General Assembly Council: The Big Picture

The General Assembly Council (GAC) of the Presbyterian Church, USA, met last week, and significant changes have been made to how the GAC will operate. Announcements about those changes have been made today. I think it is important for those trying to place the changes in context to keep in mind the entire Mission Work Plan adopted by the GAC in February. I have included that entire plan here. At the end of this post, I offer some observations about what we have just done and what comes next.

Mission Work Plan Contents

• Purpose Statement
• Vision Statement
• Mission Statement
• Mission Context
• Core Commitments
• Goal Areas and Objectives

PURPOSE STATEMENT

The General Assembly Council, led and empowered by the Triune God, provides visionary leadership in the development and implementation of the General Assembly's mission directives, supports governing bodies in our common mission, and acts on behalf of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on policy matters when the General Assembly is not in session. (adapted from the Book of Order)

VISION STATEMENT

We envision our congregations, presbyteries, synods, General Assembly and ecumenical partners, singly and together, being so inspired and nurtured by the gospel of Jesus Christ that ministries are vibrant and inviting. We pray that all will be drawn irresistibly into ministries reflecting the love and justice of Jesus, with immediate neighborhoods and the whole of the world as arenas in which the gospel is to be proclaimed and lived. (adapted from the Organization for Mission)

MISSION STATEMENT

The mission of the General Assembly Council, with congregations and governing bodies, is to offer the world a visible witness of Jesus Christ through (1) the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; (2) the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; (3) the maintenance of divine worship; (4) the preservation of the truth; (5) the promotion of social righteousness; and (6) the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. (adapted from the Book of Order)

MISSION CONTEXT

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A., like all other denominations, is in a time of tremendous change and soul searching. There is a well worn phrase among historians that "The past is prologue." What factors in the recent past serve as prologue for our life together in the 21st Century? What has changed over the last half century and what will it mean for the future of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.? What follows describe some key dynamics in what it means to be a denomination in the United States today, dynamics that are part of the context in which we develop a mission work plan for 2007-2008.

• Christian Consensus to Disestablishment – Fifty years ago Christianity was the dominant religious force in the culture. Non-Christians of whatever ilk, and even some Christians with what were considered "fringe" beliefs, were given scant attention or voice. Institutions from schools, to government, to service organizations, to media, could all be counted on to be supportive of many of the same values embraced by Presbyterians. Now, more attention and credence, warranted or not, is given to a multitude of beliefs, and institutions have become less inclined, unable or unwilling to deal with the multiplicity so they do nothing or even appear hostile to the point where the language of religion and faith is not the lingua franca it was in the past.
• Institutional Loyalty to Choice – Fifty years ago there was high commitment to institutions in everything from the civic organizations we joined to the kind of ketchup we bought. It was not uncommon for people to spend their whole lives working for one employer. Now we have become a consumer driven society. Consumers have more access to information about decisions. They switch brands with ease depending on how they perceive the benefits. This mindset is pervasive in our culture as people go "church shopping." Denominational labels usually mean little.
• Cultural Homogeneity to Cultural Pluralism – Fifty years ago the nation was clearly dominated by Anglo-American culture and ethnic or minority voices were largely muted. Since then, the number of the ethnic groups and size of the overall ethnic minority population has grown. This has meant a growth in the diversity of expressions within Christianity as well as growth in non-Christian traditions.
• Information Gate keeping to Information Overload – Fifty years ago, information came through a narrow filter and access was limited to a handful of sources. Because of denominational loyalty and limited access to competing information, denominations could expect some "brand loyalty" from their congregations. Now with internet, cellular technology, and host of other advancements, information bombards us, and we are skeptical of all of it. Denominational goods and services compete in an open market against those provided by other denominations or para-church organizations. Increased information has created awareness of the many causes to which funds can be contributed and givers are more discriminating, preferring to give directly to particular initiatives instead of umbrella ministry operations.

