Monday - I finally understand FOG

Monday – I finally understand -

The committee work began in earnest on Monday. Hearings continued and we heard from advocates and dissenters about the new (revised) form of government (nFOG). I was truly surprised by the ratio of people that wanted the nFOG to be approved. Before the Assembly, I received a lot of information about why we should not approve but very little information about why we should approve it.

Explanation:

This may initially sound boring but if you are brave and not to sleepy, try to read the following. A revised form of government is the biggest change that has come to the Presbyterian church in 30 years. I have come to believe that the new form of government is essential and extremely important for us to grow our ministry through creativity and imagination.

The way the Presbyterian Church governs is mainly though the Book of Order (BOO). We also look at our Book of Confessions as well as the Bible for how to rule, govern and discern issues that come up. The BOO has become the regulations book that has rules on just about everything we do as a church (i.e. how many people need to be on a pastoral search committee, how many people of diverse racial back grounds need to be on the committee for representation, ordination standards, rules for calling pastors, church property rules, rules of order for meetings, session rules and a million others). A book was written that mentions our BOO to be a book with blood on every page. What this means it every time the Presbyterian Church has had conflict in the past, they wrote a new rule and put in the book of order. Since inception, the BOO has been modified more then 300 times to put in new rules. The number and complexity of the rules has become unwieldy and unrealistic for a large number of Presbyteries and congregations. Currently, there are a large number of Presbyteries and churches who ignore parts of the BOO because they are situationally unable to conform to the BOO.

Examples:
A Spanish Presbyterian church in Texas needs a new pastor. They find a pastor from Mexico that can be called but our BOO states that our pastors need Hebrew and Greek. Sorry, can’t do it without begging for an exception.

A church or 20 people need to look for a pastor. They need 7 people on the nominating committee. What if they can’t get 7?

A Presbytery covers an area that is predominantly white with virtually no racial diversity. This Presbytery has to have a Committee On Representation (COR)with racial diversification. You have very few racially diverse people willing to serve and if they do, you have to tell them to service on the COR committee.

All churches are supposed to have a financial audit once a year. I heard that up to 50% of the congregations don’t do it. Maybe because of cost or effort but they are supposed to because of the BOO. Again the current BOO (form of government is failing to enforce the rules).

The revised (new) form of government is designed to be a constitutional rather then regulatory form of Government. Like the US constitution, it is to provide guidelines on how to regulate but it provides some flexibility in interpretation and execution. There will still be rules but they will be broader in scope. The nFOG is designed not to handcuff churches, sessions and presbyteries into regulatory rules that don’t always make contextual sense.

This new Form of Government is sometimes called missional because the belief is that the church can focus more of the efforts on creative mission activities rather then worrying about compliance with regulatory rules.

This does not mean anarchy or there are no rules. There are boundaries, rules and guidelines. The revised form of government purposefully stays away from specifics but writes the constitution in such a way that any situation can be interpreted in the context of the constitutional guidelines.