My fellow Consistory member Viola Larson at Naming His Grace has noted an interesting thing about the latest controversy in the PCUSA regarding the publication of the Advisory Committee on the Constitution’s recommendations to General Assembly. She saw this post on Bob Davis’ Presbyblog, and had this response:
I was surprised by Pastor Davis’s posting. The reason I was surprised: I thought that the advisory must have been posted for several weeks on PC-BiZ and instead it was only posted on May the 6th the day of our Presbytery meeting.
I had already read the Advisory and saw how it had been used since it was a part of the papers posted on our presbytery’s web site a week ago. And it was used in the first report written by a mediating team concerning a church in our presbytery seeking dismissal from the PCUSA. The first two meetings with the teams from both the church and the presbytery were held on April the 9th and 11th. So I have two questions concerning these papers.
1. I wonder how many other mediating teams in other presbyteries are receiving this advice from Louisville or more succinctly the Office of the General Assembly before it is even voted on by General Assembly?
2. I also wonder if other mediating teams are giving out the suggestion this team did in its first report? That is, given the advisory recommendation to the Presbyteries, “We noted that these issues were the subject of a Request for interpretation from the Presbytery of Charlotte that is currently pending before the General Assembly for consideration at the June meeting, and Presbytery [Sacramento] might choose to defer making a determination with respect to those issues until the General Assembly acted on that Request.”
In other words, the suggestion was being given that our Presbytery might just want to put this off until after General Assembly. As it happened mediation broke down without this ploy being used. I am not blaming our Presbytery, I am not blaming the mediating team. I am just saying it seems like Presbyteries are becoming puppets on a string being pulled by others in Louisville. That isn’t connectionalism, its madness because it will simply further erode any small bit of trust left in the Church.
So what exactly is going on here? Is Louisville engaged in Machiavellian machinations to try to get presbyteries to wait until after General Assembly to decide about dismissal requests? Are they telling presbyteries to follow a constitutional interpretation that hasn’t even been passed by the General Assembly yet? What I think we’re seeing is simply the playing out of the logic of the Louisville Papers, and the strategy of keeping as much church property as possible. They lose the congregations, but hey, the PCUSA’s pretty big, they can afford to lose a few dozen thousand malcontents if they get to keep the loot.
Posted by David Fischler 
