At The Table of Thanks

Trust

What I'm Hearing

Over the past several months, I've been traveling quite a bit. When I am with people, I ask a lot of questions. I'm just a curious soul who wants to understand what is going on in the world that we encounter every day. The tenor and substance of my conversations about the PCUSA are changing.

There are a range of topics that I hear. One is a deep concern about the state of presbyteries and how they will function in the future. Another is the impact that the Fellowship of Presbyterians / ECO: Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians will have on the church. A third conversation is a mixture of topics related to GA overtures this summer addressing the definition of marriage and ordination standards, the response by churches and presbyteries to GA votes, and a call for a moratorium on these issues while the new Form of Government has time to be fully implemented in the presbyteries.

I'm no seer with a crystal ball. I don't know what will become. It certainly appears from the conversations that I am having that we have a perfect storm of institutional change awaiting us on the horizon.

Trust

At the spring meeting of my presbytery, I heard appeals from the floor that as Presbyterians we need trust one another. I agree, wholeheartedly. Trust, however, is an outcome, a result, not a strategy.

Trust is the outcome of our attitudes and behaviors toward people and institutions. It is a product of the active expression of dignity, respect, and honor. When it is missing, some barrier stands in the way of the relationship exhibiting these qualities.

It reminds me of what Machiavelli wrote about ingratitude, that it "arises either from avarice or from suspicion." He wrote these words as advice to rulers and their treatment of the people they serve. If the people feel avarice, it is for the power and privilege that the ruler has. If suspicion, it because the ruler has not acted to build trust and confidence in his or her leadership. In our context, I'd say the issues are about who holds power in the church and the fear of those who believe differently that we do.

When ingratitude is present, trust is missing. When trust is present, then expressions of gratitude are evident. This is why my Five Actions of Gratitude are not just a set of nice sentiments, but rather a strategic approach to relationships in the church, and any institution. 

Here's how the Five Actions of Gratitude build trust.

Saying Thanks establishes a relationship of appreciation and gratitude with a person. To identify a reason to say thanks is to begin to create conditions where trust can be built.

Giving Back completes the circle of giving. I take my cue here from Thomas Merton in the beginning paragraphs of his book, No Man Is An Island.

"A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy."

"There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit.  True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared.  There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit.  Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life.  He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves.  In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be."

For Merton, it is not enough that we are givers of love. Our love is to have a result, a response, an effect that is tangible. To love is more than about our obligation to love. It is about what is to be the impact of our love.

"Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion.  It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely.  That is to say it must be given, not merely taken.  Unselfish love that is poured out upon a selfish object does not bring perfect happiness: not because love requires a return or a reward for loving, but because it rests in the happiness of the beloved.  And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the lover is not satisfied.  He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved happy.  It has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love."

"Hence the paradox that unselfish love cannot rest perfectly except in a love that is perfectly reciprocated: because it knows that the only true peace is found in selfless love.  Selfless love consents to be loved selflessly for the sake of the beloved.  In so doing, it perfects itself."

"The gift of love is the gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it.  So, love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received."

I'd like us to consider the importance of these words not solely in the context of our personal relationships, but also in our professional relationships within the church. If this type of love was characteristic of our relationships in our presbyteries, we would not be asking the questions about why we cannot trust one another.

I am not naive as if I'm simply asking for us all just to get along. Rather, I am suggesting that our attitudes and behaviors are conscious choices we make based on emotional states like avarice and fear. 

Do we believe that perfect love casts out fear and produces magnanimity rather than the need for control?  It isn't a rhetorical question.

Making Welcome opens ourselves up to those whon we may feel are our adversaries. The practice of hospitality is the domestication of reconciliation. Trust builds relationships of reconciliation.

It was in a similarly divisive church context that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians,

"On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it."

How ironic that Paul leaves it to us to decide who is the weaker, less honorable, less respectable member. We make that judgment. Practicing open hospitality is a strategy that creates an environment of trust.

