At the 90-day point in my ministry as Transitional Leader in the Presbytery of Elizabeth, I attended the annual meeting of the Association of Executive Presbyters and the PCUSA polity conference in Detroit, MI.  The timing was good for a brief step-away for net-working, exposure to Presbyterian life on the national level, and opportunity to reflect on implications for our life here in Elizabeth Presbytery.

In the many stories of mission and hope, shared from presbytery and national staff leaders, I noted a strong denominational trend toward conversation, spiritual development, and hands-on mission, with significantly less emphasis on policy and procedure.  We are becoming more relational and less regulatory.   

Our understanding of the nature and purpose of presbyteries is shifting.  The emphasis is now on supporting and resourcing congregations, for the sake of mission to their communities.  Presbyteries are being transformed into learning communities, as congregations require new tools and strategies for effective ministry in the 21st century.   There is no one-size-fits-all model.  Nor is there a road-map for the adaptive challenges before us.  However, as I listened to colleagues talk about the ways they are living into new patterns and practices, I noted the following common themes: 

·      Sabbath and Sabbaticals:  Presbyteries and presbytery entities are finding creative ways to take time off, time away, time out from business and busy-ness in order to devote significant time to Scripture, prayer and other spiritual practices that connect presbyters more deeply to God and each other….the fruits of which is discernment of new ways of doing and being.

·      Permission to let go of old forms and models:  In coherence with the New Form of Government, which allows for much flexibility about how presbyteries carry out the functions assigned to them, presbyteries are feeling free to dispense with elements that are cumbersome or no longer work well.

·      Use of visual images, music, sensory and tactile experiences:  Leaders are designing experiences that engage right brain activity to open new pathways in the minds and hearts of participants. 

·      A spirit of playfulness and experimentation:  There is plenty of trial and error, as presbyters explore the changing nature of their roles and responsibilities.   There is an ethos of freedom to try new tools and strategies and practices, without attachment to a particular outcome without fear of failure

·      Identifying and training new leaders:  In most presbyteries there are leaders (often younger and on the margins) who are excited and want to be a part of discerning and developing new places in the presbytery system for their gifts to resource congregations.  These leaders – both pastors and lay leaders - are often not in formal leadership roles in the life of the presbytery.

·      Use of key Scriptures to give handles that shape identity and mission.  What stories from the Bible describe who we are, how we experience our life with God, and how we relate to the world around us?

·      Focus outside the walls:  Moving beyond our church building(s) and outside the institutional structures of presbytery is essential to our transformation and to the formation of Christian discipleship.

·      Attention on pockets of joy and new life: (what Corey Schlosser-Hall referred to as "creating a culture of aspiration")  Presbyteries are choosing to invest emotional time and energy into offense rather than defense. 

These common themes were especially noted in two workshops I attended.

Trends in Mid-Council Partnerships

As we move through this transitional season together, thinking about questions of structure and staffing, we are not alone.  This workshop gave an over-view of trends emerging in mid-councils, from the perspective of Jill Hudson, PCUSA staff person for mid-councils.

·      Mid-Councils across the denomination are finding creative ways to share services, programs, and/or staff….sometimes forming collaborations, sometimes merging, dissolving some positions and establishing others.

·       Over and over again, I was struck by the importance of laying groundwork, asking the right questions, and keeping the focus of attention on-purpose.  (One presbytery gave itself a sunset date for going out of business, which forced them to get serious about the question of why they exist.)  

New Models for Committees on  Ministry:

The new Form of Government no longer mandates the existence of a Committee on Ministry, but does include some of the traditional COM functions among the responsibilities of a presbytery.  Yes, there are actually presbyteries out there who have done away with COM and in its place mobilized teams of people who are trained and sent to serve as pastor, counselor, and advisor to teaching elders and congregations.  In some cases, this has meant training some specialists who could be deployed in situations of conflict or transition.  In other cases, COMs remain but have radically transformed the way they carry out their functions, in relationship to pastors and congregations. 

Implications for Elizabeth Presbytery

We are in the phase of laying groundwork.  The Presbytery of Elizabeth has aptly named cultivating community and re-building trust as the primary work of Year One of the transitional period.   During this year, it is essential that we deepen our life in God and engage in experiences that build new relationships for the sake of Christ’s mission to the communities we serve.  As we engage this work, the common themes noted above may inform our choices.  Additionally, we may want to experiment with bold new strategies that will break us out of old habits and cultivate new habits of mind and heart.

Ideas I think have merit for our consideration: 

• A season of Sabbatical in which we put most of the work of our committees, units and teams on hold, while we turn to God together in new ways…letting things lie still, dormant without feeling the need to stir things up....spending intentional time in small groups of spiritual practice and/or engaging in acts of mission and witness together.

