who gathers us into a community of Christians that are called the church. Maybe this all sounds like semantics to you, but I think it may have some pretty important implications as we seek to discern how the Holy Spirit is moving among us to draw us into the mission of God in the world. You see, if we view ourselves as ‘Presbyterians,’ that noun becomes a label that potentially divides us from others in the larger body of Christ. Such labels invite us to retreat into a kind of clubhouse mentality, or invite others to marginalize our witness by distinguishing us as something not quite Christian, or not Christian in the right way, i.e. their way.

This summer, while y’all are enjoying the 4^th of July holiday, I will be gathered with Presbyterian Christians from around the United States in Pittsburgh. Our regional council, the Presbytery of Prospect Hill, has asked me to be our Presbytery’s teaching elder commissioner for this year’s assembly. On the one hand it is a great honor. On the other hand it is kind of a pain. It is an honor to be chosen and given a seat in the discernment of our mission as a national church body. It is a pain because Presbyterian Christians have proven over the centuries to be a contentious lot, and this year’s assembly will be no exception. Two churches in our area have already expressed a desire to be dismissed from the PC(USA), citing their unhappiness over changes to the Form of Government ratified from the last General Assembly, specifically the standards for ordaining those in ordered ministries such as Deacons, Ruling Elder(the session) and Teaching Elder(pastors). It will be a pain because difficult subjects will be discussed and voted on, and a media not particularly well-versed in the nuance of the discussion, or the Gospel, will invariably over-simplify some issue and splash a general misrepresentation in a headline that will be all many people will read or see regarding the subject. This will lead to hard feelings born of too little information and rash declarations about the state of the church, or more close to home, the state of the Presbyterians.

But this is what Presbyterian Christians do. We gather in Assembly, commissioning one teaching elder and one ruling elder from each Presbytery across the country to discern together God’s will for us. We do not have a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops to make decisions for us. We do not have a free-for-all where individual congregations do as they please. We practice our faith as Christians who are accountable to one another for listening together to God’s Word for us as to how we might most faithfully embody the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It should come as little surprise to anyone that a gathering of this many believers from wide-ranging cultural and theological points of view yields some measure of disagreement. General Assembly is not some faceless bureaucracy, it is me and you, and others like us. Our way of deciding and disagreeing may be Presbyterian in its nature, but our way of handling those disagreements should be modeled after the kind of grace and peace that is shown to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus does not abandon us- EVER. We need to be careful about following the spirit of this age in which we are encouraged to dismiss those who hold a contrary opinion. Such behavior is antithetical to the good news of reconciliation through Christ.

I think what makes it all so difficult is that, while our representative form of democracy is modeled after the Presbyterian way of doing things, there is one significant difference. In civil governance, those in the State or National assembly are elected to represent the will of the people. But in the church, commissioners are asked to listen for the will of God and to vote according to their conscience as it is informed by the Holy Spirit. So when the congress acts, they act on behalf of the people. That’s a big deal. But it’s a much bigger deal to take action on behalf of God. Whatever the outcome and headlines from this year’s assembly, I hope you will do one thing that is decidedly Presbyterian in nature- take the time to study what truly took place and listen to those who were there- so that if someone brings it up, you know what you’re talking about. What could be more Presbyterian than that?

Introductions

About six months ago I got a call from the person in my presbytery who heads up nominations. (Already with the first sentence  a little translation may be required for any non-Presbyterian types who are reading this, or those Presbyterians who have more important things to do than pay attention to polity and that sort of thing. So, a few terms: 
Polity- the word for how a particular Christian tradition governs itself, basically the rules for how we make decisions and get things done. 
Presbytery- a regional [for now] grouping of congregations who are accountable to one another for things like preparing people who might be called to serve in ordained leadership positions, attending to the relationships between congregations and their current leadership, and praying together about how to support one another as a whole toward the end of doing Christian ministry.
Nominations- a committee composed of members of the presbytery [we just LOVE committees. We love committees so much that sometimes we think that the only purpose of a committee is to meet as a committee. Think, corporate America and it's love of meetings for the sake of meeting.] whose purpose is to fill positions on the other committees that are tasked with some of the functions specified above in the life of a presbytery.
Everybody up to speed? Good. Back to our regularly scheduled program)
The head of Nominations calls me because in addition to filling the positions that keep our presbytery committees functioning, they also tap the commissioners to the General Assembly.
(Time for more terminology. Maybe this kind of thing floats your boat, but after awhile it gets pretty tedious. And people wonder why our short-attention-span generation has lost interest in church.
General Assembly- up until just a few years ago the General Assembly met every year. Presbyterians are like onions, or is that ogres? We have layers of leadership. Congregations -> Presbyteries -> Synods -> General Assembly. Each presbytery sends two commissioners to General Assembly. [if you're thinking, 'hey, that sounds an awful lot like the U.S. Senate where each state gets two senators,' there's a reason for that. You can blame, or credit, the Presbyterians for a good deal of influence in the governing structure of the United States' constitution.]
Commissioner- one who is sent on behalf of her, or his, presbytery to participate in the business of the General Assembly.)
Long story short. They asked me to be the teaching elder commissioner to this year's GA.
(crap! okay...
teaching elder- there's some confusion about this because we JUST changed the terminology. There are three ordered ministries in the Presbyterian tradition: teaching elder, ruling elder, and deacon. Teaching elders are seminary trained individuals who jump through all kinds of hoops so that they can be ordained to that office in order to serve primarily as pastors in the church. Some serve in other pastoral capacities such as college professors, chaplains, etc. Ruling elders are members of a congregation who are ordained to the council of a local church to measure and direct the mission and ministry of that body. Deacons serve congregations through particular acts of Christian service including ministry of assistance to individuals in need [for my money they are where the rubber of the Gospel meets the road of ministry])
That's right they asked ME, Mr. Who Needs to Study for the Polity Exam When it's an Open Book Test, Mr. ANOTHER Presbytery Meeting!?!?!? I know, right?
I am being sent by my peers in ministry to participate in this year's debacle we call General Assembly. I'm sure I'll explain the 'debacle' remark in a later post. In Greek the word 'apostolos' means "a delegate, messenger, one who is sent forth". I guess that's me.
The truth of the matter is that when it comes to the call of God, reluctance is part of the game. The scariest people are the ones waving their arms in the air for God saying, "pick me! PICK ME!" You don't see a lot of that in the Bible. Generally what you see is people who aren't sure they're up to whatever it is that God is calling them to do, and even less sure that they necessarily want to be a part of it. And yet, I'm going. Because that's what you do when you are called, and sent. You go.