wfn.org | GAC Steers Reorganization Vehicles Into Slow Lanes

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19-February-1999 
99072 
 
    GAC Steers Reorganization Vehicles Into Slow Lanes 
 
    by John Filiatreau 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - In the face of renewed controversy over two special 
committee reports on restructuring some key agencies of the Presbyterian 
Church (U.S.A.), the General Assembly Council (GAC) has called for 
additional study and asked that recommendations be prepared for submission 
to the 213th General Assembly in 2001. 
 
    The reports - by the Special Committee on Middle Governing Body 
Relationships and the Special Committee for Review of the General Assembly 
- will be forwarded to the 211th General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas, 
this June, jointly by the GAC and the Committee on the General Assembly 
(COGA), with calls for at least two more years of deliberations. 
 
    The governing body report retains no trace of the committee's earlier 
call for the elimination of synods. The GA-review report still calls for 
major structural changes, but a list of GAC "concerns," and a go-slow 
recommendation, have been attached. 
 
    The governing body report calls for further "consultation" on a 
possible change in the church's current four-governing-body system - of 
sessions, presbyteries, synods and General Assembly - to find "simplified, 
flexible, and more responsive ways . . . for the PC(USA) to do its work as 
it moves into a new millennium." 
 
    The special committee's report notes that "the primary organizational 
focus of the life and work of the PC(USA) is on developing, encouraging, 
equipping, and resourcing its congregations and their leaders as the Living 
Body of Jesus Christ"; that "the primary focus . . . of presbyteries is to 
enhance the effectiveness of congregations"; and that "all governing bodies 
will be engaged in partnerships for mutual mission and ministry." 
 
    In earlier drafts, the committee suggested moving to a 
three-governing-body system by eliminating synods. That recommendation was 
dropped after the executive committees of COGA and GAC called for a slower, 
more consultative process, and after an outcry from synod leaders and 
others. The version approved by COGA in January was without the offending 
language. 
 
    Some GAC members said during the floor debate that the report, which 
addressed the responsibilities of presbyteries but made virtually no 
mention of synods, still contained, by implication, the call to abolish 
synods. They were assured that synod leaders will be equal partners in any 
consultations about governing-body relationships. 
 
    In their joint report, COGA and GAC said: "We are pleased to report 
that the importance of these relationships already has been affirmed . . . 
with the establishment and staffing of a joint Office of Middle Governing 
Body Relations." That office has been set up and staffed with an interim 
coordinator, retired Synod of Living Waters executive the Rev. Harold 
Jackson.  The permanent position is to be filled by June. 
 
    The special committee was created by the 1996 General Assembly to 
search for ways to "create and nurture" partnerships among the church's 
middle governing bodies - to remedy what the General Assembly called a 
"disconnect" among the denomination's levels of government. 
 
    The report of the Special Committee for Review of the General Assembly 
calls for the creation of two new bodies to replace COGA and GAC. A new, 
21-member Council of the Assembly (COA) would take on most of the duties 
now assigned to COGA as well as the ecclesiastical functions of the current 
GAC, while a new Mission Agency would assume the GAC's present 
mission-related functions. 
 
    A new wrinkle in the COA proposal is that nine of its 21 members would 
be General Assembly commissioners - three each from the three most recent 
Assemblies. 
 
    Under the new structure, the Mission Agency would focus solely on 
mission, while the Council of the Assembly would have added responsibility 
for review and evaluation, coordination, planning and the resolution of 
conflicts between agencies - what one observer called "the things the GAC 
isn't really any good at anyway." 
 
    The GAC voted to forward the report to the General Assembly with a 
series of "comments" in which it applauds the proposal's "call for 
accountability to the General Assembly"; the "improved means it offers for 
partnership and cooperation between assembly agencies"; the creation of a 
means for heading off conflict"; and its "plan for periodic external 
evaluation of the work assigned to GA agencies." 
 
    However, the GAC also lists a number of what it calls "concerns," 
including those having to do with "unresolved issues" related to the GA's 
per capita budget; unclear assignments of responsibility for planning, 
mission direction, mission funding, budgeting and accounting; and the 
possible creation of "an additional costly financial staff and structure." 
 
    More generally, there was a perception that the new structure would 
make the GAC's successor Mission Agency subservient to the new Council. 
 
    The Rev. David Bleivik of Anchorage, Alaska, remarked that "this 
Council of the Assembly sounds to me like a College of Cardinals." 
 
    The GAC said it "recommends that the General Assembly address these 
concerns before moving forward with implementation of the Report and its 
recommendations." 
 
    The special committee was elected by the 209th General Assembly (1997) 
to "reassess the role of the General Assembly," especially in light of a 
1997 report from the consulting firm Arthur Andersen LLP that noted 
"numerous inadequacies and difficulties in the operation of the GAC and in 
the relationships between the General Assembly agencies and bodies." 
 
    Many of the GAC members who spoke against the report contended that the 
proposed restructuring is not necessary. 
 
    Warren Barnes, of the Synod of the Pacific, likened the proposed 
reorganization to "medication prescribed for a patient who is not ill." He 
objected to what he called "the pervasive assumption" among Presbyterian 
leaders "that the answer is more reorganization." He pointed out, "We can 
reorganize all the time - perpetually - and it's not going to get us where 
we want to go." 
 
    At-large member Richard M. Schlobohm of Mill Valley, Calif., pointed 
out that the General Assembly approved a major restructuring just six years 
ago. He said church leaders seem to "constantly want to face in another 
direction, rather than (face) the mission of the church." 
 
    Bleivik, a minister representing Yukon Presbytery, said the special 
committee was mistaking "disorganization for reorganization." He said 
reorganizing the governance structure at this point would be like treating 
a healing fracture by "re-breaking that arm." 
 
    Peter Pizor of Wyoming Presbytery, noting that "the GAC has been 
continually improving itself" recently, and remarking on a general 
"increase in trust" among church leaders and agencies, called the 
committee's proposal "an untested model," and dismissed it as "yesterday's 
solution to yesteryear's problem." 
 
    Richard C. Malmberg, of Northern Kansas Presbytery, agreed, saying that 
the plan reflects "what we looked like five years ago." 
 
    Patricia G. Brown of Cincinnati, a former GA moderator (1997), noting 
that the new structure would have ex-moderators play major leadership roles 
for two years after their moderator years end, said the time requirement 
would preclude most people from participating: "One needs to be retired in 
order to have time to (even) be moderator." 
 
    That objection was taken up by David P. Greer, an at-large member from 
Omaha, Neb., who asked, "Where are you going to find these superhuman 
beings who can take this great chunk out of their lives to serve the 
church?" 

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