Yes to the Means of Grace; No to 12-B

It is Book of Order amendment voting season and, thanks be to God, the PC(USA) will not be voting directly on an issue of human sexuality.  In their wisdom, the 220th General Assembly left the current language alone for the most part and called the church into a season of discernment and prayer on the issue of same-gender marriage.

Of the 10 proposed amendments to the Book of Order, none is terribly controversial.  There is some question about whether a few are really necessary, but in the end their impact will be negligible and will do no harm to the church.  One, proposed amendment 12-B, does raise some questions, however.

12-B proposes an addition to G-2.0104a "Gifts and Qualifications for Ordered Ministry."  The proposed language would add a sentence to the text:

“This includes repentance of sin and diligent use of the means of grace.”

"This" is in reference to the previous sentence which calls on those who would be ordained and installed to ordered ministry in the church to live in a manner that exhibits "a demonstration of the Christian gospel in the church and the world."

It is a nice elaboration on the church's understanding of what it means to live a life that demonstrates the gospel and it is difficult to argue that it is somehow inappropriate as a qualification for ministry.  On those points, 12-B is on solid ground.  But those are not the only questions at stake when we amend our Book of Order.

After spending many years and vast sums of money to revamp our polity, we must proceed with any amending language carefully and with an eye toward preserving the advances made when our polity was simplified and streamlined.

The first question we need to ask is whether or not this provision, in its enforcement, can stand as a principle of Reformed theology.  Although the notion that those in ordered ministry will repent of sin and diligently use the means of grace is a solidly Reformed principle, it presents a troubling issue for the church.  

Embedding such language in our constitution imposes a requirement on councils of the church to enforce the standard.  Unlike other areas in which councils enjoy latitude in interpretation (suitability for office, sufficiency of theological knowledge, etc.) this standard requires councils to determine concretely what are and are not means of grace.  By what standard shall those decisions be made?  Are the means of grace limited to the sacraments?  Does personal devotion count as a means of grace?  

Someone or some group will have to determine what are and are not means of grace.  If that power is invested in an individual, such a provision would violate the very principle of Presbyterian governance and the rejection of spiritual hierarchy vested in any individual.  If that power is invested in a council below the General Assembly, such a provision would violate the principle that higher councils guide lower councils.  This would also lead to inevitable conflicts not only in application of the constitution but is very meaning from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.  Presbytery A may define the "means of grace" as the sacraments while presbytery B may define the "means of grace" as prayer and study.  

Either of these solutions would violate fundamental principles of our polity and our theology of the priesthood of all believers.

The GAPJC has ruled repeatedly in recent years that presbyteries may not impose standards on candidates for ordination and/or installation that go beyond those adopted by the entire church.  (I.e. a presbytery may not require a sixth ordination exam.)  Proposed amendment 12-B does exactly that.  It requires a council to determine, beyond the text of the constitution, what is and what is not a "means of grace."

That councils are required to go beyond the text of the constitution in violation of our current guiding polity raises the second question that must be answered: does this provision uplift or undermine the peace, unity and purity of the church?

That a governing document may contradict or limit itself is not necessarily dis-positive to its validity. Governing documents can and often do include provisions that are facially contradictory.  Such contradictions are inevitably worked out through some process of discernment.  In the case of the church, such a contradiction would have to be decided by either judicial process or an authoritative interpretation issued by a GA.  Either solution would plunge the church into another season of judicial complaint and counter-complaint.

Why, if it is not necessary, would we impose another season of litigation on the church?  What purpose is served by inserting well meaning but ill defined language into our just revised constitution?  

In the end, 12-B is a solution in search of a problem.  There is no evidence that there is an epidemic of unrepentant behavior among those in ordered ministry.  (At least no more epidemic than it is among any population of sinful people.)  There is no evidence that its inclusion in the Book of Order will clarify or enhance our polity.  In truth, it may serve to confuse and undermine it.   

That those in ordered ministry should be ever mindful of our sinfulness and repentant of our sins is a worthy reminder for the church.  If Teaching and Ruling Elders and Deacons are to serve Christ and the church with faithfulness, we must indeed repent and encourage in one another diligent use of the means of grace.  That it is wise advice is clear.  That it is constitutionally necessary is not.

12-B should be defeated by the presbyteries.

Note: Edited at 12:20 pm 1/25/13 to correct a spelling mistake in the third paragraph and to finish a word that was truncated in the first paragraph when edited.

Dues Plus: Part 2

            I wrote in this space yesterday about the “Dues Plus” plan proposed by the PC(USA) Board of Pensions (the BOP).  Dues Plus is a plan to revise our medical plan in an effort to find a solution to an increasing deficit problem common to health plans. 

