Are Presbyteries Families?

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is entering a period of renegotiation, as congregations and presbyteries absorb the reality that both the New Form of Government and amendment 10-A may pass. A number of efforts are already underway to align congregations and presbyteries on the basis of theological agreement and not geography, a shift that will involve the creation of entirely new presbyteries. Presbyteries and church sessions, as well as a Middle Governing Bodies commission formed by the last General Assembly, are working on these things at the same time.

At the center of this renegotiation is the understanding of the purpose of church structures beyond the congregation, namely presbyteries, but also a denomination per se. And at the center of that conception are metaphors. The Ministers and Presbytery Executives who are urging this realignment are doing so with metaphors to describe presbyteries and the denomination. I want to examine those metaphors.

[[Excursis: the PC (USA) Book of Order doesn’t dally in metaphor when it comes to presbyteries: “Presbytery is a corporate expression of the church consisting of all the churches and Minsters of the Word and Sacrament within a certain district. The Presbytery is responsible for the mission and governance of the church throughout its geographical district.”

The proposed New Form of Government adds language about the imperative for congregations to “share with others both within and beyond the congregation the task of bearing witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ in the world.” Neither of these draw on anything metaphorical.]]

One metaphor being employed for presbyteries in an attempt to re-conceive their nature and purpose is the family. A colleague of mine writes:

The reason for doing something like this is to create circles of shared mission, shared theology, and trust within a diverse and fractured larger body. I’d compare this to the familial unit existing within a diverse nation. I like having a family with shared values. One of the reasons my wife and I got married was because of the values that we shared . . . We had certain shared values, which created trust and intimacy between us, and we teach those values to our children.

That congregations ought to experience trust and intimacy with one another as they share the tasks of ministry is undeniably important. But are family-style trust and intimacy enough to carry the load of that task? And are there aspects of family life that go unnoticed by this adoption of the metaphor? And does choosing to align with a presbytery with whom a congregation shares certain values mean that it believes the churches in its current presbytery don’t share those values? Isn’t choosing to leave one family for another divorce?

I would press my colleague to identify precisely those values that he doesn’t think we share. And I would ask him to consider that perhaps the parental role in the family is not the one that churches should occupy in the metaphor. If, as our denomination affirms, “Christ is the Head of the church,” then aren’t churches related to one another as siblings? Siblings may grow apart. They may have open conflict. One may even kill the other. But they can’t simply adopt different families.

The truism, “You can’t choose your family” ought to be remembered here. You can choose your friends, and that’s more in line with what people do when they choose to get married. In that case, it’s worth stating that the bonds of marriage aren’t negated because the values of one of the spouses changes. Families don’t always share the same values. They don’t stop being families because of that.

If congregations wish to align themselves with presbyteries with whom they imagine they share values not shared by their current presbyteries, then they are not joining a family but a circle of friends. Maybe friendship is a better metaphor for the kinds of connections we ought to seek within a denomination (it certainly bears fruit for these folks). I’m not sure. I feel strongly, though, that The Family is not as helpful as my colleague thinks