PNC Meeting: A New Church and No to NFOG

          (Photo by Dwayne Bailey--hope you don't mind my copying it!)

You see above the most important thing that happened at Saturday's meeting of the Presbytery of New Covenant. Approval was given to charter our new church development, Pathways, as an official congregation for the PC(USA).

Pathways is a young congregation of mostly second and third generation Asian-Americans in the inner city area of Houston. In fact the group is so youthful that the organizing pastor, Rev. Shawn Kang, says that they don't need a youth group yet because all the children in the congregation are so young.

This is the fifth new church charter approved by our presbytery in the last six years! We're not finding the Book of Order an impediment to growing new congregations in this area.

Which brings me to the NFOG vote, which was also taken at this meeting. NFOG was resoundingly defeated, 186 to 44. 

There is a back story to this issue in our presbytery. PNC created a study group after the 2008 GA to review the NFOG. Our group found many of the same problems that have been raised by those who oppose the current NFOG that we are now voting on, and forwarded their concerns and suggestions to the NFOG Task Force. None of their issues were addressed. 

If the NFOG is not adopted, hopefully a new Task Force with new members will be created that will review the proposal and work to resolve these issues.

UPDATE: Here's the video that was shown at the Presbytery Meeting prior to the vote on approving the chartering of Pathways Church!

The NFOG and Manual Madness

After spending some time studying the proposed New Form of Government for the PCUSA that we will be voting on this Saturday in Presbytery of New Covenant, I have concluded that the NFOG is not yet ready for approval.

The Task Force worked hard and delivered a proposal that has some good things in it, but as a past member of our presbytery's PJC, I am concerned about the issues raised by the GAPJC which have become a subject of controversy this week on the internet as well as what appears to be a strengthening of the hierarchical structure of the denomination and the weakening of connectionalism and consistency between the presbyteries.

But the major issue I want to raise here is the requirement that sessions, presbyteries and synods create "Manuals of Operations".

This means that PJC's at all levels must not only interpret and apply the constitution, but also the manuals of councils in their jurisdictions. In effect this expands the NFOG to include all of these manuals, some of which are yet to be created, approved and put into practice.

As one who revised an extensive operations manual for my tall steeple church a couple of years ago, let me assure you that this will be a burden and diversion from mission for most congregations, not to mention the presbyteries. As for the synods, it seems this requirement is giving them a reason to continue to exist when they should be dissolved.

The revision I was involved in took about 9 months and not only my time, but the time of another elder and several staff members of the church. In the hope that I could find a template for the manual, I contacted several other large churches across the country and found that NOT ONE of them had such a manual. So we had to work from scratch. Will our manual pass muster if the NFOG goes into effect? Who knows?

Since presbytery must review and approve session manuals, synod must review and approve presbytery manuals, and General Assembly must approve and review synod manuals, this requirement seems to represent a move to a more hierarchical system of church government.

The vote on the NFOG is coming up this Saturday in Presbytery of New Covenant. I'm voting against it.  If it fails  across the denomination, I hope these issues will be addressed in a subsequent  revision after the next General Assembly.