In Search of a Missional Polity for Presbyterians

Written by Michael R. Walker

Monday, 23 October 2006 18:00

Of the several important decisions made by the PC(USA)'s 217th General Assembly (2006) that have yet to receive much attention, the formation of the “Form of Government Task Force” (F.O.G.) is at the top of the list. This new Task Force has been charged with proposing a re-written Form of Government (the “G” section in the PCUSA’s Book of Order) to the 218th General Assembly (2008).

I had the opportunity to observe the second meeting of this task force, which was held in Louisville on June 19-21, 2006. Leslie Scanlon has written a good descriptive article on the meeting, and her story is available here.

The basic idea behind this project is to develop a polity that serves the ministries of local congregations better. The G.A. mandate instructs the Task Force to make the provision of “leadership of congregations as missional communities” the primary focus of a new Form of Government, while maintaining presbyteries as the central unit of church government. The G.A. mandate also takes the sexuality and property debates off the table – these are elements of the Form of Government that may not be touched – given the fact that tampering with either one of these provisions has “the capacity to obfuscate the constitutional renewal efforts.”

Thankfully, I found the nature of the work of this task force so far to be very different from the work of the PUP Task Force. The PUPTF was dealing with the sexuality debate and often behind closed doors, which, whether or not appropriate, contributed to a sense of being “in the dark,” not being transparent, etc. And they were also discussing matters about which hundreds of books have been written, subjects that have been talked to death for the last thirty or so years. And in the end their polity recommendation was a tweak of a particular constitutional provision about which there is a huge amount of debate.

Yet the FOG Task Force’s meetings were transparent, even unguarded in the open-ended and rather candid discussions about Presbyterian distinctives, the purpose of governing bodies, and the meaning of the missional church movement that they hope informs their own work. And though they have met only twice, we are already receiving drafts of their work. (The draft of their rewrite of the first four chapters of the Book of Order is available here, and the draft of their re-write of chapter 7 of the current FOG is available here. A draft of the outline for the new FOG is available here. I haven’t had the time to scrutinize them carefully yet.) And, frankly, to the degree that they are trying to do genuine theological work on the intersection of missional theology and Presbyterian polity, they are working on a project about which the first book has yet to be written. So, it’s at least stimulating discussion (something I never thought I’d say about a G.A. level committee meeting). It’s a good thing when a G.A. committee reads Darrell Guder’s The Continuing Conversion of the Church.

Of course, we will have to take things one step at a time and see how their effort proceeds. They have invited feedback from the church, so if you’re interested in this sort of thing, you should review their drafts and offer your feedback. I will offer some further comments over the next couple of days, beginning with a post entitled: Missional Polity: Will It Really Help 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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