These changes' dynamics have several implications for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Among the challenges the denomination will face are to:

• Define what Presbyterians (individually and corporately) have to offer that the world can't live without? The word "Presbyterian" means little to our culture. Denominational loyalty is all but gone. We will only draw people if we connect with them in some way that is meaningful to them.
• Discern how to retain a culturally unified inclusive approach to ministry in a fragmented culture. The culture is so fragmented that no one institution is recognized as having legitimate authority to speak to the entire culture. This is even truer for denominations as organized religion has become more marginalized. This has implications for how we view social action and how we speak to the culture.
• Expand our vision and mission in greater partnership with the global church. The world is getting smaller and more interconnected. Our actions no longer have impact on our culture alone, and vice versa.
• Learn how we can better share our faith in the 21st Century. Sharing our faith takes on new forms as we move into an increasingly post-Christian era with cultural fragmentation. The Great Commission is always culturally contextual and we need to better understand our changing context.
• Find ways to retain members and re-engage inactive members. One report indicates that nearly two out of three former Presbyterians are not attending or joining churches elsewhere. We need focus on how to better retain those within our communities.
• Continue the expansion of ministry with people outside of the traditional Euro-American heritage. Populations show the United States becoming more culturally diverse over the next few years. The denomination has nearly achieved a goal 10% racial-ethnic membership in 2005. This is still below the diversity in the larger culture.
• Discover how we can create healthy congregations and strengthen existing ones. To whatever degree that people ever connected with denominations, they no longer do. They connect with congregations. Congregations are the first and foremost focus of ministry.
• Learn how we can promote the development of more new congregations. Denominations that are growing are active in church planting are growing. New congregations are highly energetic at reaching people and have the residual effect of inspiring other congregations into out reach. New congregations are also an effective means of reaching minority cultures.
• Investigate what is working for other denominations. Many denominations are trying a variety of innovative strategies of organizing and doing ministry. We need to learn from what others are doing that might have application within our context.

CORE COMMITMENTS

• Work in partnership with validated missions ecumenically and internationally.
• Link closely to the governing bodies of the church.
• Exercise good stewardship of the time, talent and resources generously entrusted to us.
• Witness prophetically to the church, nation and the world.
• Celebrate our oneness in Christ in all of its diversity.
• Nurture and empower servant leadership throughout the church.
• Live in an ever-changing environment in contextually-sensitive ways.
• Give faithful witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ.

GOAL AREAS AND OBJECTIVES

Justice and Compassion

POVERTY - Enable partnerships with governing bodies and others to actively address the causes and effects of poverty locally, nationally and globally.

PEACE - Encourage and support presbyteries and congregations to be active in seeking non-violent solutions to conflict in their own communities and in the communities of the world.

Evangelism and Witness

EVANGELISM - Equip Presbyterians, governing bodies and others to witness locally and globally to the Gospel of Jesus Christ with an emphasis on those with no active church affiliation.

MULTICULTURAL - Support presbyteries’ efforts to develop congregations and fellowships that will enable them to reflect the multicultural makeup of our society.

Spirituality and Discipleship

REFORMED IDENTITY - Encourage and support presbyteries and congregations to further develop their members' ability to appreciate and understand their Reformed identity, experience and practice disciplines of Reformed spirituality and apply them in today's world.

FAMILIES - Enable presbyteries and congregations to ground families, in all their manifestations, in Christian discipleship that helps them confront and resist the idolatries of society today.

Leadership and Vocation

VOCATION - Equip presbyteries and congregations to help members discern that their vocation is a call from God to Christian witness in society and the church.

SMALL CHURCHES - Facilitate the exchange and development of alternative models for pastoral and mission leadership in small churches.

Where we are today and where we are headed.

The GAC approved the Mission Work Plan in February of this year. Over the last two months, the GAC staff has been conducting a very detailed analysis of all the work done at the GAC level. Work was categorized as one of three kinds when measured against the objectives in the Mission Work Plan: essential, helpful, and not to be done at the GAC level. Based on income projections, it was determined that more than nine million dollars needed to be cut from the budget. We desired to have measurable outcomes, a 2007-2008 budget, and a new staffing configuration by the end of last week.

Our goal was a little too ambitious. We were not able to develop and finalize a list of outcomes for each objective. However, the staff did a Herculean job of breaking down all the work done by objective and eliminating what did not contribute to the objectives. This allowed us to allocate dollar amounts for the eight overarching objectives. Between now and our meeting in September, our work will focus on developing the outcomes and fine-tuning the work to focus on those outcomes directly.

Last week, we cut nine million dollars from the budget. However, there is no way to compare the present budget with the new one we just adopted. We are no longer funding programs. We are funding objectives. Some programs fit narrowly within one objective, while most are spread across multiple objectives and impact the financials for each objective accordingly.

