Moving on…

December 18, 2007

Today I joined some 160+ ministers and elder commissioners, and some visitors, at a called meeting of Heartland Presbytery. What follows is a long post about what transpired today, and my blogging about some of the events elsewhere under the moniker ‘kairos’. If you aren’t interested, or don’t have much patience for the inter-church squabbles of a mainline denomination and its polity, you are free to skip it; if you are, feel free to read on… I’m sorry its so long, even as I skip a lot of details.

It was a specially called meeting, fairly rare actually, where we were considering the recommendations of the Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry to remove a minister from the rolls of Presbytery. In effect, this removed his ordination. There is a lot of back story here and history that I can’t really summarize here, but the long and the short of it is that the particular pastor in question had been at a church in our presbytery for 15 years, and had for quite some time expressed “deep grievances” with our denomination, particularly on issues such as abortion and diversity of opinion over the church’s teaching and approach to human sexuality.

There’s a lot of disagreement on a lot of issues in our church, and that’s neither unusual nor a deal breaker. I don’t agree with our church’s position on certain things, and like others I am free to work against that and to even advocate for change. Its my responsibility to seek the mind of Christ and to advocate for it in Christ’s church. But in the meantime I acknowledge the common constitutional framework that binds us together, and I believe that this framework gives us a good way to try to discern God’s will for our church and to bind us together with mutual responsibility and mutual forbearance.

As a Minister of Word and Sacrament, I can’t just do anything I want to do as a pastor, or that I think is the truth. I have to submit that to the wider strictures of the constitution of the church, and its bodies that nurture me and give my ordination meaning. The constitution requires that some duly authorized body (say, a session or a presbytery),, and duly authorized and overseen by a governing body of the church authorize it when I administer the sacraments, and that I do them in a certain way (say, with the Trinitarian baptismal formula “in the name of the Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit”). It requires that I get the denomination’s approval if I want to do pastoral things in a setting outside of the presbytery, say if I want to officiate at a wedding in another part of the country. These are just some conditions of being a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

My acting outside those bounds would (rightly) subject me to the discipline of the denomination. That’s part of the deal; part of what it means to be a pastor in this church. It gives shape to what it means to be a PCUSA minister and to be accountable to the larger church, elders and ministers in representative bodies.

It was the judgment of the Presbytery today that this pastor had, in effect, removed himself from our denomination through his actions. The technical term for that is that we judged that the pastor had “renounced jurisdiction” of the Presbyterian Church (USA), by doing two things: persisting in a work disapproved by the Presbytery, and assuming membership of some character in another denomination.

Again, a quick summary: this particular church, after its leadership had over the years expressed concern about the state of our denomination, asked to be dismissed from our denomination to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (or EPC), following some suggestions of the New Wineskins Association of Churches along the way. The pastor in question was part of the strategy team which wrote this strategy document, which I’ve read and which I think is not a fair picture of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

That’s a charitable way of saying it; more directly, I think it is misleading, inaccurate, and propagandistic on its face, and in particular it misrepresents the connectional nature of our denomination, the relationship of individual churches to our presbyteries and the denomination, and the faith of many if not most of its members and clergy. It particularly distorts those of us, like myself, who are liberal/progressive in theology, evangelical in passion and dedication to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and committed to the work of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

But some members of this church, and many others, didn’t see it that way, and they decided that they could no longer abide being in communion with us. The Presbytery, after attempting reconciliation through its Committee on Ministry and an Administrative Review Commission, appointed a special type of committee, called an Administrative Commission (or AC), to act in as Presbytery to to seek reconciliation with this church and its members where possible, and to determine what to do under the requirements of the constitution.

This AC determined that there was a sizable number of people (around 90 at this point) at this 500 member church that wanted to stay within the PCUSA, and for that reason among others it denied the request of the church to be dismissed to the EPC. The AC, as it was empowered to do by the presbytery, assumed original jurisdiction and became the session of the church, and placed the pastor on paid administrative leave, under the condition that he not perform pastoral functions (preaching, officiating at sacraments, etc) while under that leave.

Some 200-300 members of that church left (as they were planning to do, anyway), and formed another church in the same community. And the pastor went with them to be a “guest preacher”, performing baptism there and, as the presbytery determined, acting as their pastor. In doing this, and in his activities with the EPC, the presbytery determined that this pastor’s call wasn’t with the PCUSA any more, and that he was acting outside the structure of our shared constitution.

The argument presented and deliberated today was more complex than all of this, but that should suffice. If you’re a real glutton for punishment, I’ll post the link to the video of the whole painful affair when it becomes available…

I wanted to comment on this, briefly, here for a few reasons. The main one is that I’m saddened that our presbytery was brought to this. I support what we did today, but I mourn for the hurt that this pastor feels about his (now former) denomination, and while I strongly disagree with his claims about us, I really do wish him well, particularly should he formally become pastor of this new church in his community, and if they get affiliated with the EPC. As I communicated to him recently by email, I continue to hold him and his family in my prayers, hoping that God’s grace may abide with him in whatever God might be calling him towards.

One other reason to post on this: I’ve had scant little interaction with this pastor, but I have blogged about events at his church elsewhere. I did this on a blog that was pseudonymous, under the name ‘kairos’. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the pseudonymity was a conscious decision I made in order to be able to blog on matters without being identified with a particular church.

This pastor made a lot today about my having commented about what he and others have done–actions that I thought, then and now, were outside the bounds of our constitutional bonds–and how I did so anonymously. In part, he was making an argument (directly or indirectly) that I was hiding behind that pseudonym to act dishonorably. But many people blog anonymously, for various reasons. That in and of itself is not dishonorable. I didn’t obscure my identity strongly, and many people could see who I was, and for others who asked, I tended to tell. “Hiding” wasn’t ever the point, and I frankly have no problem talking about that. Drop me a line if you’d like more discourse about it.

This pastor points to this exchange, on another blog that frankly distorts the events and positions of the PCUSA, as a purported example. He wants people to read it, and frankly so do I.

I actually am quite proud of all that I’ve written there or under that moniker, and this pastor’s claims to the contrary, I didn’t blog about or comment about anything that wasn’t public record. I didn’t misrepresent myself. I tried to write there and elsewhere with pastoral sensitivity, respect for the truth and for others, and with all possible grace. I think that exchange demonstrates that.

Since this pastor brought this up in his floor comments today, I wanted to comment on it here. I simply want to acknowledge what has transpired from my perspective, and don’t plan to belabor it. (Thus there are no comments available to this post, and I don’t plan to blog about it any more). I am moving on, as I’m sure he is moving on. I wish him well as he seeks to follow God as he think’s God is calling him. I will continue to do my best to embody the teachings of Jesus as I understand them and as I have been shaped by the PC(USA). In the end, I hope that God’s will is accomplished through both of us, and I trust that, regardless of any of this, God’s will will indeed be accomplished, to God’s glory.

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