Warning: Heavy lifting ahead

Church leaders help Moving Forward Implementation Commission refine its to-do list

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

The Moving Forward Implementation Commission heard Monday from the Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. (Photo by Mike Ferguson)

LOUISVILLE —  Told by the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly that they’re in “for some heavy lifting” helping the 21^st century church adapt “to a world that’s changing quickly every day,” members of the Moving Forward Implementation Commission got a clearer picture of what’s expected of them during their first in-person meeting Monday at the Presbyterian Center.

“This is not just a nuts and bolts, fix the church at a national level” assignment to “turn the screws on the (Presbyterian Mission Agency) or the (Office of the General Assembly) or who’s running the building,” said the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II. “It’s not about us alone. Mid council and other church leaders become important, and some are struggling — not because of incompetence, but frankly because they didn’t see the world shifting.”

Commission members met Monday and will continue Tuesday to figure out, among other tasks, what their role is alongside other groups including the A Corporation board, whose co-moderators, Bridget-Anne Hampden and Chris Mason, spoke via a conference call to commissioners Monday afternoon.

As he travels among churches and mid councils, Nelson said he’s asked less and less to settle polity disputes. Instead, he’s enlisted to help with skirmishes that are equally vexing: How do we close our church and merge with the congregation across town when grandma is buried in our church cemetery?

“We are trying to make sure people know how to love one another and the Lord and not just your church,” he said, adding that the Presbyterian Center in downtown Louisville could also one day see changes, possibly with some space utilized to train Presbyterian leaders from across the country. “How do we turn this building into a place where people know this is a church among all those (downtown) bourbon distilleries and hotels?” he asked. Education can transform the faithful, “and I think this building is pivotal to that. I want to do that in my tenure,” he said.

Speaking next, the Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, also touched on the large amount of work to be done. That work includes boosting congregational vitality and stemming racism and poverty.

“We don’t want to get constipated on anything that will keep us from moving forward,” she said. “I love the name of your commission, because we’re moving forward with you.”

Kathy Francis, PMA’s senior director of communications, told commissioners that denominational communications are being audited to make an accounting of how communication is being done . Communicators are working together at cross-agency promotion, she said, and the denomination’s website is slated for a makeover. “We hear that a lot,” she said. “It’s definitely on our radar.”

Overall, Moffett said, the PMA “is on a healing trajectory.”

“I try to be a non-anxious presence as a leader,” she said. “I think we are in a good place now with some way to go.”

Mike Miller, acting senior director of Shared Services and the CFO for the A Corporation, said the corporate arm of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has an announcement scheduled for Wednesday. “I don’t think you will see anything (in that announcement) that will surprise you,” he said.

He drew chuckles from commissioners, expected to make recommendations to the 2020 General Assembly, with this statement: “If you like deliberations, you’ll love this process.”

Hampden, the A Corp. board co-moderator, said that body “has a lot of balls in the air” while it develops “a workable plan to populate management functions based on the directive of the last General Assembly.”

Commissioners met in executive (closed) session with Hampden and Mason for about 30 minutes, taking no action before reconvening in open session to further discuss the work ahead.

One commission task that will require some finesse, said the Rev. Eric Beene, will be “how do we create a centralized version while respecting that the Presbyterian Church will be made up of a lot of visions? How do we find a way to unite and affirm everyone’s right to have a vision?”

Rachel Sutphin, a young adult advisory delegate at the 2018 General Assembly, said that as a seminary student, she has only one request: “I want the church to be alive when I graduate,” she said, “so I can have a job.”