We also eliminated a net 77 of 505 staff positions and reconfigured the staff leadership into a much flatter management structure. There will be an executive director with two deputies: Deputy Director for Witness and Deputy Director for Mission Support. There will be a layer of approximately eight Associate Directors for Witness and about three for Mission Support. Each of the four Goals will have its own "table" that oversees the work for that goal area. The details are still being developed, and there will be more later.

We also voted to reduce the size of the Council to thirty-nine voting members. The positions of Council members rotating out of service will not be filled this year. That will bring our number from about 72 voting members to 52. In addition to dealing with staff changes, the GAC will radically reconfigure its own work. Divisions will be eliminated, and each Council member will now review the entire work of the entire GAC staff instead dividing into "silos" where each member truly had a grip on only one portion of GAC operations.

Looking forward, we will get a better grip on developing outcomes and baselines for those outcomes. Also critical to this process is a priority-setting component that allows us to prioritize our work consistently. As we bring this all together, this will likely consume much of our time over the next two years.

Today is a tough day in that so many hard-working staff people are losing their positions. We need to pray for them and their families as they face the days ahead. Yet amid the turmoil, we must not lose sight of the opportunities the future holds. These are days of radical transformation at the GAC, and I hope you will keep all involved in your prayers.

(For the Presbyterian News Service story, Click Here.)

Comments

[Todd Bensel]

Hi Mr. Kruse.
Thanks for the insights into the process - twenty-one hundred words to analyze six mission plan overviews, four dynamics, nine challenges, eight core commitments, eight goals and objectives, and nine million dollars in revenue shortfall. And a partridge in a pear tree.... Let me give you the simple, direct version to chew on. Stop using church governments and structures to make controversial, unbiblical, political announcements. Serve the wider church - not revisionist, insubstantial, and hidebound socialist agendas. Lift up Jesus Christ, savior of every human being, and head of the church. I know, too simple!

[Michael Kruse]

Hi Todd.

"Stop using church governments and structures to make controversial, unbiblical, political announcements. Serve the wider church - not revisionist, insubstantial, and hidebound socialist agendas."

Frankly, I wasn't aware that I was. *grin* By and large the GAC doesn't set soical witness policy. We implement the policy adopted by the General Assembly. You need to talk to your GA Commissioners about that. Get them to change the policy and we will be happy to oversee implementation it.

Also, as to the "Serve the wider church..." Did you read the post? What exactly is it you want? What is in the plan that doesn't square with your vision? How would you structure things?

[Todd Bensel]

Hi! I know that you personally do not ever do those things! Now for some concrete suggestions - eliminate 90 percent of the staff and budgeted funds for the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy; elminate 90 percent of the staff and budget of the Peacemaking Program; and completely close the Washington Office. That should just about get you to 9.15 million. Are those suggestions concrete enough?

[Michael Kruse]

ACSWP is an entity of the General Assembly not the GAC. We have no oversight authority over their actions (although staff does report to the Executive Director's office). 2005 GAC staff actual expenses were about $340,000. One support postion has been eliminated for ACSWP. I believe the 2007 budget will be about $300,000. ACSWP staff support can not be unilaterally nixed by the GAC.

The Peacemaking Program is funded by restricted funds which means they can not be used for anything else (Total budget about $1.25 million)

The Washington Office had a total budget of about $340,000 this year. One of four staff have been cut and offices will be moved to shared space with other denominations. Total budget for next year is about $250,000.

Your suggestions get us less than $300,000 in cuts. Still have about 8.8 million to go.

The fact is that there is a about a 70%-30% split between restricted and unrestricted giving. The options are few.

[Wendy Bailey]

Michael ...
Good work. I see you are being as faithful as possible in a very difficult situation. My prayers are with all of the Louisville staff and others in the GA structure.

Personally, I am convinced that $$ and resources for both new church development and congregational redevelopment/transformation is vital to the turn-around of our churches. I've read the articles and it seems like this is still a priority. I hope I haven't been mis-reading.

BTW ... we met last May in Nashville, I recall. I hope all is well with you.

[E]

I appreciate the very complex work of the GAC in recent months and days - with its own downsizing and the downsizing of the staff and the new objectives there is a lot going on. With a projected 10% loss in membership in the next four years, our focus on new church development and congregational transformation is essential.
Your blog is extremely helpful. Thanks. Stan

[Michael Kruse]

Thanks Wendy and Stan. New Church Development and transformation are tricky issues. This is clearly among the highest priorities for the denomination but how much can effectively be done at the GAC level? This is largely work of presbyteries and congregations.

