wfn.org | Seminary Students Learn Ins & Outs of Polity

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

GA99080 
23-June-1999 
 
           Seminary Students Learn Ins & Outs of Polity 
            From PC(USA) Professor Who's a 'GA junkie' 
 
 
FORT WORTH   If you really want to know what's happening during the 211th 
General Assembly here, buttonhole one of the seminary students in Jack 
Rogers' course, "Presbyterianism: Principles and Practice."  
     They're the only people who are likely to be able to tell you what 
happened, for example, in two committee meetings that took place 
simultaneously. 
     That's because Rogers, vice-president theology professor for Southern 
California at San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS), has 29 fired-up 
students at the GA this year, fanned out around the Fort Worth Convention 
Center and other assembly venues, energetically keeping tabs on all the 
major players and reporting back to the whole group. 
     The students are fired up because Rogers' own passion is contagious. 
     "I love it. This is the only place where you see the whole church, and 
I need that," Rogers says. "I'm kind of a GA junkie. I've got to get my fix 
every year." 
     This is Rogers' 26th General Assembly. He attended his first, in 
Rochester, N.Y., in 1971, as a commissioner, and has missed only a couple 
since then. 
     He started bringing students with him in 1993. 
     "I had friends and colleagues who said, 'Oh, don't do it! They'll see 
all the problems in the church; they'll get discouraged,'" Rogers says. 
"But it happens just like I thought: I bring them in and let them see 
everything, warts and all, and it energizes them. It sets them on fire." 
     That's what happened the other day to Cary Champlin, of Somerville, 
Mass., a student at Harvard Divinity School, and Shelly Wood, of 
Springfield, Ill., a student at McCormick Theological Seminary, when they 
went to a meeting of the Assembly Committee on Mission Coordination and 
witnessed a debate over continued funding for the controversial National 
Network of Presbyterian College Women.  
     The young women were so affected by the debate   in which, they said, 
some witnesses were cruel and un-Christian towards some others   that they 
had tears in their eyes when they returned to the classroom to report on 
the meeting. Asked whether the experience would make it more likely or less 
likely that they will return to the GA one day as commissioners, both 
replied, with feeling, "More likely!" 
     "If they're going to be like that," Champlin said, "they're going to 
have to deal with me."  
     That's not an idle threat. Rogers says: "I actually have had students 
take this class one year, then come back the next year as a commissioner. 
And I think that's terrific." 
     The course is co-sponsored by SFTS, the Office of the General Assembly 
and the Committee on Theological Education (COTE). 
     Rogers, who turned 65 in January, is retiring, effective July 1. "I've 
always said administrators should retire at 65," he says, "so I thought I 
really should take my own advice." 
     He has agreed to shepherd one more group of seminarians through the 
General Assembly  "next year, because it'll be in our back yard, in Long 
Beach," he says   then step aside. 
     "This isn't my program," he says. "It's a seminary program, with OGA 
and COTE. And we have a clear transition plan. If I drop dead tonight, it 
would keep going; that's the important thing." 
     SFTS had a retirement party for Rogers last month, and about 300 
people, including "a whole string of former students," showed up to honor 
him and wish him well. 
     "What I heard them saying was, 'You believed in me and you encouraged 
me, and that was the most important,'" Rogers says. "I said, 'Everybody 
ought to have this   at mid-career; then you'd know what mattered, and do 
better at it.'" 
     Jeffrey G. Bridgeman, a minister and GAC member from Solvang, Calif., 
is a typical Rogers disciple. Overhearing a mention of Rogers' name, he 
stops what he's doing and says: "Are you talking about Jack Rogers? He's 
the reason I'm here. He opened the door for me." 
     Rogers, an ordained minister who belongs to the San Gabriel 
Presbytery, believes he answered a calling to be a professor. 
     "What has always gripped me most deeply about this faith," he says, 
"is that it gives meaning to life   and so, for me to help people see the 
meaning in this, to understand, that's been what I've liked; so teaching 
has been a wonderful opportunity for me." 
     The students in Rogers' GA class this year, who represent 17 different 
seminaries, clearly believe it's a wonderful opportunity for them as well. 
     Says Bill Bess, of San Anselmo, Calif., a student at SFTS: "(Rogers) 
works at the southern campus (of SFTS), and I'm a student at the northern 
campus. So while I've met him, and sat with him at lunch once or twice, I 
wouldn't say I knew him. But he taught a course on our campus this spring, 
on the confessions, and I heard so many good things about that, about his 
knowledge of polity, in particular. That's why I'm here. And I'd say it was 
an excellent decision on my part." 
     "In this class we have the whole theological spectrum," Rogers says. 
"Harvard Divinity and Union in New York, if you want to talk about people 
on the left. Gordon-Conwell, and Fuller, and Regent College in Vancouver, 
British Columbia, which are known as conservative institutions on the right 
plus Presbyterian students who go to two different Methodist seminaries, 
and a Baptist seminary." And nine Presbyterian institutions. 
     "You can tell in discussions that they have different points of view, 
but I have not sensed any rancor or contention. Last year I did. We had 
some Gordon-Conwell and some Union in New York people. What would happen 