            That some solution needs to be found can hardly be debated.  Our benefits plan is not just a matter of present needs, it is also an expression of promises made to pensioners and future pensioners.  The board has a responsibility to wisely use the resources they receive from our congregations through the BOP dues paid by each church. 

            In my post yesterday, I said that I support the Dues Plus as a solution not because it is ideal but because it is necessary.  I recognized that it will change to some measure the structure and the underlying assumptions of the plan, however I do not believe that it fundamentally violates the covenant shared by the BOP, its members and the churches who pay the dues.

            Based on the responses I got yesterday (some made in public that were both helpful and insightful and some sent under cover of email that were occasionally profane and decidedly unhelpful), I am not persuaded to change my position on Dues Plus as a solution to a very real problem.  However, I am persuaded that there is a need for more conversation in the church about possible alternatives to this one specific plan. 

            For better or worse, something needs to be done and it needs to be done sooner rather than later. 

            These are the facts as I understand them outlined in detail or implied by information in the BOP communication to the church.[i]

• Dues income is not sufficient to cover annual costs.  At the current rate of income/expense the medical reserve (this is not related to pension reserves) will be exhausted in 36-48 months.
•  The medical plan must be self-sustaining in order to prevent disruption of the pension plan which is fully funded and able to meet all present and future obligations.
• In order to maintain current dues structure and close increasing deficits, member dues will necessarily increase above 25-27% of effective salary for medical only (36-39% for all benefits combined.)
• More than ½ of plan members are 50-64 and actuarially likely to consume an increasing rather than decreasing level of healthcare.
•  The decreasing number of dues paying institution and the declining real dollars collected in dues exacerbates the rising costs and use of healthcare.

            This is not an ideal situation.  That is for sure.  However, it is our shared reality and we have to do something or risk the solvency of the plan.

            Some commenters to me and in other forums have made a point that the BOP has done a poor job of communicating the issues and options to the larger church.  That is a fair criticism.  The BOP has done a poor public relations job throughout this process.  (Calling for austerity last fall from Hilton Head and this spring from the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Philadelphia does take something away from the argument.)

            The BOP’s poor communication aside, the math does not change.  Something has to be done.

            So what are the options?

            Well, we know Dues Plus.  It shifts part (only part) of the cost of dependent coverage from regular dues to the medical plan to an additional premium.  Every member remains covered 100% and dependent coverage, while heavily subsidized, would require the payment of a premium based on who is covered.  This has the advantage of solving the problem presented; however, it does so by placing a burden on a particular group- clergy with children or spouse in need of coverage.  To be fair, despite the proposed 2% decrease in dues, Dues Plus still heavily subsidizes the cost of dependent coverage through the dues payed on pastors with no dependents.

            What about just raising dues?  That is certainly an option.  It is what we have done for years.  Simply raise dues to meet existing needs.  The BOP did consider that as evidenced by the information they give in the Q&A published for the church.  Simply maintaining the status quo would require dues to continue to rise from the current 21% to 27% and beyond within five years.  This too would solve the problem presented; however, it too balances the budget on the back of a particular group.  I this case small churches like one of mine would simply have to forego pastoral leadership.  Dues are a stretch now and a significant increase in dues is simply not possible. 

            What about farming out the plan and no longer being self-insured?  Just on a lark, I called a couple of insurance folks today to find out how much it would cost to move me and my secretary (who is in the affiliates program) to private insurance.  Let’s just say we would be missing the days of 27% medical dues!

            There is just no easy answer to this problem.  But it has to be solved. 

            I claim no special insights or ah-ha moments on this.   I wish I had a magic wand to wave and make the problem go away.  Unfortunately, the only options presented so far are a) keep increasing dues for everyone or b) Dues Plus.  No other options that I have seen solve the fundamental problem of the math.

            One last note, I realize how emotional an issue this is.  However, I hope that my colleagues and friends will take care when calling this unjust because it puts the burden of the solution “on the backs of families.”  For more than a generation the church has been silent on the reality that the 16% of us who are single and have no children have been overpaying for years.  As I said yesterday on Facebook, I am fine with that.  I am fine having my income lowered a bit to help ensure that my friends and colleagues coverage is not out of reach.  That is how our plan does and should work.  

            Let’s not let this become a struggle about who shoulders the most burdens.  Together, let’s try to find a solution that allows us to share and shoulder it together. 

---

[i] http://web.pensions.org/Publications/pensions/Home/Forms%20%26%20Publications/Booklets%20%26%20Brochures/MedicalDues-QandA.pdf

Board of Pensions "Dues Plus" Is the Right Thing to Do

Forty-five days from now the governing board of the PC(USA) Board of Pensions will vote on a proposal to restructure the medical dues and benefits they oversee for the church.  In November 2012, the BOP proposed a program informally called “Dues Plus.”  The purpose of the plan is to bridge the growing gap between dues received and benefits paid by the plan each year.