I expect what will be seeing is more work by the GAC staff to connect presbyteries/congregations with each other and facilitate peer learning as opposed to developing grandiose programs to be implemented across the denomination. One GAC meeting a year will be held in conjunction with the executive presbyters and I hope that will also get GAC better clued in as to what presbyteries need.

(Wendy your name is familiar but I can’t quite place the face. Maybe we will have to schedule a Presbyterian Emergent event sometime so we can all get reacquainted.)

[Dave]

Thanks so much for your helpful analysis of what is going on at GAC. If you can handle yet another comment, I wonder what it means to "fund objectives, not programs." For example, here is a coouple of your objectives:

REFORMED IDENTITY - Encourage and support presbyteries and congregations to further develop their members' ability to appreciate and understand their Reformed identity, experience and practice disciplines of Reformed spirituality and apply them in today's world.

FAMILIES - Enable presbyteries and congregations to ground families, in all their manifestations, in Christian discipleship that helps them confront and resist the idolatries of society today.

How does one fund these "encouraging" and "enabling" objectives without funding programs intended to achieve them?

Our prayers go with the many faithful people whose working lives are being disrupted.

[Michael Kruse]

Good question Dave. There are going to be some programs that neatly and tightly address a particular outcomes for certain objectives. However, there are also going to be programs that may contribute to multiple outcomes in multiple objectives. We may have a Worship and Theology Office but it may do work that contributes to outcomes in Evangelism, Vocation and Reformed Identity objectives.

In a business environment, you might have a sales force. You could ask the sales force what did you accomplish last year. They could tell you that they empolyed a certain number of people and called on a certain number of clients. Or they could tell you that they increased the dollar amount of products sold by 11% using the same level of expenditures. Which are you most interested in as a business owner? The first is describing "programming" (what we did) vs. objective outcomes (what value we contributed).

The rub in the church environment, and in any not-for-profit entity, is that financial gain is not the bottom line. Yet clearly we have some gain in mind to accomplish, otherwise we would not exist. So what is the gain we aim to achieve in each of our many activities? That is often hard to measure but that is what we are striving for.

To ask what are we doing in the area of Evangelism and getting a listing of programs in return is not adequate. We want to know what difference those programs made. What outcomes did they achieve. It is in this sense that we are funding objective outcomes not programs.

Does that help?

[E. Stanley Ott]

While "grandiose" programs at the GA level may not deliver the needed transformation unless very well conceived, nevertheless attention to congregation transformation is badly needed as a major national emphasis even if there is no "program" - at least as vision casting that "turnaround is possible." I say this because it is possible - there are several viable protocols today for mainline congregational turnaround. While a number of General Presbyters and pastors know this, the vast majority of the denomination is not connected with such protocols.

Although I see that the transformation office is one of those eliminated in the recent cut backs, we need a General Assembly or GAC level affirmation of transformation as crucial to making legitmate the risks involved in moving from and old (and dying) paradigm to one that breathes life during our high velocity/post modern era. We are in an odd moment in which over 90% of our grassroots congregations have plateaued numerically yet only 1% of the overtures to General Assemly are aimed directly at congregational vitality.

I believe to stabalize the ship we need a vast infusion of new church developments - 200+ a year for a decade and an emphasis on congregational vitality given similar stature. Again, your blog is very helpful - Stan

p.s. For more on transformational concepts see "Twelve Dynamic Shifts for Transforming Your Church" and "Transform Your Church with Ministry Teams" both by Eerdmans - blessings -

[Michael Kruse]

Thanks for these insights Stan. I confess I am a bit hazy at the moment about just how new church development at the GAC level goes forward. I know the multi-cultural objective includes work with starting and transforming congregations as does the small church objective. While the existing configuration of offices may be eliminated the work toward new church development and transformation has not. I also know from a consultation that the Mission Work Plan group had with some executive presbyters that this a very high priority with them. As we (GAC) get better connected with presbyteries I suspect we will find better ways can be of support.

As an aside, this topic is a perfect one to point out another tension in our decision making. The entity with primary care for congregations is presbyteries; not the GAC. We see our primary role as strengthening presbyteries and synods so they may minister to congregations under their care. That does not mean there won't be any direct relationships between congregations and the GAC but we are wary about usurping the role of presbyteries.

One thing I feel certain of is that this focus is not going away but it just isn't entirely clear to me how it all comes together yet. Stay tuned!