Honoring Others treat people with dignity, respect and care. Of the Five Actions, it is this action I've learned that the other four depend. It is the most difficult because it strikes at the heart of our own weaknesses of our fear, insecurity, and self-righteousness. We can practice the first three actions of gratitude in a sort of detached, mechanistic way. But to place the honoring of others ahead of our own welfare forces our egos  to either give way to humility, or abandon gratitude as impractical and unreasonable. Ultimately, trust results from how we treat one another.

Creating Goodness provides the conditions where trust can grow. Note in these words from Paul to the Ephesian church that God's gifts to us are summarized as kindness and that the goodness we create is the way of life that he has prepared for us to live.

"But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life."  (emphasis mine)

To live the good life that God has prepared is to create an environment where trust is realized. Trust isn't some strategy for working out our differences. It is a measure of how well we are living out God's call.

Moving into the Next Era of Trust

I don't know what will happen this summer at General Assembly. I don't know how churches or presbyteries are going work together in the future. I don't know what the next two years much less the next 50 years will bring to our church.

Here's what I do know. The future of the church is not determined yet. I'm certain that it will not look like the church of our past. Virtually everyone I know admits that the present structure is not sustainable.  The larger question is how do we change while preserving the best of our Presbyterian tradition. How do we prepare for the next generation Presbyterian church?

Given time and opportunity, maybe the new Form of Government will spark an entrepreneurial grassroots rebirth of the church. If it does, then trust will grow.  New models of mission will develop. New worshipping communities will emerge. New ways of designing presbyteries will grow.  We will thne see the present as a moment in time rather than the end of time.

Trust is a key outcome and measure of our future. If trust is present, the church will grow. If not, it will continue to lose membership and churches.  It is a choice that we individually make, that is expressed through our churches and councils of the church.

How do I make this choice?  I choose to act, as one colleague has graciously shared with me, as a bridge. A bridge between people. A bridge between the past and the future. A bridge between the church as it has been and what it will look like in the future. A bridge between those who represent different sides of issues. A bridge for those who are afraid, angry and disaffected.

My offer is to any person, church or presbytery who is willing, to let me be in conversation with you about the future of the church.  Let us together ask these questions.

What should the church to look like in the future?

What new forms of the church do we need to develop?

How can those forms be structured to create trust?

How can we live into “the good works that God prepared to be our way of life?”

Let's talk, and may God build trust and kindness as the hallmarks of our future life together as Presbyterians

Defining Worshiping Communities

The PCUSA has initiated a campaign to establish 1001 Worshiping Communities within the decade. From the program website:

We will seek to create a movement, bubbling up from within rather than directed nationally, engaging congregations and presbyteries together in fresh ways.

There is nothing more transformative than the people of God, gathered together to worship the risen Christ, and sent out to serve the world in Christ’s name.

God’s Spirit is moving throughout the Church, whispering the same things, inspiring new models, fresh vision, and an awareness that is bringing God’s people to understand and embrace again the truth that “It’s all about congregations.”

The most effective evangelism tool is to start new communities of faith.  These new worshiping communities are the most strategic way to reach new generations, new residents, and new populations that established churches are not reaching.

Worshiping communities are defined by Acts 2:42: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

I like this campaign. I support it. I want to see it succeed. I'll do what I can to help. I'll begin by challenging our conception of what a worshiping community is in order to broaden our vision for what is possible.

What is a worshipping community?

There are different ways for us to approach this question.

From some people, the local congregation is the worshiping community, and generally this is what is meant by the campaign's aim.

However, I do think that we should broaden our conception of what a worshiping community is in order to see that there are more avenues for creating new congregations that simply the actions of presbyteries and local congregations.

The broadening of our conception of a worshiping community may also bring us to a new understanding of what the Spirit of God is doing in our time and place.

In the simplest sense, it is a community that worships Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Is it more than that? This simple description certainly describes many congregations.

In addition, there is leadership, governance, spiritual formation, outreach, stewardship, and fellowship.

