The commission agreed to add a recommendation… that would effectively eliminate the denomination’s 16 synods, replacing their ecclesiastical functions with five regional administrative commissions of the General Assembly as well as establishing a number of regional judicial commissions.

The Mid Council Commission (MCC) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) released a sneak preview to a report that could change some of the denomination’s bedrock structures.

On Friday, the commission broke off into small groups to edit and revise an initial 76-page report that will recommend sweeping changes to the 220th General Assembly later this year.

While the MCC won’t vote on the report until Feb. 13 during a telephone conference call, the group released the first 13 pages of the report to the media, including an introduction, vision statement and guiding principles.

In 2010, the GA created the MCC to “develop models that reflect the roles of middle governing bodies in [PCUSA] polity and the changing context of [the denomination’s] witness in the United States and their relationship with other governing bodies.”

The MCC approved two major components to the report on Thursday. First, the commission agreed to add a recommendation to its final report that would effectively eliminate the denomination’s 16 synods, replacing their ecclesiastical functions with five regional administrative commissions of the General Assembly as well as establishing a number of regional judicial commissions.

Second, the MCC approved an experimental plan that would create non-geographic presbyteries and allow churches to be dismissed to other presbyteries under certain conditions.

Critics of the presbytery plan say it doesn’t give sufficient authority to proposed non-geographic presbyteries. Opponents also claim the plan changes little of the current structure and will only delay the increasing flight of disaffected churches exasperated with the widening theological rift within the PCUSA, pointing to the recent formation of a new Reformed body, the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians.

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