The Pea in Landon’s Mattress: Like-Mindedness and Sleepless Nights

Landon Whitsitt has posted a thoughtful and carefully considered response to my last post. He’s been irked since the NEXT Church Indy event, and my post pushed the right buttons to bring that irk . . . age clearly into focus. You’re welcome, Landon.

You should read the post, you should read Landon’s book Open Source Church when it comes out this spring, and you should read his Open Source Gospel ebook now. Landon is an innovative thinker who is widely read and who leaves fewer stones unturned than most when it comes to proposing a way forward for 21st century mainline protestant Christianity.

Also, we’re tight. He and his wife sang in my wedding. I baptized one of his kids. You get the idea. Speak uncharitably of him and I’ll hurt you.

What Landon takes issue with is my lack of alarm at the like-mindedness that characterizes both the NEXT Church conversation and the Fellowship of Presbyterian Pastors one. Much of the criticism aimed at that latter group centered on its lack of gender, ethnic, and vocational diversity (they’re mostly white male pastors of big churches).

Yet the NEXT gathering betrayed much of the same bias (far less so, though, in the area of gender), and that has caused many hopeful progressives to throw up their hands in despair. Landon is among them.

He writes:

Regardless of a group’s defining characteristics, when group members are similar, they tend to become cohesive – or “like-minded” – fairly quickly. The more similarities, the faster the cohesion is achieved. This cohesiveness is deceptive. We interpret it as a good thing because it seemingly allows us to get our work done more effectively and efficiently. But the actual effect of this cohesion is that it promotes reliance upon the group to such a degree that members become insulated from outside opinions.

Insulation from outside opinions is a serious threat, and Landon is right to worry about it. But I don’t agree that cohesion in a like-minded group has to lead to this effect. Both the Fellowship and NEXT groups have thrown their doors wide and invited everyone in. How people are greeted when they accept the invitation–that will be the test of insularity. It’s not a foregone conclusion.

More to the point, I don’t think any association of individuals who are trying to change an institution can get very far with an unlimited plurality of opinion. It just won’t work. I’m no slave to the mantra of efficiency, but conversations like NEXT and the Fellowship PC(USA) are after some kind of concrete change. That requires a modicum of like-mindedness.

Both James Davison Hunter and Steven Johnson were mentioned at the NEXT gathering, and both have written about the importance of “networks” in innovation and cultural change.

Hunter says this:

the key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks. And the more “dense” the network—that is, the more active and interactive the network—the more influential it could be. This is where the stuff of culture and cultural change is produced.

Johnson says this by way of explaining the rapid rate of innovation that took place as people transitioned from nomadic hunter/gatherer societies to life in cities:

In the dense networks of the first cities, good ideas have a natural propensity to get into circulation. They spill over, and in that spilling they are preserved for future generations.

Both Davidson and Johnson used the descriptor “density,” which I think is far more helpful than like-mindedness. The latter is a marker of the former. From a Christian theological point of view, we could substitute “community” or “kinship” for density and bring the issue more clearly into focus: how do dense networks that begin with like-minded thinkers expand to become effective communities characterized by diversity?

The church is charged to model Kingdom-of-God type community. To me, that means people at cultural margins are heard equally with those in “tall steeples.” It means that racial and gender diversity are not optional. And, for Presbyterians, it means that pastors’ voices are not privileged over the voices of Ruling Elders.

Both the NEXT and the Fellowship efforts have serious holes with respect to that charge, as has been amply pointed out by Landon and many others, and as those efforts’ organizers are well aware. But I don’t see those holes as crippling, at least not with respect to the NEXT gathering, for two reasons (I’ll save my reasons for limiting these qualifications to NEXT for a later post):

First, networks aren’t about themselves but the people in them. The people behind the NEXT conversation are people both Landon and I trust. I trust them to have their eye on the need for a diverse community of voices as they host conversations about contentious subjects. This first one, admittedly, got away from them, and you can’t expect people in progressive circles to let something like that go. They haven’t.

Second, it’s a beginning. One of the organizers tweeted in response to Landon’s post that the planners of NEXT saw the Indianapolis event as a “beta” test and not a “full release.” This was not the launch of a strategic program but of a conversation with undetermined outcomes.

The pea in Landon’s mattress is a divinely-inspired caution against self-righteous retreat into safe enclaves of shared opinion. I hope that pea gets into all of our mattresses. But I also hope we can reach in there, take the pea out, look at it carefully, and decide if it’s really worth losing sleep over.

For me–right now–it’s not. But that could change.

Presbyterian Death Match: NEXT Church vs. The Fellowship

“so what’s the difference (other than theological perspective) between #nextchurchindy and the fellowship/whitepaper? any takers? #pcusa“

I’m fool enough to take that bait, laid out by @gspcrobert yesterday amidst the waning reaction to the NEXT Church gathering in Indianapolis earlier this week. I quickly tweeted:

“@gspcrobert I’ll take that. #nextchurchindy is a gathering looking for answers. The Fellowship is an argument looking for a gathering.”