This describes many groups that function within a congregation. A choir in this sense could be a worshiping community. A mission team that goes to Guatemala or Rwanda could be a worshipping community. A church's youth group certainly would be a worshiping community. A homeless ministry could be. The list could go on and on.

The result is that we define ourselves by our institutional structure rather than by our function as the people of God.

As a result, we see programs where we should see worshiping communities.

An Example

One of the most hidden and under-appreciated (IMHO) ministries of the Presbyterian Church USA are our college and university campus ministries and chaplaincies.  I have been involved with this aspect of the life of the church for almost a quarter century.

Campus ministry is not very romantic, like a mission trip to an exotic tropical country. It isn't very visible like a church's youth group. It isn't a producer of larger numbers of worshipers on a Sunday morning.(Remember your college days?) It isn't a dramatic social need like hunger or homelessness.  In the minds of many people, they are just college students, living through extended adolescence.

This is unfortunate. It represents a kind of thinking is limits the church from being a network of worshiping communities.

A Difference in Perception

To get at the heart of what a worshiping community is we need to make an important distinction.

When we describe an aspect of being a worshiping community as "a program" or "a ministry" of the church, we are conceiving the church as an organizational institution. We see it as a non-profit business. 

However, if we look at a church or an aspect of a church as a worshiping community, our perception changes.  Instead of an institution, we see relationships.

Go sit in our your youth group. Visit a campus ministry. Go on a mission trip. Join the choir. What you'll find is that these groups are more than programs. They are communities.

Our short-sightedness here is a product of the age we live in. That age is fading, and the era of community is emerging.

Five Standards for a Worshiping Community, a starting point

Based on what I've seen through my work with churches over the years, here are five that can be a starting point for discerning whether your church's "programs, ministries and groups" are worshiping communities.

1. A Mission that is an expression of faith in Jesus Christ, with a purpose beyond the group's benefit.

2. Participation is a setting for personal spiritual formation. Every participant, therefore, has the opportunity to contribute.

3. Prayer, biblical reflection and times of worship take place regularly.

4. The program, ministry or group, even as a part of a larger body, has a means of governing itself.

5. Fellowship and caring support for one another provides a context for being a community, rather than just as a program or committee of an institution.

These are sort of minimum standards.

I worked with a large church many years ago where we discovered that they were really two churches under one roof. One church was focused on spiritual growth, Bible study, prayer and support for one another. The other church was focused on outreach and service in the community and throughout the world. In the long range plan that was adopted, all groups within the church were asked to include in their life and work together, both Bible study and prayer, and outreach and service.

Seeing each church as a collection of small worshiping communities is how we strengthen the whole body. To treat each group as a worshiping community is to treat each of them holistically.

Shifting your programs and ministries into being worshiping communities.

If the General Assembly's goal of 1001 worshiping communities in a decade is to be reached, we then need to begin by shifting our perceptions about what the church is. Here's a starting point for your local church.

1. Acknowledge that every gathering of people in your congregation can be a worshiping community. Apply the five criteria above to each group.

2. Treat worship as a primary place for spiritual formation. Equip people to fully experience the grace and love of Jesus Christ in their lives through the context of worship. And to do this in every gathering point in the life of the church.

3. Give people the freedom and opportunity to grow their worshiping communities. Encourage initiative and imagination in seeing what God can do through each individual group.  Give each group the opportunity to lead the church in worship.

An example in practice

I came to this awareness about worshiping communities by participating in one of the weekly gatherings of students in a Presbyterian Campus Ministry. In the space of a little over two hours, these students served dinner that they had organized and made for everyone, worshiped with song, prayer, reflection upon the Scripture, discussed their mission outreach plans for their upcoming semester break, and closed with requests for prayer and closing worship.

Sitting there I realized that I was witnessing the future of the church.I saw in them what I believe we all want in our experience of faith. These students were not being initiated into an institutional model of the church. They were being the church as a worshiping community. It was a very uplifting, revelatory moment for me.

