The big question before this General Assembly was what issue would capture the attention of the assembly and threaten to suck all the oxygen out of the room the way sexuality and divestment have in the last few GAs. Would it be divestment again? Would human sexuality find its way into the mix once more? Perhaps it would be the sacraments or a pressing social issue like race or guns.
Nope. In the end the most energetic and, at times, emotional committee discussion so far surrounded corporate structuring.
That Presbyterians are overly invested in things like the structure of our corporate model is not entirely surprising. We do have a passion for structure and process and the way the church visible lives out its ministry in the church. And to be sure those things matter. The church does in fact live in the world and it is sometimes necessary to explore the most efficient and effective way to do that.
The present debate over corporate structure comes from the two year Way Forward Commission's work and the All-Agency Review Committee's work. Among their many suggested actions is a re-design of the corporate structure of the Presbyterian Church (USA) from one corporation (the A Corp) including both the Presbyterian Mission Agency and the Office of the General Assembly into two corporations with each overseeing one of those two entities and being in charge of shared services like property management of the denominational office building, accounting, human resources, vendor relations, etc.
The changes are needed, according to the committees, for two reasons. First, the church needs to respond to the changes in how we "do church" in the 21st century. Second, there is a troubling culture in our national organization between the PMA and the OGA which centers on issues of power and authority. Change is needed to remove this distraction.
To a cynic, the fact that we are spending so much time talking about corporate structures and denominational offices speaks to a church out of touch with the world and actively avoiding the bigger issues at stake. To an extent, I think that is right. We are using this conversation about corporate and denominational structure to avoid talking about exactly what it is that is causing this sense of powerlessness for one group and the perception that another group is exercising too much power. The structure is surely part of it, but the structure can only be partly to blame. But like in any relationship, it is easy to talk about some issues and not others so we deal with the easy things first and the rest only when/if we have to.
The cynics are only partly right, however. There is actually something very affirming and good at the heart of this discussion. We are debating how best to be an effective and efficient organization for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are debating how best to be the church. That we Presbyterians, immersed as we are in an anti-establishment church culture, still believe that the church visible is worth the spiritual and emotional energy says something about how we value Christ's command to be the people of God.
How we visibly express the community of the church in the world matters. How we treat the visible church says volumes about how we value the people in it and how we value our place in the larger world. Solving our corporate structure issues will not somehow save the church, but it does speak to our commitment to being a faithful institution in the context of God's world. That we choose to deal with these difficult and often confusing details of structures and corporations and visible expressions of the church in the world speaks to our commitment to that world.
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