That answer generated a couple of responses that I want to get into here. @Suzemb replied:

@yorocko @gspcrobert do the answers being sought exploring ways for both sides to find common ground so the denom isn’t torn apart?

And @charlesawiley added:

@yorocko Wonder about your distinction between Next and Fellowship. Next had irenic tone-but with a pretty like-minded group #nextchurchindy

First, the basic background for the uninitiated. Several months ago, a group of Presbyterian pastors, many representing what you call “Tall Steeple” churches from the progressive/liberal regions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), were invited to Kansas City to start a conversation about the future of the denomination. The invitation came from Tom Are, Pastor at Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, and it went out, as best I know, to people he trusts and who’s insight he values. Specific areas of concern had to do with mission and the need for a different way to engage the denomination’s areas of conflict that aren’t dependent on a political winner-take-all model.

The NEXT Church Indianapolis gathering was an outgrowth of that Kansas City conversation (and, I think, another conversation or two). The organizers invited all interested parties to come to Indy and explore different ways of doing mission, vocation, and governance in the PC (U.S.A.).

Meanwhile, last month another group of Presbyterian pastors, also representing mostly “Tall Steeple” churches but from the church’s conservative regions–and calling themselves The Fellowship of Presbyterian Pastors–distributed a letter and an accompanying white paper that asserted that the denomination is “deathly ill” and that invited folks to an August event that would explore the formation of a parallel Reformed body separate from but related to the PC (U.S.A.). That letter and white paper were followed by a brief video posted online in which Jim Singleton, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Colorado Springs, that further laid out the strategic vision of this Fellowship.

So what’s the difference between NEXT and The Fellowhip?

One difference is very clear. NEXT organizers want a conversation among like-minded Presbyterians. That conversation is about very specific things, and the way it’s been structured so far, it could plausibly produce a number of varying–even competing–results. It is a conversation looking for answers–and new ways of engaging the denomination’s problems.

The Fellowship, on the other hand, is proposing the answer at the outset. It is inviting like-minded Presbyterians to join in a process that has clearly articulated outcomes. The organizers have set in motion a process, and people will gather in August to join in that process.

@charlesawiley’s observation that both efforts appeal to like-mindedness is apt, as is @suzemb’s concern that NEXT transcend that like-mindedness in search of common ground. But I don’t think like-mindedness is a problem. Shared convictions and common ways of viewing problems are the fuel of effective movements for change. Both The Fellowship and NEXT are appealing to people who think like the organizers and who like and trust one another. There’s nothing wrong with that.

(Try to get people to join a gathering populated by people they know they don’t agree with and whom they don’t like–I believe that’s called a presbytery meeting.)

And, practically speaking, both efforts are intentionally trying to get beyond the tired effort of finding common ground among liberals and conservatives that leaves both feeling ignored and wronged.

In the end, the biggest difference is how NEXT and Fellowship are using like-mindedness, the former as food for an open-ended (but topically delimited) conversation, and the latter as a vehicle for accomplishing precisely defined aims.

More NEXT Church Summary: In Defense of White Male Pastors

That much of the speaking that was done in Indianapolis on Monday and Tuesday was done by white male pastors did not go unnoticed by the event’s participants. Their observation is accurate. Out of three sermons, two were given by that demographic; two of the three “testimonies” offered after the worship liturgies were also delivered by white male pastors.

In addition to the speaking that went on in the sanctuary, many of the leaders of small groups were also, you guessed it, non-female, non-ruling elder, non-non-white people.

So in the event’s final hours, when event-goers were invited to share their thoughts about the goings on, this got pointed out. And pointed out. And pointed out some more.

The qualification has been given by John Vest that, though this characteristic was something of a flaw at NEXT Church, the gathering was clearly a beginning to an important conversation, and a very good one at that. If the next NEXT event looks the same, then the movement may have a serious systemic limitation.

In addition, I want to point out two things, one by way of explanation and the other by way of correction. First the explanation. The NEXT Church gathering was conceived of and organized by a group of progressive pastors, many of whom serve tall-steeple churches. It’s a largely white male group. That at its first denomination-wide gathering the leadership gave most of the prime speaking time to itself makes organizational sense. They were framing the conversation, and since it’s a conversation they started and then invited everyone else into, they were the first to speak.

Second, it shows a bad understanding of what the NEXT conversation is aiming at to criticize the makeup of the small group leadership. A personal anecdote will illustrate my point.

One of the leaders (a white, female pastor) had her plane diverted to Louisville on Sunday night due to weather and so was not able to lead her Monday morning small group. She texted me and asked me to fill in as facilitator. I replied, “Sure, but would you rather ask an expert on the topic?”

Her answer was simple: “The facilitators aren’t meant to be experts, only listeners and recorders.”

So at least one of the white male pastor small group leaders was there by accident.

But all the others were put there for a reason: to let other people talk. I attended a Monday afternoon small group in which the white male pastor facilitator hardly said three sentences in the allotted hour, all of which were for the sake of clarification and invitation. The most frequent voices in that group came from a female seminary graduate looking for a call, a female deacon, and a female pastor (all white).