What these students do, so can the people in your church. It doesn't have to be the decision of the Session. It just takes one person deciding that their group is going to develop this way. This is how grassroots movements begin. By the initiative of people who decide that their world can be different. You don't have to change the whole church, just the part where you are.  When we do this together, our cumulative impact is significant. We begin by changing our perceptions and behaviors in the place were we are already committed and involved.

The future of the church is now.

The future is in seeing that thousands of small worshiping communities connected together in churches and presbyteries across the denomination need strengthening and support.  It begins with each of us deciding to focus our efforts in just one place to help develop that place as a worshiping community.

My place is with our Presbyterian Campus Ministries. Where's your place?

The Real End of the 20th Century

 

Historical Context

Forty six years ago, this picture appeared in a publication of Asheville Presbytery of the old Presbyterian Church US. Years later, a friend of my grandparents gave me it knowing that I'd want it because my grandfather stands in the center-left of the picture behind the man sitting second from the left. 

When this picture was taken, Europe was engaged in what was called The Great War, and my grandfather was a year away from leaving his law practice in Asheville to enlist in the U.S. Army to serve in an artillary battery in France.

I find this point in time significant for understanding our point in time today. Here is Canadian historian, Modris Eksteins in his cultural history of the war, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1989), describing its context.

Like all wars, the 1914 war, when it broke out, was seen as an opportunity for both change and confirmation. Germany, which been united as recently as 1871 and within one generation had become an awesome industrial and military power, was, on the eve of war, the foremost representative of innovation and renewal. She was, among nations, the very embodiment of vitalism and technical brilliance. The war for her was to be a war of liberation, a Befreiungskrieg, from the hypocrisy of bourgeois form and convenience, and Britain was to her the principal representative of the order against which she was rebelling. Britain was in fact the major conservative power of the fin-de-siecle world. First industrial nation, agent of the Pax Britannica, symbol of an ethic of enterprise and progress based on parliament and law, Britain felt not only her pre-eminence in the world but her entire way of life threatened by the thrusting energy and instability Germany was seen to typify. British involvement in the 1914 war was to turn it from a continental power struggle into a veritable war of cultures.

At the same time the tensions were developing between states in this turn-of-the-century world, fundamental conflicts were surfacing in virtually all areas of human endeavor and behavior: in the arts, in fashion, in sexual mores, between generations, in politics. The whole motif of liberation, which has become so central to our century - be it the emancipation of women, homosexuals, proletariat, youth, appetites, peoples - comes into view at the turn of the century. The term avant-garde has usually been applied to artists and writers who promoted experimental techniques in their work and urged rebellion against established academies. The notion of modernism has been used to subsume both this avant-garde and the intellectual impulse behind the quest for liberation and the act of rebellion. Very few critics have ventured to extend these notions of the avant-garde and modernism to the social and political as well as artistic agents of revolt, and to the act of rebellion in general, in order to identify a broad wave of sentiment and endeavor.

Here, too, this same conflict between progressivism and conservatism has been waged within the Presbyterian community for a century. For many believers, it has meant a loss of belief in the church as the spiritual institution of Christ's kingdom on earth. As a result, a cynical and ironic perspective developed that viewed institutional religion as a false spirituality and the source of many of the world's problems. 

This loss of faith goes beyond the boundaries of religion to the socio-political ideologies of the 19th. century.  Paul Fussell in his insightful book The Great War and Modern Memory, writes,

Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because it means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends. In the Great War, eight million people were destroyed because two persons, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, had been shot. The Second World War offers even more preposterous ironies. Ostensibly begun to guarantee the sovereignty of Poland, that war managed to bring about Poland's bondage and humiliation. Air bombardment, which was supposed to shorten the war, prolonged it by inviting those who were targets to cast themselves in the role of victim-heroes and thus stiffen their resolve.

But the Great War was more ironic than any before or since. It was a hideous embarrassment to the prevailing Meliorist myth which had dominated the public consciousness for a century. It reversed the Idea of Progress. ...

Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence. One reason the Great War was more ironic than any other is that its beginning was more innocent. ... The certainties were intact. Britain had not known a major war for a century, and on the Continent, as A.J.P. Taylor points out, "there had been no war between the Great Powers since 1871. No man in the prime of life knew what war was like.  All imagined that it would be an affair of great marches and great battles, quickly decided."

Furthermore, the Great War was perhaps the last to be conceived as taking place within a seamless, purposeful "history" involving a coherent stream of time running from past through present to future. The shrewd recruiting power depicting a worried father of the future being asked by his children, "Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?" assumes a future whose moral and social pressures are identical with those of the past. Today, when each day's experience seems notably ad hoc, no such appeal would shame the most stupid at the recruiting office. But the Great War took place in what was, compared with ours, a static world, where the values appeared stable and where the meanings of abstractions seemed permanent and reliable.  Everyone knew what Glory was, and what Honor meant. It was not until eleven years after the war that Hemingway could declare in A Farewell to Arms that "abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates." In the summer 1914 no one would have understood what on earth he was talking about.

The church has not been immuned from these changes in society during the 20th century. A similar loss of innocence raises the question about how God acts within history as wars, genocide, and political and economic tyranny happen.  

The Place of Institutions

It is not unusual to hear persons of my age lamenting the decline of the church, of civility, of government, of business, or of sportmanship, ethics, politics, culture and community in general. Their reaction is similar to that of people one hundred years ago, who felt the same way, as the Great War turned from a short idealistic defense of a nation's values into a violent and costly war of attrition.  At the heart of this change of mind is the decline of the value of the institutions of society.

Hugh Heclo in his book, On Thinking Institutionally, addresses the growing distrust that people have of institutions.

We are disposed to distrust institutions. That is the basic fact of life we share as modern people. And it is the point of departure from which this account must begin. As good pluralists, tolerant multiculturalists, secular or religious moralists (choose your term), we can be divided on almost any other imaginable subject. But a fundamental distrust of institutions is the one mark we have in common as inhabitants of these times. ... With few exceptions, growing distrust in the modern mind is directed toward the entire institutional apparatus of modern society. If you imagine that apparatus as a sort of bank, the overall picture is one of many withdrawals, few deposits, and a continuous depletion of trust reserves.

The correlation here between the distrust of institutions and the decline of institutions is not one-to-one. Distrust is just one facet of the decline. The decline is also a function of the diminishment of values as a core function of organizations and communities. What has replaced values are processes, bureaucratic functions, and political positions that are more or less intended to preserve power and the access to wealth by those with a controlling interest in the institution. 

In the church, the diminishment of denominations is part the product of institutional decline, and partly a product of the growth of the individualization of consumer culture. Churches that have thrived in this environment are more congregational than connectional, and more focused on personal religion than on socio-cultural role of the church as a transformational agent in society. 

The question that confronts us as the church today is whether these trends from the 20th. century will continue through the 21st?

For some time I've been witnessing a shift in churches.  They are not the product deliberations and decisions of the General Assembly, or of  a Presbytery or the Session of a church. Instead, these shifts rise out of the social interaction that people are having with one another in their churches. Most of what I see is describe in the guide, 21st Century Congregation Distinctives.

These shifts mark the transition from the 20th century church that functions as an institutional pillar of society to one that is a community of shared mission. These shifts lay the ground for a revived institutionalization of the church that is better suited to the 21st. century.  To better understand this, let me return to Hugh Heclo for a moment, and let him describe what an institution is.

... let me simply observe that institutions represent inheritances of valued purpose with attendant rules and moral obligations. They constitute socially ordered grounding for human life. This grounding in a normative field implicates the lives of individuals and collectivies in a lived-out social reality. To live in a culture that turns its back on institutions is equivalent to trying to live in a physical body without its skeleton or hoping to use a language but not is grammar. A culture wholly committed to distrusting its institutions is a self-contradiction.