Under the current plan rules, churches pay a set percentage of pastor’s salary and housing compensation as dues for medical, pension, death benefits and disability coverage  (21% medical, 11% pension, 1% death and disability.)  Under the existing plan, medical dues are neutral in terms of the number of people covered.  A single pastor’s dues are 21% as are the dues for a pastor with spouse and six dependent children. 

Two principles are said to be at the heart of the BOP plan and each is an important expression of our theology of church and community.  First, dues are charged under a principle of “call neutrality.”  Call neutrality simply means that single or married, children or no children, a pastor’s dues are the same.  This principle eliminates any advantage or disadvantage or employing a pastor based on his or her family status.  The second principle is the community nature of the plan.  Dues are not paid into individual accounts but a pooled fund that ensures that every plan member is equally covered regardless of the resources available to their congregation.  Large church pastors and small church pastors are the same in the eyes of the plan.

Dues Plus will change all of that...sort of.

Under Dues Plus, medical dues will decrease from 21% of effective salary to 19%, however that cost will cover the pastor only.  Family coverage will require payment of an additional premium (currently estimated at $5700/year.

Few have argued with the necessity of doing something to curb the deficits and deal with rising costs to the plan caused by an ageing membership and increasing medical costs.  Some, however, argue that the Dues Plus plan is not the right fix because it violates the two principles underlying our plan; namely call neutrality and the community nature of the plan.

I disagree.

Dues Plus is certainly a departure from the way our plan works today, however it is a stretch to say that this policy shift undermines or violates the fundamental nature of the plan.

Call neutrality is an admirable principle and a worthy way of understanding our benefits plan, but we are fooling ourselves if we think that call neutrality exists anywhere in the church but in the BOP dues structure.  There continues to be a hierarchy of supposed worthiness or desirability among clergy.  From my perspective as a single early 40’s pastor, I have no illusions that I am on the same vocational footing as a 30-something pastor with wife (yes, gender matters too) and two kids.  Call neutrality is a nice idea, but it does not happen in the real world of the church and the small savings Dues Plus will offer to churches employing single pastors or the cost increase for married pastors will not turn that reality on its head.

The community nature of the plan is unchanged under Dues Plus.  Yes, there is an added cost to some churches and not to others.  The fact that the difference between current dues (21%) and proposed dues (19%) demonstrates that churches who employ single pastors will continue to subsidize coverage even for those who pay the dues plus.  Does $5700 really cover the full cost of a spouse and two children?

There are yet unanswered questions about how small churches will cope and how new worshiping communities fit into this picture. 

However, in the end, the pressing question before the church is a practical one; how can we most reasonably and responsibly use the resources our members stewardship makes available?  The Dues Plus plan is not ideal but then neither are the contemporary circumstances of healthcare or congregational finances. 

Dues Plus is an honest, thoughtful and ultimately workable solution that maintains the church’s commitment to its clergy and responds to the reality in which we find ourselves today. 

For my part, I support the BOP and thank the board’s members for their willingness to do this frequently thankless job.

There Is Yet Hope Here: A Response to Ed Koster

In a recent Outlook guest editorial, Rev. Ed Koster brought his considerable experience with Presbyterian polity to bear in an indicting portrayal of the current state of discipline in the PC(USA).  Koster explores issues ranging from the adoption of the Book of Confessions by the United Presbyterian Church to recent decisions by the GAPJC to demonstrate what he sees as an epidemic of disobedience to church polity.   Reading his bleak and despairing words about a church in which, “(T)here is no discipline in the land, and everyone does what is right in his own eyes,”  one wonders if there is any hope for the PC(USA).

Despite the prognostications of doom and demise from Koster and others, I believe there is. 

In fact, there is hope for the church found in the very places Koster sees only decline and doom.

Koster takes issue first with the language of the new F-1.0303 which identifies the three marks of the church; proclamation and hearing of the Word of God, administration of the sacraments and nurturing a covenant community of disciples of Christ.  It is the third mark of the church that appears to worry Koster.  He points out that the former language referred not to building covenant community but ensuring that “ecclesiastical discipline is uprightly administered.”  The change in language, he claims, represents a rejection of the notion of discipline in the church; that somehow the the church has rejected this important part of our Reformed heritage.  In fact, this premise, that discipline and order are no more, underlies most of Koster's expressed concern about the church.

I disagree.

The change in language adopted in F-1.0303 represents not a refutation of our Reformed heritage but a reclaiming of the theological role of the church in the right ordering of our spiritual lives.  Over the last two decades, ecclesiastical discipline in the PC(USA) has been reduced to a court for the punishment of unpopular opinions.  Whether against progressives who fought for full inclusion in the church or conservatives who have withheld per-capita funding out of a sense of conscience, the courts of the church have been used less to order than to punish. 