NEXT is trying to provide a platform for lots of different voices within the PC (U.S.A.). I for one am assuming the best about its intentions, intentions which were on display during its inaugural conference, especially in the role played by its small group leaders.

NEXT Church Summary

I spent the last two days inIndianapolis with a bunch of Presbyterians mulling the NEXT Church. We worshiped together and had lots of structured conversation around things like social media and young adult ministry. Of course, the reason you go to these events has less to do with actual program content than it does the people who will be there and the offering of a platform to interact with and learn from those people.

NEXT Church was full of great people. Every significant conversation is.

And while there was the expected observation that lots of people who should be in the conversation were not (ruling elders and non-white Presbyterians, namely), NEXT was a beginning. It was a good beginning, because it brought together good people–thoughtful, creative, innovative, passionate people.

Check out the event’s website for lots of video and to connect to the ongoing conversation.

PresbyMEME: Why I Am Voting Yes on Amendment 10a

The presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are voting for the next several months on an amendment to one part of the church’s constitution that will remove language requiring of ordained officers (Ministers, Elders, and Deacons) “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman” or “chastity in singleness.” The proposed amendment will replace that language with a statement of standards for ordained officers that says nothing *ahem* explicitly about sexuality:

The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation . . . shall examine each candidate’s calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office. The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation . . . Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates.

Yorocko is glad to take part in a PresbyMEME advocating passage of this amendment. Organized by former General Assembly Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow, the MEME is challenging men and women who support the amendment to explain their reasons, answering a few simple questions:

Name, City, State: Rocky Supinger, Claremont, California
Twitter and Facebook profiles: Facebook, rsupinger; Twitter, yorocko.
Presbytery and 10a voting date: San Gabriel Presbytery, March 8, 2011.
Reason ONE that you are voting “yes” on 10a is… My friends and colleagues, who serve the church faithfully and intelligently and with their whole lives but who, counter to the momentum of the gospel of Jesus, are forced to shutter a central part of their identity behind a veil of religiosity that is based less on an understanding of God’s grace than it is on a misguided desire to witness to that grace by maintaining misinformed standards of sexual morality.
Reason TWO that you are voting “yes” on 10a is… The language. The current language is less than two decades old and represents a novel attempt to codify standards for ordained officers in a way that the Presbyterian church had resisted throughout its history, and with strict reference to sexuality. The language of 10a, on the other hand, speaks broadly of candidates for ordination’s “calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for office,” not just standards of sexual behavior, and it places the responsibility of assessing those criteria squarely where Presbyterian polity wants it: on the shoulders of the ordaining body, not in the articles of the church’s constitution.
Reason THREE that you are voting “yes” on 10a is… So that the Presbyterian Church (USA) can better participate in God’s incoming reign of release, freedom, vision, and peace. Since current ordination standards effectively bar gays and lesbians from consideration for office, and since gay men and women in North America continue to be targeted for harassment and exclusion, and since the message Jesus preached was one of a radical reconsideration of what constitutes “religious” behavior, one that was founded on the oft-repeated-in-Scripture announcement that the harassed and excluded were of God’s special concern, the church needs a better way to welcome all of those into ordained service those who know themselves to be despised by the world yet treasured by God.
What are your greatest hopes for the 10a debate that will take place on the floor of your Presbytery? That a single mind may be changed in the direction of passing 10a, from the beginning of the debate to the end. My experience with these debates in the past is a frustrating collection of advocacy pushes and posturing that shows no evidence of the qualities of debate. The vote could be taken without the debate with an identical result. My hope this time is that some small opening will be created for us to hear one another, and to hear God speaking through one another.
How would you respond to those that say that if we pass 10a individuals and congregations will leave the PC(USA)? The likelihood that people will be bothered by a church action is a poor reason to shy away from taking it. People and churches left when churches integrated on racial lines. They left when it ordained women. They’re leaving now, as we speak, simply because the presence of an honest conversation on the subject indicates to them infidelity and a lack of moral vision. While it’s crass to say of those who would leave over the passage of 10a “good riddance,” I’m persuaded that they’re likely to leave anyway, and I’m convinced that fear over membership loss is a terrible guide in moral decision making.
What should the Presbyterian Church focus on after Amendment 10a passes? The same things it’s focusing on now: proclaiming the good news of the gospel, worshiping God, serving the poor and needy, promoting social welfare, and building community for those who have none. I suspect, however, that the church’s definition of marriage is the next thing that needs to be thoroughly considered in light of Scripture and our current context.
How does your understanding of Scripture frame your position on 10a? It frames it on every side. It was abundantly clear in the last round of debating this subject that the people quoting the Bible in the debate were those advocating change. I don’t understand Scripture to be a rulebook handed down once-and-for-all from Heaven, but rather the Spirit-inspired witness of God’s people over multiple conditions and contexts to the ever-expanding reach of God’s welcome. In that light, 10a, while not an easy amendment to summarize, is a no-brainer.