Heclo's description adequately identifies the church at all levels.  His insight reveals partly why as a denomination that we have declined over the past two generations. Increasingly, our common membership as Presbyterians has been based on the governance structure of the national church. We are Presbyterians, less because of our theology, our values and, even our worship, than we are by the relationship that we share through the Book of Order. For this reason, I welcome the new Form of Government because it forces us to reevaluate who we are and what our purpose as a church is.  These shifts are preparing us for the next era of the Presbyterian church.

21st. Century Congregational Missional Shifts

We are transitioning as a church from an institutional form to one centered in mission. The former is internally focused. The latter externally. You look down the list of the churches in any presbytery and see that the externally focused congregations are growing, and the internal focused ones are committed to preserving a conception of the church that worked for them in the last century. I have often spoken of these churches as "museums of memories" with the pastor as their curator.

Here are two areas of the church where I see these shifts taking place, and what they look like.

LEADERSHIP

Shift from leadership as Control to one of Equipping the membership for ministry.

Shift from leadership as an Organizational Role with defined Administrative Responsibilities to Relationships of Shared Responsibility.

Shift from Leadership by a Select Few to a Community of Shared Leadership.

Shift from a Passive Acceptance of Other People's Leadership to Personal Initiative to Make a Difference that Matters.

MEMBERSHIP

From being a Member on the roll of the church to a Personal Call to participate and contribute to Christ's mission through the church.

From the church as an Institution to a Community in Jesus Christ.

From being spectators and recipients of THE professional pastor's ministry to Participants with him or her.

From Consumers of religious services to Contributors to mission of the church.

This is a marked departure from the mindset of the past century which was cynical, ironic and anti-institutional. This shift marks a growing embrace of purpose, values and a belief in the possibility of making a difference in the world that truly matters. This is not just an idea taking place in a few churches, but a trend beginning to gain momentum on a global scale. When people take responsibility, act collectively based upon shared values, then the basis for creating new institutions for society grows.

This is what I see taking place in the church.

The question that now faces us

With the decline of institutions being one of the products of the 20th. century, as Presbyterians, we are faced with the need to reenvision what it means to be a connectional body. For I see the course of the past century as one of de-connection toward disconnection and dismemberment. The growing congregational culture of our denomination is a product of our time. But that time is passing, and the call to community by society is growing. I believe it is time to rethink what we mean by our connectionalism.

First, it must be relational, or social, or communal. It cannot first be an administrative structure. Instead it must rise from a clarification of our mission as the church in relationship with one another.

Secondly, it means that presbyteries are needed to provide a relational structure to support our shared mission. Presbyteries must be rethought of as something other than an administrative governance body. Instead, as some presbyteries have already begun, they become missional bodies for the coordination of the collective mission of churches.

Thirdly, it means that we need to rethink precisely what is the church at the congregational level. Our structure was right for a homogeneous culture. Now, as I'm beginning to see, we need a broader perspective of what is a worshipping community. We need to provide space for innovation and experimentation so that new communities of Jesus Christ can emerge from relationships of shared responsibility and leadership.

The Real End of the 20th. Century

The loss of innocence that came as the result of the Great War, and the conflicts that followed, is now being replaced by the recovery of purpose and mission. The Presbyterian church that is needed for the 21st. century can be created through the openness of our nFog structure to create a structure that builds relationships between churches, mission endeavors, and other avenues for the Gospel to be expressed in society. I welcome the rebirth of our connectionalism as we discover a new how the Spirit of Christ leads us forth in mission.

Worshiping Communities - the essential question

One of my New Testament professors in seminary would regularly caution us about the hardening of the categories in our interpreting the Scriptures. As the new Form of Government is implemented through the presbyteries, and as the Fellowship of Presbyterians promotes their vision of a New Reformed Body, I feel that we still must guard against the hardening of the categories as we look to what the PCUSA will be for the 21st century.

My question isn't primarily theological or biblical, but rather social. It is a question of how the church as an organization in society adapts to changes that are influencing us.

So, let's play a little thought game to get at the heart of this issue.