is, when they would lead in prayers, the other students would look at each 
other like, What in the world?, What kind of language is that? You could 
just see it.  But they got to know each other and to respect each other. 
They trusted each other, that's the beauty of it. So when they go out from 
here, they know friends and colleagues from across (factional) lines, which 
is wonderful, and it's good for the church." 
     Says Bess: "I haven't felt any strain (between people of different 
theological convictions) in this group. ... But over time it would be 
different, I suspect." 
      Rogers says he is impressed with the quality of ministerial students 
today. 
     "People say the quality is down, because statistically, more bright 
young people are going to law school and medical school," he says, "but 
that's not been my experience. What I think is the great thing is that 
since the mid-'70s, when women started to come in great numbers, the women, 
such bright people, have really challenged the men. And what also came at 
that time were mid- career people, and I think that's wonderful. ... The 
program I run, the average age of our students is in the early 40s. Half of 
being a minister is just knowing how to get along with people and organize 
your life and geta job done. You don't have to teach these people that." 
     What quickly becomes clear to anyone who talks with Rogers about the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is that he feels great affection for the 
denomination. 
     "I'm an institutional person and I've given myself to this 
institution, and I've worked in it and through it; that suits my 
temperament, and it's what I believe is helpful, and it's really hard for 
me to step outside," he says. "Even when I'm a critic I'm a very loving 
critic   and from inside." 
     He'd be happy to hear what Daniel Moore, of South Hamilton, Mass., a 
student at Gordon- Conwell Seminary, says about his participation in the 
course: "It has formed my identity as a Presbyterian. Before this I would 
have considered myself as more ecumenical." 
     Yet Rogers is not above criticizing the church he loves. 
     "The racial thing is what's really under the surface," he says. "We're 
a 95 percent   well, at the best a 93 percent   white denomination. We talk 
incessantly about being diverse, but we've got to find a way to put our 
money where our mouth is. If we can't do better than that in being 
inclusive with people who have been part of our community for 200 years, 
we're really in trouble.  
     "What we did 10 or 15 years ago to try to solve the problem, we set 
quotas and mandated certain things in terms of leadership. I worked in 
Louisville at the headquarters for two years, and at that time   probably 
still   we had to have 25 percent racial/ethnic people in the staffing of 
every office. What we did is, we sucked the leadership out of the 
congregations! And put these people in very visible spots, and as it turned 
out, it was really tokenism, I think   although I don't believe that was 
intentional on anyone's part. It made us all feel better. It made us look 
better. ... 
     "Often you do a good thing and it has bad consequences. ... 
     "In the '60s we abandoned almost all of our character-forming 
activities, for what seemed like very good reasons. ... We quit having a 
denominational curriculum, we quit having denominationally sponsored youth 
groups, we quit having denominationally sponsored college ministry, we quit 
doing new-church development, we quit sending overseas missionaries in the 
numbers we had, because everything, we thought, should be ecumenical.  
     "Well, there was a real value to that. ... But we lost the whole 
boomer generation. ... We gave our children our values, but we didn't root 
them in the tradition that had nourished us, because we bent over backward 
not to impose all that on them. Well, now we have had to start over." 
     Rogers says the most important thing his students learn at the General 
Assembly is merely that things are generally more complicated than they 
seem at first. Each one chooses an issue of particular interest and follows 
that issue through the committee process and the plenary sessions. 
     "I ask them to write a one-page paper before they start, about what 
they think about the issue, and then at the end they write a 10- or 15-page 
paper, and it's almost always a 'how-my- mind-has-changed' paper, because 
they've seen things in much greater complexity than they ever suspected 
before. And it's usually a transforming experience. ... Because it's a 
plunge, an immersion kind of a thing." 
     Rogers disagrees with those who say the mainstream Protestant 
denominations are dying. 
     "It's clear that membership is down," he says. "We've dropped from 
about four million members before the (1983) merger   if you count the 
bodies that came together   to about two and a half million. But giving is 
up; we've got less numbers, and we're giving more money; now that indicates 
something. There's tremendous vitality out there in the congregations. ... 
     "There are two kinds of things that have got to happen in a church. 
You've got to preserve some kind of tradition, whether you call it Bible or 
tradition or history or whatever. And you have to have some kind of 
innovation. The Southern Baptists are very good at preserving the 
traditions, and Unitarians are really good at innovation. But the trick is 
to have both things at the same time   and that's what a mainline 
denomination is. That makes it hard, because every year we have to struggle 
and think through, How do we keep those two in balance? But that's 
vitality. That's where the vitality comes from." 
 
John Filiatreau 

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