PPCN, SECOND PRESENTATION

“Restructuring Presbytery for Pastoral Care-Giving ”

There are a number of statements in the Book of Order that mandate a presbytery’s pastoral care of both congregations and pastors. One of such statements is G-11.0103F, quote: “[THE PRESBYTERY IS RESPONSIBLE] TO PROVIDE PASTORAL CARE FOR THE CHURCHES AND MEMBERS OF PRESBYTERY, VISITING SESSIONS AND MINISTERS ON A REGULAR BASIS.” (G-11-0103f)

However, similar statements elsewhere involve both COM and Presbytery Councils in overlaps of care-giving. When considering the present structure of presbyteries, it is telling that much more attention and mandated directives are provided in the Book about Committees on Ministry than about Presbytery Councils. Indeed, a whole subsection of the chapter 11 on the Presbytery, section # 5 that has 16 paragraphs (!), elaborates the what, how, and the functions of Committees on Ministry, as compared to one section, G-11-0103 a – g, & v, about the what, how, and functions of Presbytery Councils. Clearly this reflects a great deal of clericalism in the mentality and priorities of presbytery structure, as well as the primary consciousness and focus of presbytery care-giving. Little wonder that many knowledgeable elders consider presbyteries to be “preacher unions” primarily run by and for the clergy.

Moreover, because COM’s must often take disciplinary actions with pastors and act in political ways that challenge pastors’ careers, COM’s often cannot secure the trust of pastors needed to provide them with pastoral care. And because Presbytery Councils usually have so many institutional responsibilities for and with the operations of presbytery, they do very little in the care of congregations-as-a-whole. In that hiatus, both pastors and congregations are essentially left with very little presbytery care-giving of them as parties to pastoral relationships.

I. The Bias of Presbytery Structures for Care-Giving

Not only are presbyteries operating with this hiatus of little pastoral care-giving of pastors and congregations, but they are structured to consciously or unconsciously ‘divide-and-conquer’ pastoral relationships. This structural bias of presbyteries toward the pastoral care of clergy with little more than lip service for presbytery’s pastoral care of congregations, exacerbates the difficulty most presbyters have of even perceiving, much less conceiving of, pastoral relationships per se. Even though the Book of Order provides that presbyteries shall “ESTABLISH THE PASTORAL RELATIONSHIP AND TO DISSOLVE IT AT THE REQUEST OF ONE OR BOTH OF THE PARTIES . . . [G-11.0103o], presbytery’s structure leads it to relate to the two parties of that relationship separately and in disconnects. Consequently, even when presbyters begin to recognize how pastoral relationships inform and mal-form both congregations and pastors interactively, they are thwarted by presbytery’s mandated organization – a structure that disassociates and dismembers what God is believed to have “joined together” in services of installation.

II. A Proposal for Restructure of Presbytery Pastoral Care-Giving: A Committee on Pastoral Relationships (CPR)

Should presbyteries want to redirect their pastoral care-giving to the interacting interdependencies of pastoral relationships, rather than relating institutionally to ministers and congregations separately, I propose that a new mandated entity, the Committee on Pastoral Relationships (a “CPR”, aptly named?!) - be formed. Essentially, the authority and responsibilities of this newly formed Committee on Pastoral Relationships – CPR – would consist of the mandated directives relating to the formation of pastoral relationships from the point of pastoral installation to pastoral dissolution, found in Book of Order sections G-11.010o and in Book of Order sections G14.0500 – 0600. Through CPR, Presbytery’s pastoral care-giving of BOTH congregations and pastors would be integrated and simultaneous. Most of the remaining mandated presbytery responsibilities for ordaining, certifying, commissioning, calling ministers in G-14.000 through 14.0500 and for guiding and strengthening the leadership and mission of congregations in G-11.0103a through 11.0103.k would remain the authority and responsibilities of COM and the authority and responsibility of Presbytery’s Council respectively.

To focus on Pastoral Relationship per se, would be to begin working on building “social capital” for the practice of ministry. Robert D. Putnam in his best-selling book, Bowling Alone [Simon & Schuster, 2000] describes three kinds of emotional/spiritual/mental investments that people make with each other. These three kinds of interpersonal capital are physical capital (as in money, machines, etc.), human capital (as in college educations, or skills training), and social capital as in reciprocating bonding and bridging/networking (pp. 18-23). In his analysis, “social capital” as been declining in American society since the 1970’s, eating away at social trust, efficiency, and security as more and more of interpersonal disconnections occur in a nation where people more and more ‘bowl alone’. For our purposes, one of the key benefits of a structural focus on pastoral relationships by means of a presbytery’s CPR, would be intentionally build social capital for bonding and bridging between pastors and congregations in shared practice of ministry, and therefore more impacting and fulfilling practice of ministry by both parties. Although increasing social capital for shared practice of ministry initially seem irrelevant to the pastoral care of pastors and congregations, many current studies of clergy show how debilitating many of them are with clinical depressions, bringing waste and pain to their practice of ministry, and therefore to the congregations they serve as well.

What I am proposing is not a complete reorganization of presbyteries, much less another revision of the Book of Order. I am simply proposing that the current mandates of the Book for presbytery’s pastoral care and strengthening of pastors and congregations be sorted out so that the care-giving activities with parties to pastoral relationships from services of installation to dissolutions by request, disciplinary action, or retirement be reassigned from councils and COM’s to the new Committee on Pastoral Relationships, freeing councils to guide presbytery operations, maintaining COM’s obligations in establishing pastoral relationships and in disciplining parties to them in discrete ways, and fostering focus, energy, and resources on strengthening pastoral relationships themselves as a strategic way of care-giving to both congregations and pastors of the presbytery. Such a restructure might rebalance the clericalism of many presbyteries and reconstitute presbytery itself as a pastoral care-giver to its entire membership, both clergy and lay.

In making this proposal for your consideration, I am acutely aware of how distasteful personally, difficult politically, and draining organizationally any genuine structural changes are, particular those that deal with the “live nerves” and passions involved in pastoral relationships. However, I do not see how presbyters can cease to think and relate to pastors and congregations individualistically and begin to think and relate to pastors and congregations systemically without structuring an integrating means of pastoral care. Perhaps current levels of human anger and pain – both of clergy and of congregations; current levels of wasted personal and communal vision, gifts, skills, and energy in institutional lethargy; and current levels of drained hopes and draining combat in pastoral relationships – perhaps these current levels of distress in Presbyterian business-as-usual are reaching a magnitude, that we are arriving at the maxim that people change when the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of changing.