“No one wants to be held hostage to a threat from people who don’t like our actions. We made a covenant to be together even if we’re not of the same opinion. We should stay together.”

Increasing Power At The Top
By an 84 percent majority, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has delegated its power to a 21-person commission. Its purpose will be to deal with the denomination’s increasingly dysfunctional organizational structure, according to a statement by the Commissioners’ Committee on Middle Governing Bodies.

“The time has come to make our structure more flexible and nimble,” said committee moderator Cliff Lyda. Lyda said his committee considered overtures from six presbyteries, all of which were asking the General Assembly to repair an antiquated, multi-level, four-governing body structure that they say is unnecessarily expensive and too rigid to meet 21st century challenges.

Lyda said redesigning the system will require convening a small group that has the power to act as if it were the General Assembly itself.

Currently, the Presbyterian Church (USA) operates through four levels of governing entities: the session, presbytery, synod and General Assembly. All of the money for the four entities comes from the local congregations, which provide per-capita support for presbyteries, synods and the General Assembly.

In times of plenty, this structure gave little cause for concern. But today’s national church budgets are severely strained. Congregations are giving less money to higher governing bodies, partly due to their own financial constraints and partly due to a widespread disaffection with national church programs and policies.

Some opposition arose on the floor of the assembly, primarily from a concern that vesting 21 people with such power was dangerous. The assembly addressed that concern by enacting an amendment declaring that the commission could only act “upon a majority affirmative vote of the affected presbytery or presbyteries or a majority affirmative vote of the presbyteries in the affected synod or synods.”

Keeping conservatives in their place.
In separate actions, the General Assembly voted down an overture from Beaver-Butler Presbytery that would have allowed congregations in one presbytery to transfer their membership to another for reasons of theological affinity. The overture was supported by commissioner Julia Leeth from Santa Barbara Presbytery, who said she was aware of theologically conservative congregations that were on the verge of leaving the denomination. “The possibility of losing so many wonderful churches is sobering,” she said. “This overture may give them a way to stay in a different way.”

But Nancy D’Ippolito, a commissioner from Plains and Peaks Presbytery, countered with an argument that swayed the assembly: “No one wants to be held hostage to a threat from people who don’t like our actions. We made a covenant to be together even if we’re not of the same opinion. We should stay together.”

A related overture from Santa Barbara Presbytery also bit the dust. Birthed by the theologically conservative Presbyterians for Renewal (PFR), the plan was to create a 17th ‘affinity’ synod into which churches that share evangelical convictions and Biblical sexual ethics could relocate.

For the past two years, PFR has sponsored “reshaping conversations” throughout the country in an attempt to generate support for the proposal. PFR executive director Paul Detterman touted the plan as a strategy to keep churches that are becoming increasingly restive over the denomination’s liberal policies and programs.

Liberals accused the plan of being a staging area for a mass exodus from the denomination. Conservatives that opposed PFR’s plan said it did little more than create a cocoon, isolating evangelicals from apostasy in name only, since they would remain members of the denomination.

The Commissioners’ Committee on Middle Governing Bodies voted 40-4 to recommend disapproval of the overture. When it came before the full General Assembly, the plan died with hardly a whimper. After two years of effort by PFR, not a single commissioner rose to speak on its behalf. With no debate and no objection, it was declared dead on arrival.