*One million Lebanese gather in Beirut, March 14, 2005, to protest Syrian occupation and the assasination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The Post-Pentecost Structure

Let's say that right now at the end of the year 2011, Pentecost is happening, not two thousand years ago.  Right now. It may look like the picture above of a crowd of a million people in central Beirut, Lebanon in the spring of 2005.

You and I are present as the Spirit descends upon this random multi-cultural crowd of people gathered in a city square or park in places like Los Angeles, Hanoi or Beirut. On this day, we are present at the spiritual birth of the church.  Not the creation of a new denomination, but the church of Jesus Christ.

How would the media cover the event? What would the Twitter feed of the event be recording? How soon would there be a Facebook page up asking people to like the new social network of Pentecost? How would the dominant religious institutions of our time react? What would be the mainstream religious traditions, if there had been no Christian body for the past two thousand years, until this afternoon?

What do you think the people caught up in the Spirit's appearance would do next?  What do you think would happen tomorrow or the next week? After a year, what do you think would have happened to this group of people? Would they still be together?

More importantly, what organizational form would the people caught up in the Spirit's movement adopt? If the church were born today, what would it look like?  Would it look like a mass uprising or a few people sitting around a table in a coffee shop chatting? Would it look like a downtown, tall steeple church, a mega-church or a house church meeting in a suburban living room?

We have the Acts record to know what happened two thousands years ago. But what about now. The new Form of Government or NRB or any other traditional formalized structure of a denominational church are patterns of church organization that are also logical adaptations to current forms of secular organizations.  As a result, all church structures are products of their historical context. To understand this insight is to recognize that change is not necessarily destructive, but rather how the church adapts to the culture around it.

A Discussion of Structure

One day this past week, I celebrated the 30th anniversary of my ordination as a minister of the word and sacrament / teaching elder. I spent the day with a group of leaders from a presbytery discussing their presbytery's organizational model, and why it wasn't working. Like many presbyteries, they are divided up into regional clusters. The intent was to help this large diverse, geographically scattered presbytery create the conditions for community and shared mission. It hasn't happened like it was designed.

The essential problem, in my opinion, is a widely shared perspective about organizations that has found its way into the church. This adaptation to contemporary organizational norms sees the church as an administrative / programmatic entity created for order, efficiency and top-down accountability. This is the secular corporate model that has been the standard approach to organizations since the end of the Second World War. The PCUSA institutionalized this approach in the reunion of 1983. 

This approach elevates administrative process over human interaction. The result is the creation of an organizational environment of divisive special interests, each seeking to claim preeminence as the core mission of the church.

I am saying that the divisions in the church over the past hundred years are products of organizational design, not simply differences in theology and social / political ideology. The product is disunity in the Body of Christ.

The Structural Shift

Over at my Leading Questions blog, I've been writing for a long time about how change is affecting organizations and leaders. The key posts over the past 18 months are gathered in the compilation, Leadership for the 21st Century, that explores the social and organizational changes that are influencing what we understand the nature of leadership and organizational structure are becoming in the 21st century. Working both sides of the line that separates the church from for-profit businesses, non-profit community organizations, local governments, regulated utilities, healthcare organizations and institutions of higher education, I have come to see that there is an epic shift taking place in society from organizational structures of hierarchy to ones based upon a network of relationships. What I see is are Parallel Structures of Networks of Relationships.

Here's the juxtaposition that I see constituting a shift that is historic and transforming society as a whole on a global scale.

Organizations since the rise of the global empires of three millennia ago have functioned through a structure of hierarchy. As this image describes, hierarchical organizations are built around a leadership structure of institutional authority of delegated responsibility whose purpose is institutional integrity. This is the corporate model that we see designed into virtually every business and government institution in our society.

Functioning in parallel are relationship networks. These networks form around a shared mission or interest. I'm distinguishing these relationship networks from the more common social networks that one can find on Facebook, Google + and the myriad other online gathering points. These relationship networks are missional in nature, and are governed by the values that inform that mission. Participation in these networks is based on personal initiative to contribute. As a result, these networks are based upon a leadership structure of shared mission, shared responsibility, personal integrity and initiative to make a difference that matters.

