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07522 August 22, 2007
Form of Government Task Force approves, prepares to release 'bold' revision
Documents available for study and comment in September
by Toya Richards Hill Presbyterian News Service
LOUISVILLE - The General Assembly task force charged with reorganizing the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Form of Government is ready to release denomination-wide a revision it calls "bold" and "more perfected" than what currently exists.
Following a line-by-line review and editing of its work at a meeting here Aug. 16-18, the Form of Government Task Force (FOGTF) unanimously approved its proposed new initial section of the Book of Order,entitled "The Foundations of Presbyterian Polity," and its changes in six chapters of the book's Form of Government section.
The revised version "makes more sense. I think it's bold," said FOGTF member the Rev. James H. Y. Kim. "We've basically turned the polity of the church on its head," said FOGTF co-moderator Sharon M. Davison.
The nine-person task force was created by the 217th General Assembly (2006), and charged to revise the Form of Government in light of five priorities:
to preserve the PC(USA)'s "foundational polity," particularly the first four chapters of the Book of Order; to provide leadership for congregations as "missional communities"; to maintain the presbytery as "the central governmental unit" of the PC(USA) and to provide presbyteries with "sufficient authority and flexibility" to assist congregations, particularly by addressing the "institutional and structural impediments" that tend to cripple them; to provide "flexibility at all levels," granting authority while permitting governing bodies to develop the structures they think best to carry out their mission; to encourage greater dialogue and consensus decision-making as governing bodies seek to resolve conflict. The Assembly also instructed the task force to release its report by September 2007, so the whole church can read and consider it fully before it goes to the Assembly. The FOGTF documents, including a study guide, will be posted on its Web site, and synods, presbyteries and sessions will be notified that the material is available for review and comment.
Also available on the Web, and included in what the task force was charged with creating, will be an advisory handbook, a checklist of policies and procedure that synods, presbyteries and sessions need to have in place to do their work.
Once all of that is in place, the task force will hit the road to talk about its work with various groups, including the General Assembly Council (GAC) and The Association of Executive Presbyters (AEPs), and at gatherings such as the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) Fall Polity Conference and the Moderator's Conference in November.
Task force co-moderators Cynthia J. Bolbach and Davison also will reach out to denominational affinity groups and others such as evangelical Presbyterians in order to make sure a diverse group has seen and had an opportunity to comment on the task force's work
"I think this is the time when you really want to blitz" in terms of communication, OGA Communications Coordinator the Rev. Sharon K. Youngs advised the task force.
Youngs is working with the FOGTF on a number of communications efforts, including producing video clips answering questions such as, "How are the first four chapters of the Book of Order being revised?" and "What is the biggest change between what we have now and what you are proposing?"
Feedback the task force receives will be reviewed to determine if more edits are needed before it finalizes what it submits to the 218th General Assembly, which meets next summer in San Jose, CA.
"I just think it's incredible that you got this done," the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, PC(USA)General Assembly stated clerk, told the task force during its meeting. The critical issue going forward is "getting people dealing with it enough that they know what is there."
"I think it is very important to be out" talking about what's been done, he said. "The next three months are important."
The task force already received suggestions on fine-tuning its material while it was in draft form. Some of that advice, particularly from the General Assembly's Advisory Committee on the Constitution and the PC(USA)'s Office of Theology, Worship and Education, was incorporated into what the FOGTF ultimately approved.
"The importance of the work that you are doing cannot be overstated," the Rev. Joseph Small, director of the PC(USA)'s Office of Theology, Worship and Education, told the FOGTF.
The task force is not simply saying, lets take this book of regulations and make it leaner and meaner so that it will free people up, he said. "You are doing more than that," Small stressed. This is an opportunity "to make some significant advances in the church's understanding of who and what it is."
Small said fear that the task force will "mess it all up" has people questioning why its "tinkering" with the Book of Order at all. But, he told them, "if you are able to explain clearly ... people will stand up and salute."
Among Small's suggestions that the task force embraced was using the term "ordered ministers" to refer to ministers of the Word and Sacrament, elders and deacons, who "are given by the church a certain order."
These three "ministers" have a commonality, and John Calvin said these three functions are necessary in every congregation, Small said. The task force has an opportunity to contribute to recovering "the genius of the Reformed tradition" and "the dignity and the gravity of the ministry to which they have been called."
The task force also applied another suggestion from Small's office, which was to eliminate the term "governing bodies."
Instead, Small suggests returning to the word council, a term with a long tradition in the church, he said. "Governing bodies was a bad invention."
Council is a centuries-old term and "it indicates the function that these groups have," Small said. They are called together to consider "weighty matters of the Gospel and to help guide the church."
"This is, again, an opportunity ... to recall the church to its better self," he said. It says the PC(USA) is a denomination "that orders itself."
"On some of these issues you ought to be bold," particularly when it comes to matters that shape the denomination's self-understanding, Small said.
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