• Set aside presbytery by-laws for a season, in order to give the system permission and time to try new things without having to go through the work of process of changing by-laws in order to be able to do it.  

• Assess various tools out there to help us get handles on the current health and potential vitality of our congregations,  some we have used:  Natural Church Development and Russell Crabtree’s Holy Cow Organizational Intelligence.  Are there learnings still to be gleaned from these processes?  Others we might look at for the first time:  like the denomination’s New Beginnings program. 

• Learn more about the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement as a catalyst to get our congregations thinking outside the box about ministering to the nones….the many people in our communities who have no religious affiliation.  And about U-Kirk….a new denominational endeavor to reach young adults.  

• Storyboard presbytery meetings….map out the experience the cabinet would want the presbytery to have at a particular meeting, or the emphasis for the meeting.  You get on the docket if it fits the story.

 I look forward to working with the Cabinet and other key leaders to consider how we might begin living into new ways of doing and being, as a presbytery.  I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Blessings,

Cheryl

“Turning A Blind Eye”                                                                             September 24, 2013

John 9:1-41                                                            Rev. Cheryl D. Galan, Transitional Leader

Do you remember a time when you couldn’t see?

I’m remembering one summer when I was serving as a Volunteer Director

at Camp Whitman on Seneca Lake in New York

….I’d just finished getting ready for bed at the shower house,

and realized I’d forgotten my flashlight.

Oh well, I shrugged.  After all these years, I know these woods like the back of my hand.

          Surely I can find my way back to my cabin without it.

It happened to be a cloudy night.

            No stars, no moon, and out there in the wilderness, 

                     no ambient light reflected onto the clouds from lights on the ground

                              because there weren’t any.

Just dark.  Pitch black.  Night.

            I headed back in the direction of my cabin on a dirt road, 

                     following the ruts with my feet, the brush to the sides of the road, barely discernible,

the black shadows of the tree tops - dark against dark

                                   forming a tunnel around the open sky.

I found the  fork in the road  and turned to the right.

Home free, I thought.

            But then I got to the tree-lined field.  Somewhere, at the edges of the field

buried within the trees was the path that would lead me home.

Now I couldn’t see a thing.  And I’d lost my bearings.           

Just on the other side of the trees I could hear the laughter of

my campers, settling in for the night, but there I was alone, 

just me and my blind eyes in the darkness.

For the blind man of John’s gospel, life had always been like that.

            Since birth, only darkness.  Since birth, all alone in the not seeing.

                       

NEVER a time when he could see.

Until Jesus.

Until Jesus spat on the ground and scooped up a fingerful

            of dirt mixed with saliva and touched his eyes with it.

Until he felt the cool, wet mud on his eyelids.

Until he heard Jesus tell him to go wash in the pool of Siloam

           and he stretched out his arms, one more time groping in the darkness,

                   one more time reaching in the darkness,

                        one more time walking the well-worn path in the darkness, 

a path he knew so well he didn’t falter or stumble, once he got clear of the crowd.

And one last time he fell on his knees by the cooling waters of the pool

            plunged his hands into the water, 

                        scooped it up by hands-full to splash his eyes,

now caked with the mud that was hardened and dry, like crust.

Washing the mud away, the blind man opened his eyes.  And now, he could see!

Where he’d walked with unhalting steps on the way to those healing waters, 

           I imagine he stumbled now; he faltered now

                  as he walked in a world he’d never seen before.

Now he made his way along a path, both familiar and entirely foreign.

Now he came home to voices that had faces and faces that had questions

            and questions that flew at him and unsettled his soul.

How were your eyes opened?

Where is he?

How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?

Is this your son?  How does he now see?

What did he do to you?

How did he open your eyes?

The neighbors, the Jews, the Pharisees, even the man’s parents struggle to reconcile the truth 

        as they have  KNOWN it with this new reality represented in the answers 

                 the formerly blind man gives them.

They ask.  He speaks.  And it’s as if they are moving through thick, pea-soup fog,

It makes no sense.  

       It turns the conventional wisdom on which they have depended on its head.  

And so, it rocks their world.

With mud and spittle, by a touch and a command, on the Sabbath, a blind man sees,

            but now everyone else does not.

The neighbors, the Jews, the Pharisees, and the man’s parents

do not see that Jesus has come among them to touch

where conventional wisdom says…do not touch.  

Do not touch my certainty.  Do not touch my comfort.

Do not touch the institutions in which I have invested large parts of myself. 

