I’d be very happy if Presbyterians would become more Presbyterian.
A couple days ago I attended the stated meeting of our local presbytery. For those unfamiliar with the polity, it is a meeting for all the local teaching elders (TEs), aka ministers of Word and Sacrament, and up to two ruling elders (REs) from each local church. At this meeting, multiple pastors rose up to complain that the presbytery meetings were not times of rich fellowship and encouragement that the TEs desired and needed but were instead filled with business. The fault was laid at the current set of bylaws, which were said to be too bureaucratically constraining. How exactly this was so was never made clear to me aside from one example in that the bylaws specified that presbytery meetings were to be held on Saturdays, which meant the TEs didn’t have the freedom to schedule them at a more convenient time, such as Wednesday mornings.
I am very proud to say that my pastor took the floor to declare that the problem was not the bylaws but rather the lack of faithfulness of the TEs, for which they all (including himself) should repent. And as an example of lack of faithfulness, he pointed out that in prior meetings, many TEs left during the lunch break rather than stay for the afternoon session. And despite this direct rebuke, attendance of the afternoon session of the current meeting was noticeably smaller, and only one third of the men who started the meeting stayed until the end of the meeting.
I came to the realization that a large number of the TEs viewed the presbytery meeting as interfering with the work of the church rather than being the work of the church. For example, it was in the afternoon session that candidates for ministry were examined and pastoral calls were assessed. One might think this sort of oversight was an essential feature of Presbyterianism, but for a large number of TEs, it was just a bother. They’d rather hang out with fellow pastors over a beer.
Additionally, I perceived that the reason that presbytery meetings were so grinding was that the presbytery was deeply divided on substantial issues that kept arising over and over again because they were never directly faced and dealt with. Instead, the majority of TEs seemed to wish to maintain a superficial harmony by patching over differences with half-baked compromises and bureaucratic maneuvering. One example was a call that a TE received from a non-profit organization that, upon questioning from the floor, turned out to have been founded by the TE and had no independent board (at least not yet). So the question was raised, how could it be proper for a man to essentially call himself? When the website of the non-profit was checked, it turned out to have no mention of the Bible, Jesus, or the Christian faith. So the question was raised, how could this be an appropriate call for a minister of Word and Sacrament? The website also mentioned LGBTQ+, so the TE receiving the call was asked to clarify his views with respect to the recent Revoice controversy. This last question was ruled out of order, and it was pointed out that the Administrative Committee had already looked into everything and given their blessing to the call. But no one from the Administrative Committee attended the afternoon session, so their reasoning remained unexplained. The wrangling continued for more than an hour, not as debate over the substantive issues, but rather as attempts to find some precedent or compromise that would justify approving the call. By the time 4:30 pm rolled around, everyone was exhausted, so this matter, along with several others, was kicked back to the Administrative Committee.
Actually, I should have said, the Administrative Commission. Over the objections of several older TEs (including my pastor and a seminary professor) and several knowledgeable and experienced REs (including myself), a coalition of younger TEs managed to push through a wholesale replacement of the bylaws with a substantially truncated set that created an Administrative Commission largely appointed by the Moderator, and as a commission rather than a committee, it will have the power to make decisions rather than merely recommendations. Although the new bylaws state that this power is “not intended to be used for controversial matters”, would you trust that? It will now be easier for the young Turks to avoid inconvenient questions and opposition from the old guard minority, and if the presbytery meeting time is switched to Wednesday mornings, the REs will be sidelined. But with decision-making taken away from the presbytery as a whole, the middle mass of TEs will be rewarded for their support with more time for fellowship in the pub.