wfn.org | Reflections of the Stated Clerk

[PCUSA_NEWS@ecunet.org]

Date: 27-Jun-96 
 
96250            Reflections of the Stated Clerk: 
                    Jim Andrews Says Farewell 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--Jim Andrews says it seemed odd to him back in 1942 that 
while still Presbyterian, he was a member of a different denomination just 
because his parents moved from New York to Arkansas. 
 
     It was probably that sense of oddness that kept compelling him to 
deliver his spiel about reunion on the floors of presbyteries across the 
South -- even when people said it was a no go. 
 
     Reunion, Andrews says, is still happening.  It's a long, slow process 
adjusting to differences, absorbing changes and acknowledging that 
transitions -- though doable -- are often painful.  "But what the church 
can be was obviously more important than what the church had been," he says 
now, looking back on those days. 
 
     "It was visionary, looking to the future. ... It offered the 
opportunity to utilize our combined resources for planning and carrying out 
mission.  And we had a common constitution and theological base," Andrews 
says. 
 
     "Oh yeah," he admits, mistakes were made in reuniting the Presbyterian 
Church in the United States (PCUS) and the United Presbyterian Church in 
the United States of America (PCUSA) -- such as paying too little attention 
to governing body relations and to impending financial crunches.  But when 
asked what he's most proud of in his near quarter-century of working as the 
stated clerk of a Presbyterian denomination, it's reunion he mentions 
first:  "I deserve," he says, "some small share of the credit for 
accomplishing reunion.  I served both [denominations].  Had contacts in 
both.  And had some understanding of both." 
 
     What Andrews does understand is history.  That's where he often turns 
to understand conflict such as what he sees happening in the now reunited 
denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). And he says crises about 
doctrinal integrity -- though the issue now is justice -- church government 
and increasing sectionalism strikingly parallel controversies raging among 
Presbyterians in the mid-1800s. 
 
     But there's an undercurrent now that is highly paradoxical -- "a 
current sense of rejection of authority ... put together with a sense of 
longing for sources of certainty. 
 
     "You can't have certainty without sources of authority," Andrews says, 
stressing that a way out of the bind may be "a rollback to old ways ... 
re-realizing the importance of education and communication" as new ways of 
nurturing ties and connecting with each other, such as electronic networks, 
emerge. 
 
     "The day of major denominational structures is in decline.   Smaller' 
may be the wrong word [because] the end result will involve more people," 
he says.  " ... There's a very bright future in front of us." 
 
     But that means recognizing existing problems quickly, adapting to them 
and not expecting looming transitions to be painless, Andrews maintains, if 
institutions created in the 1950s are going to reshape themselves for a 
different kind of world.  He said some within the ecumenical movement 
already foresee adapting themselves to a more interfaith focus, especially 
among Jews, Christians and Muslims. 
 
     But there are griefs and criticisms, too, in surveying a 
quarter-century of the church's life. Andrews says he's dismayed by some of 
what he sees: 
 
          a lack of attention to mentoring promising individuals 
          the growing use of a "politics of threat"  
          more emphasis on professionalism than calling among clergy 
          a lack of regret among those "out of sync" with community 
consensus for causing 
          division 
          a general loss of the notion of "covenant community" for the 
primacy of the individual 
          too much worry about "more budget" rather than developing an 
"adequate" budget  
          less vision in the leadership. 
 
     And he regrets that he was never able to persuade Presbyterians to 
hold biennial Assemblies -- though the review committee's proposal to hold 
legislative Assemblies every other year with more conventionlike gatherings 
in between comes somewhat closer, Andrews says. 
 
     He attributes much of what happens in the church not only to the loss 
of trust that came out of the Vietnam era and to what he calls the indebted 
kinds of politics common to the Kennedy days, but also to the increasing 
secularization of society. 
 
     But secular society is exactly where he's headed. "It's time to give 
back.  I've got a lot of political experience," he says, stressing that he 
intends to spend some time training people to run for local political 
office, such as on school boards and town councils, and staying out of 
church controversies. 
 
     "There's an element of liberation in leaving," said Andrews, 
acknowledging that he's ready for a change and he still believes that it's 
"tragic when leadership figures do not move out of the way." 
 
     A remaining source of pride for Andrews is the staff he assembled in 
the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) -- people, he says, who enjoy 
working together and who work hard.  He paused.  "I will miss these people 
intensely. ... We just had the final senior staff meeting. 
 
     "At the next one, the new clerk will be present," Andrews said, who 
will have a consultative role for the first months of the new clerk's 
tenure.  "And at the next ... the old clerk will not be present." 

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