Do not touch my beliefs, the rules that help me find my place 

        in a sometimes chaotic and confusing world.

Do not touch my relationships-in-community,  the way my life is ordered.

Do not touch my family.

Do not touch the carefully constructed arguments of my well-informed mind. 

Do not touch my judgments.  Do not touch my prejudices. 

Do not touch my heart.  Do not touch……me.

There we have it, right?

It’s one thing for Jesus to mess with a blind beggar’s life,

but quite another for him to mess with mine.

Earlier today, we saw just a snippet of the film, Something The Lord Made.

We saw courage and vision,

pain-staking experimentation and practice,

ambition and more than a smidge of grandiosity

as Dr. Blalock went out on the limb that led to

the world’s first surgical procedure on the heart.

This work saved the life of a baby who otherwise would have died 

         and paved the way for medical procedures we now take for granted.

Blalock, Thomas, and their medical team created new norms,

crafted new conventional wisdom,

                        and charted a new course from which we reap benefits to this day.

But this is also a story about Dr. Blalock’s struggle to allow his own heart to be touched.

The under-current of the story is the largely unquestioned and unchallenged racism of the Jim Crow culture in which Dr. Blalock operated.

It was unconventional, that he forged such a close partnership

         with Vivian Thomas,  an uneducated black man whose trade was carpentry.

It was highly irregular when he invited Vivien into the O.R. to talk

him through the procedure they’d together developed and rehearsed.

But at the end of the day, when the accolades came, Dr. Blalock stood alone….

Vivien Thomas was not there, not in the headlines, not in the photo ops,

            not in the recognition ceremonies.  

Turning a blind eye to the blockage in his own heart,

            Blalock could not see and would  not allow it.

            Later he would look back on that time and say, “I have some regrets.”

Isn’t that the way it goes for us?

We want healing, for ourselves and for our world.

We pray for it.  We work, that it may be so.  We plan for it.

We protest and advocate for it. 

            We educate for that which we believe bring healing. 

…..while about our own hearts we insist…..Do not touch

So where does this leave us? 

It leaves us where we began…with our blind eyes…in the dark.

And along comes Jesus, who will climb out on a limb,

         to overturn the conventional wisdom that in this story that begs for our hearing

           and calls out for our healing:  that someone did something wrong.

Who sinned? asked the Pharisees.

To which Jesus responded,  Neither this man nor his parents sinned.

In a recent interview, Diana Butler Bass spoke of the condition of many congregations today and said,

“It’s not your fault.

The world you grew up in has changed very radically.

You didn’t change it. It changed around you.”

Who sinned....that we minister in a context of ever-diversifying demographics

      and disparities of wealth and opportunity in our churches and communities?

Who sinned.....that  institutional patterns and policies which formerly

            served us well are now falling apart?

Who sinned....that we  suffer numeric decline,

            not to mention the aging buildings with creaky floors, our Achilles heel?

Who sinned... that graying congregations and greening congregations alike

       face the daunting challenge of articulating why it matters that we are Christian,

                not to mention Presbyterian, in a world that mostly doesn't care?

 Who sinned...that we struggle to find our prophetic voice

            in the mist of pervasive violence and deep, persistent injustice?

Who sinned....that the signs of dis-ease in the earth, in our bodies, in our relationships 

       so rattle us to the core, that in our fear we become brittle, blind, or blocked,

                unable to see the beauty, the pain and raw vulnerability 

                        in the faces of our brothers and sisters.

                       

Don’t you see?  It’s not your fault, Elizabeth Presbytery.

           

Instead, it’s our opportunity, for Jesus also said,            

            “This man was born blind so God’s works might be revealed in him.”

What if this moment in our shared history could be less about

            who is to blame and more about God’s works, revealed through us.

Here’s your opportunity to shine with the light that has been given to you.

            Did you notice, when you read the lines of the blind man in the story,

                        while everyone else was confused and arguing, 

 while they bickered and complained, you spoke with growing clarity.

           

It was as if, in the telling of your own story, in reflecting on your experience

with Jesus Christ, in the questions that came flying at you,

and the words, however inadequate, you used to answer them….

a  growing awareness snuck up on you, a strengthening voice rose up in you, 

             like the gradual brightening of the morning sky,

until suddenly astoundingly,  it burst over the horizon and you blurted out,

“If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

And then Jesus found you….again.

            Jesus found YOU….who have been tumbled, tussled and tossed about

                        …and Jesus presented the question toward which this whole drama

                                    has been leading:  “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

And sight turns to insight as YOU, the blind one confess,

“Lord, I believe,” and worship him.

May it be so, for us and for our congregations, for the sake of the healing of our world.  Amen.