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Welcome! The primary purpose of this blog is to explore and encourage around what it means to be winsome and sent into the world for God's glory. If you are new here, the definition of "lighthouse-searchlight" or our missional journey is a good place to start. Come peruse the blog and add me to your RSS feed!

Saturday, July 21, 2012

ga220 reflection guest post - "making disciples"

The commissioners from the Presbytery of Charlotte were to report at our presbytery meeting today and a written reflection by myself and Kate Murphy was unintentionally omitted from the presbytery packet.  I had shared the "Disappointment and Hope" reflection from this blog.  The other reflection was by my friend, the Rev. Kate Murphy. Her reflection is below.

“Making Disciples” – the Rev. Kate Murphy

Reflections on the 220th General Assembly (2012)

After some soul-searching, I’m going to share this piece I wrote on the second day of GA. I don't write to tear down the PCUSA. This is the place God calls me to be, but I do trust God enough to tell the truth (as I see it)--because I think God is pruning and shaping us into something beautiful.

Yesterday, I worshiped at Mt. Ararat Baptist church with my friend Eustacia—and it was possibly the most powerful and authentic worship service I’ve ever experienced—the fellowship, the music, the dancing, the JOY—and the word. Rev. Curtis is an incredible preacher—but I’ve heard lots of really great preachers. What’s breath-taking is that you realize, the sermon is not the goal for him—it’s the tool, it is the means to the end—and the end is us. He’s preaching to create and deepen disciples, you can look around and see people changing, things breaking down in their hearts—in my heart. That congregation isn’t focused on being a great church (though it certainly is), and that ministry isn’t just making disciples, it’s maturing them. That community of faith teaches believers that life with Christ is not about knowing more or doing more, it’s about being more through the grace of Jesus Christ.

And I wonder, when did we in the PCUSA get the idea that there were more important things to do than make and deepen disciples? And we have—just look at what we gather to do at our big important bi-annual meeting. We don’t gather in committees to talk about evangelism, or spiritual disciplines, or stewardship, or worship—much less patience or forgiveness or love. We don’t want to be more in Christ—we want to do things in the world for God. I did not sit on the Ministry with Immigrants committee—we’re not interested in being church with strangers and ‘aliens’ in our country, we didn’t spend a second talking about that. I sat on the Immigration Affairs committee, because we’re focused on making policy, not disciples. We’re telling the world—and ourselves—what matters in the PCUSA. We’ve got more important things to do than grow deep in the grace of God. We’ve got to fix the world.

Why don’t we get that the most important work we have to do as an institution is to form the people that God sends out into the world? When did raising up and equipping the priesthood of all believers become insignificant to us? Don’t tell me we do it—we don’t even talk about doing it. And don’t tell me God does it for us without any intentionality and effort on our part. Nobody grows deep in God by accident. People whose hearts God lights on fire will go looking for a place to equip them to carry that flame out into a cold and dark world. Mt. Ararat Baptist is doing that work. And it’s not because they’re right and we’re wrong—it’s because God is equipping them to do it, because they’ve made it their primary work. I know God would equip us too—in our own way, in our own style, if only we chose it for our primary work. What if instead of writing policy papers for the US State Department, we tried to nurture and form disciples to go and be the State Department—or if we tried to be the body of Christ with and for the men and women God has already called to do that work?

Monday, July 16, 2012

ga220 reflection 4 - stuck: per capita is crippling my presbytery

AKA "Change is Hard"

In a previous post, I wrote:

Particularly around the dividing issues, I experienced the parliamentary maneuvering often as an effort by many to “guard what we’ve already won.”
An even more tangible demonstration of this point came when I put a motion before the Assembly to cap mandatory presbytery per capita payment at 18% of the presbytery operating budget.  The push-back came from folks who seemed to think that this motion would somehow reward or enable churches that withheld per capita.  For one, it is the right of sessions to do so; but more importantly, the motion had nothing to do with that issue, but with protecting presbyteries from the double whammy of a fixed tax that CANNOT adjust with dramatic budget declines in many presbyteries.

For example, in my own presbytery, per capita is fixed at nearly $300,000 (based on our membership).  Five years ago, when we had a thriving $2.4M operating budget, that per capita amounted to 12.5% of our budget.  In 2012, with a projected $1.1M operating budget, that same $300,000 per capita will be 27% of our budget.  In order to pay our mandatory per capita (which we will!), mission, staffing, savings, and critical infrastructure suffer dramatically.  The Assembly seemed so fearful of cracking a (logically unrelated) door for what were described as renegade congregations that they were unwilling to take care of a major health risk for our most important mid-council bodies, the presbyteries.

What’s my point?  It’s that we aren’t just stuck on some issues; we are really stuck… in the ways we debate, the way we refer and study, the way we spend money, and the way we do the same things over and over even though we agree that the results are problematic.  We are so stuck we are hurting ourselves.  Lord, help us!

***
Related: see the comment thread here for a lively exchange and perhaps further illustration of my point


Saturday, July 14, 2012

ga220 reflection 3 - stuck: the mid-council report

AKA "Change is Hard"

In the previous post, I wrote:

Particularly around the dividing issues, I experienced the parliamentary maneuvering often as an effort by many to “guard what we’ve already won.”

Neither conservatives nor liberals had exclusive rights to guarding their territory.  Another significant example came with the response to the Mid-Council Commission’s report.  With diverse members and wide-ranging information-gathering and visioning, this two-year study was nearly shut down in committee.  Further, the commission’s chair (Tod Bolsinger) told me he probably only had 15 min. with the committee, and with the disapproval of that committee, had none slated before the Assembly.  And this was one of the great refer and study groups from 2010.