These parallel structures of networks of relationships have always been present in the church.  They are what I see in this guide to 21st Century Congregational Distinctives and the shifts that I see taking place in congregations.

Understanding Parallel Structures

The key to understanding our future as a church and a denomination is understanding how these parallel structures function as worshipping communities.

A parallel structure is not a replacement structure, at least not by intention.

We can see parallel structures throughout the church. The Fellowship of Presbyterians is a parallel structure. The overseas mission work of a presbytery is a parallel structure. The ministry to the homeless in the congregation where my family worships is a parallel structure. The choir in almost every church is a parallel structure.

These structures provide a way for people to gather around a common interest of shared mission. It is how our diversity as a church functions. These are relationship networks that provide what I observe people saying about what they want from their life.

People want their lives to be Personally Meaningful, Socially Fulfilling and Make a Difference that Matters.

People want their values to matter and a purpose to their lives. They want their relationships to be healthy, respectful and caring. And they want to make a difference that matters.

I'm convinced that we need to structure our congregations, as well as our businesses, schools, community organizations and government organization to help people achieve these goals for themselves.

The idea of the PCUSA creating 1001 worshiping communities during the decade is an attractive one to me. It is because I see in this simple goal a way to elevate parallel structures of networks of relationships as places of worship, mission and community that create opportunities for people to find the church a place of Personal Meaning, Social Fulfillment and where their contributions make a difference that matters in the context of shared mission in Jesus Christ.

However, if this vision that I have is to be achieved, it means that we have to change some of our understandings of what church structure means.

A Reforming Structure

The organizational world outside of the church is changing. It is adopting a network perspective where relationships of shared mission and responsibility are their core organizing principle. The old corporate model is failing. The emerging paradigm is the network of relationships. This model puts a premium on personal initiative, creativity and commitment to contributing. The old hierarchical system discouraged initiative in favor of compliance. 

Networks of relationships provide a way for people to become engaged in the full mission activity of the organization. The stronger the relational interaction, the stronger the organization, and greater the opportunities for impact.  This is true in the church as it is in the business world.

For example, in my presbytery, two of our mission endeavors are partnerships with a Guatemalan presbytery and with a hospital in Malawi.The significance of these partnerships is that the Guatemalan churches are financially supporting the mission in Malawi. Shared mission, shared responsibility and the result shared impact as the church.

People involved in these mission partnerships find their faith strengthened, their skills of ministry expanded, and their perception of God's work in the world broadened through their involvement. As a network of relationships, they are functioning as a worshiping community.

The same can be said for the campus ministries that I serve with through the North Carolina Presbyterian Higher Education Ministries.  They are very much are like mini-congregations with programs of worship, fellowship, faith development and mission outreach.

Each of these mission endeavors are parallel structures aligned with a board, a church and in many cases through a presbytery. Each one has aspects of faith development, worship and service as a part of their program. Each is a network of relationships functioning as a worshiping community.

The Structure of Future

Here are my convictions about the future structure of the church. These are not predictions. Rather what I see is how we can adapt to a 21st century social context that is unlike the last century.

1. Relationships precede structure.

2. Connectionalism first must be relational if a connection system of governance is to work.

3. Presbyteries are the key to strengthening the connectional relationship between people and churches.

4. Worshipping communities are networks of relationships of people who are personally engaged in faith development, take personal initiative to contribute, and build relationships of shared mission and responsibility to live out the Great Ends of the Church.

5. As a denomination, we'll be smaller with greater impact, as we become more missional as a church.

The essential question of what will the structure of the PCUSA look like in the future I believe is answered in the development of parallel structures of networks of relationship of shared mission and responsibility as worshipping communities in Jesus Christ.

If Pentecost was to take place today, I believe this is what we would see. Networks of Relationships as Worshipping Communities of Shared Mission.

This is our future.

 *http://www.calpeacepower.org/0201/images/Lebanon_overview_bg.jpg