Missional Polity: Will it really help the church?

Written by Michael R. Walker

Tuesday, 24 October 2006 18:00

After attending the recent meetings of the PC(USA)’s “Form of Government Task Force,” I’ve been thinking about how to “place” the efforts to develop a new “missional polity” for mainline churches. That is, how to place it in the more comprehensive effort of working for the missional transformation of our congregations and ultimately the larger church structures and denomination as a whole.

In casual conversation, when people talk about “missional polity” (don’t you talk about missional polity in your casual conversations?), people are often referring to “some form of church government that is more flexible and supportive of congregations,” a polity that moves from a “regulatory” model to an “enabling” model, or however you want to put it. And such emphases are rightly placed at the center of our effort to move beyond the overly hierarchal, overly bureaucratic forms of church government that are often insensitive to the needs of congregations and do not foster an ethos in the church that is conducive to building the kind of genuine relationships that ought to characterize our life together.

So, developing a more congregation-focused polity has some real potential. And I immediately think of the need to be more discerning in how we train and ordain leaders. Our current policies often prevent immigrant congregations from receiving adequate support and often make young entrepreneurial leaders feel as though preparation for ministry is more about getting all the boxes checked and being introduced to the “mainline ethos” than it is about being nurtured in the faith and commissioned to go out and take risks for the sake of the Gospel. And, who knows, maybe a new missional polity can give us smaller presbyteries where people might actually get to know each other and at least have the chance of becoming the kind of discerning communities without which no polity can be “missional.” And – is this too much to hope? – maybe a new congregation-focused polity will drastically pare down the functions of the General Assembly and leave only those functions that really are making a difference for our congregations.

But a more congregation-focused polity in itself is not going to solve the problems of the PC(USA), and I think we need to recognize that any new polity can really only be potentiating in its effect. That is, a polity designed to be more relational will not create the relationships but provide the context in which those relationships can develop. A polity that gives greater freedom to presbyteries in developing policies that are appropriate for their own ministry context is only helpful if the presbyteries can wisely and maturely live within that greater flexibility. (I should note that, in the work of PC(USA)’s “Form of Government Task Force,” the debate over sexuality is off the table, thankfully. So we’re not talking about local flexibility or license to disregard national standards regarding the manner of life of officers, which are to remain untouched.) The long and short of it is that structural changes can help catalyze a change in the ethos of the church and can help make an environment more conducive to faithfulness in ministry, but simply changing the structures themselves will not bring about a change in ethos or greater faithfulness.

In addition, one of the things we must contend with in the midst of efforts toward the “missional transformation” of our governing bodies is the fact that such change is more than a matter of creating a more efficient, less cumbersome government for the sake of congregational ministry.

The connecting structures of the church also are intended to serve a critical role in maintaining and expressing the unity of the church and a unified witness to Jesus Christ. And these functions can only be realized (beyond a mere institutional unity) by being founded in a genuinely common faith and life. Being a missional church together is a matter of moving into participation in God’s mission as a result of our common participation in the life of God through faith. So, hopefully obviously, authentic missional transformation in the mainline will go beyond reworking our polity and will involve a common foundational understanding of who God is, what the missio dei is, and how he has called us to participate in his mission to redeem the world in Jesus Christ. In other words, ultimately, the missional transformation of mainline connectional structures cannot take place without addressing and, to some degree, overcoming the crippling theological divisions plaguing the church. Re-writing the PC(USA)’s Form of Government is not in itself going to bring about theological renewal.

But I think it would be a mistake to assume that we must first solve core theological divisions before we address obvious problems in the connectional structures. I am beginning to wonder if re-orienting our structures around the centrality of the local congregation might indirectly help us address some of the theological divisions. How? Because there is no better test of the viability of theology than in the midst of the particularities of life in the local mission community. And being one who believes that, with adequate support and leadership, the faith and life of a congregation that is shaped by the classical Christian faith will not only survive but will thrive, I have hope that less burdensome and top-heavy governing bodies might catalyze a more faithful and effective witness in our congregations. If our higher governing bodies focus on enabling congregations, and if we can put the witness of our local mission communities front and center in our own ecclesiology, then I believe classical Christianity will prevail. Good theology informs ministry that connects people with Jesus Christ. In this case, the theological changes at the higher level will come as a result of demonstrated vitality in the local church.

All in all, there is much to be said for working to reform our church polity in a way that is focused on the needs of congregations as the primary unit of mission. Many denominations are thinking through how (and why) to make this happen. And my hope is that we will see this as one potentiating step in addressing the much bigger and deeper problems in the church.

The Notebook

Calvin quotes

Here are a few quotes from Calvin's Institutes that I selected for inclusion in a church magazine to reflect the basic posture of Calvin's piety, oriented as it is toward magnifying the glory of God and subordinating self-concern. Unfortunately these don't convey the Christological centered-ness of his piety, but they convey where Christ leads us by the Spirit:

"We are consecrated and dedicated to God in order that we may thereafter think, speak, meditate, and do, nothing except to his glory."