I helped put several of the mid-council commission recommendations back up before the Assembly, but the proposal for non-geographic presbyteries was soundly defeated.  And here’s the part I want to note: both in committee and on the floor of the Assembly, the rationale given against non-geographic presbyteries seemed to primarily be about “not letting the conservatives get away with our property.”

But wait… the mid-council proposal guarded against that very thing!  It was to be a temporary experiment for missional purposes, requiring ongoing relationship with the presbytery of origin, and specifically leaving responsibility for property with the presbytery of origin.

What I’m saying is that out of fear of losing people, congregations, or assets, the Assembly missed the truly missional and forward-thinking gift of much the Mid-Council report had to offer.

Could it be that changing the way we do things might disadvantage us politically against the other?  That’s the sense I got, though I hope I’m wrong.  And at any rate, we did not adequately discuss, much less digest, the hard work of the mid-council commission.

***
John Vest, a member of the mid council commission, wrote an in-depth report and reflection on these same things.  I commend it for your reading: "Mid Councils Reform: Failure to Launch" (July 6, 2012).  I also commend a reflective article on the clash of cultures, the resistance to change, and the sovereignty of God, by Jake Horner: "...Adaptive Leadership" (July 12, 2012)

***
Addendum: over on the MGB forum on Facebook, Ed Brenegar made a valuable observation that ideas don't fall (or rise) by parliamentary vote, but by the will of those believing in them.  Even if the mid-council report had been approved and celebrated at GA, we'd still need to live out that vision and change locally, and there is nothing stopping us from doing so.  Sure, that approval would have added some momentum and exposure of the ideas, but I join those with a vision for healthy, local congregations reaching beyond their walls in continuing this work in practice! I blog about our missional experiment regularly at lighthouse/searchlight church, and would welcome your comments and interaction there.  



Thursday, July 12, 2012

ga220 reflection 1 - disappointment and hope

I’ve been back from General Assembly for four days now and I’m just now feeling rested and alert.  Not only were the days long and intense, there was an overload of information, implications, opinions, and feelings.  I mention the last one because for this INFJ pastor, bearing the spoken and unspoken range of emotion for a room of 1500+ people is exhausting after 30 minutes, much less after a 15+ hour day.

I’m still processing much of the experience, and will share over the next few days and weeks, but I want to begin by sharing broadly on the themes of disappointment and hope.

Disappointment

I experienced great disappointment and sadness during the Assembly.  I was not disappointed to not be elected moderator.  I was not disappointed that some votes didn’t go my way (and not particularly elated over the ones that did).  I was disappointed that, as a whole, this Assembly seemed to choose the familiarity and “safety” of the old way of doing things over the admittedly risky possibility of something new.  The invitations were there from all four moderator candidates, from the community and example of the YAADs, from three significant two-year committee reports (Mid-Councils, 21st Century, Biennial Assembly), and from the stories and inspirational leadership of the GAMC.  And time and again, I saw or perceived the unwillingness of the body to relinquish any ground that could possibly be used by ecclesiastical opponents.  I’ll unpack some of that in subsequent posts, but overall, it left me saddened that several places where folks with theological differences could have come together around mission and ministry, we backed away and hunkered down.

Hope

There were shining exceptions to that disappointment, and those exceptions gave me great hope.  I found hope in folks like Emily Proctor, who extended trust and with whom (I discovered) I have more in common than we have apart.  I was blessed to begin a friendship with her in the midst of the Assembly, despite our differences on some issues.  I experienced hope when Chris Campbell, a notably conservative commissioner, moved to pull deliberation of an authoritative interpretation on marriage out of the “answer all” motion on the floor because he knew how important that discussion was to so many (even though he would have voted against it).  I experienced hope when Miriam Dolin, who did not support non-geographic presbyteries, nonetheless moved for the discussion of them to be put back on the floor after that topic was disapproved in committee.  I experienced hope from various places on the theological spectrum as a few questioned our tendency to refer, study, ignore, repeat, and instead challenged the Assembly to use money and resources to strengthen local churches and grow healthy disciples.

What gives me an extra measure of hope is that though we feel so stuck, the Spirit is yet moving in and through brothers and sisters like these.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

moderator election (2012) - opening speech, QandA

Opening speeches of the moderator candidates at the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)  My speech begins at 17:15.


Question and answer on the floor of the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)



Questions Asked
  1. 00:05 - Jeff Krehbiel - TEC, National Capital: Pastoral dilemma over what to say to member in congregation who plans to get married to someone of the same sex in a jurisdiction where same-sex marriage is allowed by the state.  What advice do you offer?  (RA, 08:28)
  2. 11:52 - Ed Bush - REC, Los Ranchos: What is the Gospel? (RA, 12:58)
  3. 14:05 - Tim Simpson - TEC, St. Augustine: What should I/you/GA do if an interest group is inappropriately influencing commissioners through gifts/trips? (RA, 16:45)
  4. 19:45 - Emily McColl - TEC, Los Ranchos: What personal initiative will you take to bring people who are different to Jesus? And how to keep churches IN the PCUSA? [at least that's what I thought the questions were; you can listen for yourself!] (RA, 21:55)
  5. 32:45 - Jeremy Glidden - YAAD, Genesee Valley: Please share some personal examples of dealing with conflict in the church. (RA, 40:10)
  6. 42:57 - Chris Campbell - TEC, Grace: Please explain what "missional" means and an example of how you have been a part of missional ministry. (RA, 47:35)
  7. 52:08 - Hunter Badgley - YAAD, Alaska: What are your ideas on fostering relationships and building community at General Assembly? (RA, 54:06)
  8. 60:03 - Chris Enoch - TEC, Redstone: With most of our congregations being small in size, what does a healthy, small church look like? (RA, 60:38)



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