The purpose of ecclesiastical discipline, according to the language of the Scots Confession, is not merely to punish vice but to simultaneously nurture virtue. (Scots 3.18)  That our understanding of discipline had become consumed with the former and neglectful of the latter was a matter of grave theological concern.  The adoption of the new language in F-1.0303 represents a reclaiming of discipline as a tool for building up the community of faith and not merely beating down individuals within it.  True ecclesiastical discipline orders, it does not merely punish.

Koster next turns his attention to a second concern, what he calls “the notion that a person has the right to disobey a church rule when he or she thinks it wrong.” 

On this point, he is absolutely right. 

This is a pervasive idea in the church and thank God it is!  One of the great pillars of our Reformed tradition is the rejection that any human institution or visible combination of persons or powers can ever be deemed infallible.  The rules and policies and, yes, polity of those institutions must be resisted when, in good conscience, the individual believer finds it necessary.

The problem is not that we have a tradition of “civil disobedience” in our shared ecclesiastical life.  The trouble comes when that civil disobedience is not paired with a willingness to pay the price of one's actions.  

The misstep in Koster’s argument is his assumption that those who, in good conscience, decline to be governed by a rule they believe to be unjust believe that their resistance should come with no consequence.  That is not the case.  Jane Spahr who has resisted the church’s policies denying full fellowship to GLBTQ Presbyterians knew and faced the consequences of her resistance.  She acted as her conscience dictated and paid the price required by the courts of the church.  Wynn Kenyon famously did the same in the 1970’s.  He stood on principle (one with which I personally disagree) and suffered the consequence of his stance.

The Reformed tradition, indeed the whole history of Protestantism, rests on the shoulders of courageous people of faith who resisted.  They knew and paid the price, often dearly.  Disobedience rooted in conscience is a time honored and valuable part of our church's history. 

Koster’s third argument points to what he sees as the result of a permissive attitude within the church for such disobedience.  He points to the decision in Parnell, et al v. Presbytery of San Francisco (220-10) as evidence that the PC(USA) has rejected any sort of standard rooted in scripture or the confessions.

This is a profound misreading of what the GAPJC did.

In Parnell, the GAPJC ruled that “(T)he Book of Confessions, much like Scripture itself, requires discernment and interpretation when its standards are to be applied in the life and mission of the church.”  Far from ruling that scripture or the Confessions are insufficient to be used as a standard; the GAPJC ruled that they cannot be reduced to a static list of essentials without doing violence to the breadth of witness in each.  

The place of scripture and the Confessions as standards in the church is not diminished but enhanced by this affirmation.  In a world in which every aspect of human life and relationship is persistently reduced to formulae and lowest-common-denominator sound bites, that the PC(USA) continues to cherish the complexity and depth of scripture and the Confessions is a reason to celebrate.  The standard in the PC(USA) is an insistence that God’s word in scripture and the heritage of the church in the Confessions will not be reduced or redacted to meet the desires of a world addicted to simple answers.  The theological evaluation of candidates for ministry in Christ’s church is worth the effort.

Finally, Koster turns to “the ethos…that an individual’s wisdom is deemed greater than that of the church assembled.”

Given that the issues with which Koster takes the greatest issue are rulings by the GAPJC, actions by the General Assembly and the general direction of the church, he seems at risk of being hoisted on his own theological petard if his actions are misunderstood the way he evidently misunderstands the actions of others in the church.

For my part, I find no theological threat in an ethos that individual wisdom should be proclaimed in the midst of the church.  I do not sense that Koster seeks to substitute his own perspective for that of the church nor do I think that is a pervasive ethos among those whose voices may not be in the mainstream of current church thinking.

Instead he is doing what so many in the church have done for centuries.  He is speaking what he believes to be a faithful word in the midst of a church that has discerned a different faithful direction. 

He is certainly right that there are instances in which individuals and councils have flaunted the authority of the church.   As has happened in the past and will no doubt in the future, those situations will right themselves in time.  To say that these isolated incidents define the whole culture of the church or that they risk the unraveling of the church requires an incredible leap of imagination.

That the PC(USA) has recaptured its role as a body meant to build up the community of Christ rather than simply keep human vice in check; continues to embrace the importance of individual conscience in the midst of that community; cherishes and lifts up both scripture and the Confessions as standards that will not be diminished by reductive standardization; and remains a church in which a voice ringing out counter to the current of the church may be heard and valued is elegant proof that the PC(USA) remains filled by the life of the Spirit.

That is not a doomed church. 

That is a living and breathing community of the Spirit.

That is the Presbyterian Church I know and love and thank God for it!