"We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God's: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God's: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God's: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal."

"We ought to we seek not the things that are ours but those which are of the Lord's will and will serve to advance his glory. This is also evidence of great progress: that, almost forgetful of ourselves, surely subordinating our self-concern, we try faithfully to devote our zeal to God and his commandments. For when Scripture bids us leave off self-concern, it not only erases from our minds the yearning to possess, the desire for power, and the favor of men, but it also uproots ambition and all craving for human glory and other more secret plagues. Accordingly, the Christian must surely be so disposed and minded that he feels within himself it is with God he has to deal throughout his life. In this way, as he will refer all he has to God's decision and judgment, so will he refer his whole intention of mind scrupulously to Him. For he who has learned to look to God in all things that he must do, at the same time avoids all vain thoughts. This, then, is that denial of self which Christ enjoins with such great earnestness upon his disciples at the outset of their service."

Ecclesiology and the Cartesian Turn

Janos Pasztor offers a packed summary of some of the ecclesiological consequences of the so-called "Cartesian turn" - the rise of the anthropological starting point -- and often endpoint -- in the pursuit of knowledge that became dominant among philosophers in the 18th century and has characterize "Modern" thought):

"Theology itself was very considerably influenced by this development. It was a 180-degree turn: it began losing its theocentric character and became more and more anthropocentric. For these kinds of theologies it was not God who would come to man addressing him in his life-giving Word, but man would make attempts to approach God by means of an intellectual enterprise. A late twentieth-century representative of this trend of thought says: 'God is the object of my consciousness which I perceive in so far as I perceive something, that is I allot him a place within the framework of a sign-system, in order to be able to talk to others about this matter.' Consequently, the church is the people, who, by virtue of having accepted the common sign-system, are seeking common answers to the meaning of existence.

"These trends of thought, however respectable they might have been otherwise, have rejected most of the things the Reformers stood for. The divine Logos, the eternal Son, 'true God from true God, begotten not made, of one Being with the Father,' became the Logos of the philosophers, a principle and idea, or a set of thoughts. As Blaise Pascal put it, here one has to deal with the God of the philosophers instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus Christ. Instead of listening obedience to the Word of God, one meets the rule of reason in rationalism; instead of the freedom of God's liberated children, one gets the freedom of the individual thinker in liberailsm. These ideas had a devastating effect on the field of Christology. They brought about what has been termed by Hungarian theologians, a Unitarian theology in everything but name."

"...the church is nothing but one of the many human organizations dealing with issues like religion and morals."

"....For people with that kind of idea, catholicity meant 'as opposed to confessional catholicity...the universal kingdom of spirit, but something other than the Holy Spirit,' if it meant anything at all."

Janos Pasztor, "The Catholicity of Reformed Theology," Toward the Future of Reformed Theology (Eerdmans, 1999), p. 29.

Recovering the Wounded: Healing a Church in Exile

Psalm 147:2: "The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel."

Commenting on this verse, Calvin expreses confidence that God would ultimately restore the Church from the ruinous state that formed so much of Calvin's own life:

"In calling God the former and architect of the Church, his object is to make us aware that by his power it remains in a firm condition, or is restored when in ruins. Hence he infers that it is in his power and arbitrament to gather those who have been dispersed. Here the Psalmist would comfort those miserable exiles who had been scattered in various quarters, with the hope of being recovered from their dispersion, as God had not adopted them without a definite purpose into one body. As he had ordered his temple and altar to be erected at Jerusalem, and had fixed his seat there, the Psalmist would encourage the Jews who were exiles from their native country, to entertain good hope of a return, intimating that it was no less properly God’s work to raise up his Church when ruined and fallen down, than to found it at first. It was not, therefore, the Psalmist’s object directly to celebrate the free mercy of God in the first institution of the Church, but to argue from its original, that God would not suffer his Church altogether to fall, having once founded it with the design of preserving it for ever; for he forsakes not the work of his own hands.

This comfort ought to be improved by ourselves at the present period, when we see the Church on every side so miserably rent asunder, leading us to hope that all the elect who have been adjoined to Christ’s body, will be gathered unto the unity of the faith, although now scattered like members torn from one another, and that the mutilated body of the Church, which is daily distracted, will be restored to its entireness; for God will not suffer his work to fail.

In the following verse he insists upon the same truth, the figure suggesting that though the Church labor under, and be oppressed by many diseases, God will speedily and easily recover it from all its wounds. The same truth, therefore, is evidently conveyed, under a different form of expression — that the Church, though it may not always be in a flourishing condition, is ever safe and secure, and that God will miraculously heal it, as though it were a diseased body."

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