The PC(USA)’s Unification Commission sets July 1, 2025, as the date for unifying the Presbyterian Mission Agency and the Office of the General Assembly

Commissioners approve a timeline to conclude their work in time for the 227^th General Assembly in 2026

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

Photo by Clay Banks via Unsplash

LOUISVILLE — Dividing its time almost evenly between closed and open sessions on Sunday, the Unification Commission — which is working to unify the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency — voted to approve a timeline to complete its work by the 227^th General Assembly in 2026.

At the center of the proposed path adopted by the commission is the unification of the two entities — one the ecclesial arm of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the other its mission function — on July 1, 2025.

Commissioners approved a five-step process that begins with its current work and concludes with the 227^th General Assembly. From now until early 2025, the commission will focus on the design of unification. During the latter half of 2025, it’ll turn to implementation. The final step, in 2026, will be to align the new structure.

Here are the five steps as outlined Sunday by Kathy Lueckert, president of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A corporation, who along with Kerry Rice of the OGA and Barry Creech of the PMA provide staff support to the commission:

• Step 1 during 2023 (Design) — includes identifying key 2025 budget priorities, consultations, governance exploration, and financial analysis.
• Step 2 during 2024 (Design) — includes completing an interim report to the 226^th General Assembly, developing the 2025 budget, determining the governance model including committee structures, completing an analysis of the culture within both agencies, and supporting systems work. That final task will be important, Lueckert said, because work will be needed on back-office services and other supporting systems “that are entangled and complex and will take a while to fix things we didn’t know needed to be fixed.”
• Step 3 during the early part of 2025 (Design) — includes developing the 2026 budget; finalizing an interim governance framework; beginning work on a new Organization for Mission, which describes how power and responsibility is shared in the Church; supporting systems work; and developing a staffing design.
• Step 4 during the latter part of 2025 (Implementation) — includes unification itself on July 1, developing the 2027 budget, implementing an interim governance framework, and finalizing the new Organization for Mission.
• Step 5 during 2026 (Alignment) — includes a unified budget and staffing rationale for the new agency, the final Organization for Mission for approval by commissioners elected to the 227^th General Assembly, and the election of a new governing body, again by the General Assembly.

Staff leadership plans to meet later this week “to do some backwards planning” to identify the work that “needs to happen to make certain we are ready, and things are in place,” Lueckert told commissioners.

Kris Thompson, a ruling elder from National Capital Presbytery, said it’ll be helpful for the commission’s four working groups — Common Mission, Governance, Financial and Consultations — to send Lueckert the timelines they’ve developed to date. “Let’s get it all in one place,” Thompson said, “and let’s do it sooner than later.”

The Rev. Debra Avery from Great Rivers Presbytery described the Governance workgroup’s proposed timeline, which is even more ambitious than the one the entire commission approved Sunday. Avery noted that some of the deadlines proposed by the workgroup are “first readings” and won’t be voted on until later meetings of the commission.

During the consultations, said the Rev. Dr. Dee Cooper of Denver Presbytery, “we have said that your words matter, and we are listening. We want to make sure there is influence in these consultations on what the design is.”

The Rev. Scott Lumsden of the Financial workgroup said he and his colleagues plan to meet in Louisville early next month with leadership from PMA, OGA and the Administrative Services Group to help the workgroup develop key budget priorities. “We are still in the ‘seeking to understand’ phase,” Lumsden said, citing the Commission Covenant that’s read at the start of each commission meeting. As workgroup members listen, “it gives us a bit of the picture on culture, a significant factor we will be wrestling with as a commission.”

“I think it’s our responsibility as a commission to be attentive to the culture question and the people question,” Lumsden said. “It’ll be most important for us as we talk about governance and financial changes that we all take responsibility to be attentive to the culture … It will affect not just staff, but the whole Church will be watching us very closely.”

“I think we will be surprised about how the conversation deepens and gives us its own timeline,” Lumsden said.

“I think we need to be clear as a commission we aren’t likely to change the culture,” Thompson said. It’s the role of commissioners to “do the listening we have been doing” and “get clearer” on the healthy and not-so-healthy parts of the culture, as well as “get comfortable moving from a listening position to a reflecting position so that people hear the concerns they have been raising reflecting back to them. While there’s more work to do around listening, I think we need to start communicating back about where we see things going.”

“We are going to beef up the way we are communicating with people,” said Commission Co-Moderator Cristi Scott Ligon. One idea is to create a frequently asked questions document. “We want to make sure everyone is hearing from us and not making up their own stories.”

“We are all in this together,” said the Rev. Bronwen Boswell, the Acting Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the PC(USA). “It’s going to take a lot of hard work and I want to be right there with you.”

“I’m so grateful for the work you’re doing,” said the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis, Co-Moderator of the 225^th General Assembly (2022). “Seeing the timeline and the framings is a sign the Spirit is moving. You’re doing really important work,” Starling-Louis told the 12-member commission, appointed last year by her and the other Co-Moderator of the 225^th General Assembly, the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace. “I’m grateful to call you co-siblings on this co-creative work with God.”

Scott Ligon announced following the one-hour closed session that commissioners had formed small groups to provide feedback to the General Assembly Nominating Committee and the Stated Clerk Nomination Committee.

The Commission on the Unification of the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency, as it’s formally called, will next meet via Zoom from 3-5 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, Sept. 17. Watch the proceedings here.