LOUISVILLE—Meeting at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Louisville headquarters on October 3, the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) discussed some major changes that could alter the way the General Assembly does its business. The first change has already been decided by constitutional amendment: beginning at the June 2008 General Assembly in San Jose, California, there will be “220-some additional commissioners,” according to Gradye Parsons, an Associate Stated Clerk of the General Assembly.
But the pressure of handling such a large volume of business in a significantly larger body that meets less frequently (biennially rather than annually) will likely prompt additional alterations in the familiar patterns of the Assembly. Critics of the move to biennial assemblies, including Presbyterian Action, had predicted this result: that the denomination’s highest and most representative governing body would be weakened, with significant power flowing away to the national agencies and their staff.
Discussions at this latest COGA meeting suggested that the prediction may turn out to have some validity. Parsons led the committee through a first look at some ideas percolating out of the Office of the General Assembly (OGA). Although many of the ideas Parsons was raising are still quite preliminary, it is a given that the greater number of commissioners will lead to additional committees in San Jose.
Commissioners as Lab Rats
Two of the new committees will not even handle General Assembly business at all, Parsons reported. Rather, these committees, which will meet in facilities outside the convention center, will serve as “lab committees,” experimenting with “the use of discernment and alternative forms of decision making,” according to Parsons. The committees will practice with mock business and report back to the Assembly on how the non-parliamentary process works. Thus the commissioners assigned to these test committees will not handle General Assembly matters at all in their committee sessions. They will not be able to make any real decisions at the level at which most real decisions are made, in the committees. They will instead serve as test subjects in an OGA experiment.
This novel push away from Book of Order-mandated (G-9.0302)parliamentary procedure for decision making appears to be strong within the OGA. A while back, Parsons even attended an Australian General Assembly meeting to observe its version of consensus decision making at work.
The apparent attraction of alternative forms of decision making is that they might help us get away from now-maligned “binary, win-lose situations,” previously upheld in Presbyterian polity as the cherished concept of majority rule. However, it is interesting that new confusing and subjective forms of decision making started appearing at exactly the point at which churchwide ordination standards seemed unassailable by direct vote. The questionable timing of the push for new methods of decision making gives the impression that those who could not prevail in reversing our standards for ordination have switched tactics, now trying to gain by fuzzy means (such as consensus) what couldn’t be gained by majority vote.
The Office of the General Assembly is even producing a new booklet for the General Assembly “to explain discernment,” Parsons announced. He was pleased that over 70 people will be attending the OGA Fall Polity Conference in Mobile, Alabama, October 10-12. This conference will field test the new booklet. The booklet is intended to stand alongside the classic booklet Parliamentary Procedures in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) by the late Marianne Wolfe, which, ironically, makes a brilliant and compelling argument against consensus decision making, because of the way it runs roughshod over the rights of a minority opinion.
The General Assembly in 2006 suggested exploring alternative means of discernment, but was careful to make clear that these new methods are “preliminary to decision making” [emphasis added]. Decision making must still be done according to parliamentary procedure. Such care and precision by the General Assembly appears to be missing in our Stated Clerk’s efforts to move the General Assembly into a morass of fuzzy, feel-good decision-making methods that sometimes extraordinarily privilege minority opinions and sometimes summarily silence them.
Big Brother to Eject Some Items of Business?
“How can we focus on what’s important?” was another question Parsons raised. The COGA operating assumption seemed to be that too much business gets sent to General Assembly. Thus there was a general desire to limit the business somehow to what is considered truly significant. This desire led the COGA members to do two things: First, to think out loud on priorities, but second, to ponder solutions to some problems brought about by prior decisions about General Assembly that remained unexamined in retrospect.
On priorities, Parsons asked, if COGA thinks the General Assembly should work only on what’s important, “Who gets to decide what’s important? This committee? Staff? The moderator and vice moderator of the [General Assembly] committee?” COGA didn’t say so, but none of those alternatives seems consonant with the idea of an open and democratic process. The narrowing of business by leadership fiat hardly fits with a sense of fairness for commissioners.
Parsons didn’t appear to favor any of those responses either. The decision about important business “needs to be larger,” he suggested. “Maybe we need to have a day of discernment prior to General Assembly to decide what’s important.” Parsons wasn’t proposing that process for San Jose in 2008. But perhaps in a subsequent General Assembly, the idea might surface again, for good or for ill.
Prioritizing business would appear to be a formidable task for a just-gathered Assembly. The process could easily lend itself to staff manipulation, superficial decision making, railroading, and decisions by default rather than true spiritual discernment. What commissioners in 2008 will probably find, however, is an attempt early in the committee process on the first evening of committee work (Sunday) “to decide what’s important in the committee work,” as Parsons put it. Commissioners will probably need to be ready to champion important business that might otherwise be conveniently sidetracked by others before grassroots commissioners catch on to what is happening.
This movement to limit business, however well intended as a way to ameliorate the massive workload given any General Assembly, seems to have ignored an obvious set of problems brought on by previous COGA recommendations, which previous General Assemblies bought wholesale. Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick pushed mightily to eliminate General Assemblies in odd years a few years back, which now piles more business on each remaining biennial Assembly session. COGA proposed significantly raising the number of commissioners at each General Assembly, thus complicating arrangements, overpopulating committees, and diluting any one commissioner’s opportunity to speak or influence the Assembly. The result in each case is a weaker Assembly less capable of fulfilling its constitutional role of deciding denominational policies.
The Assembly is strained even further by the frightful number of items of business that it is expected to handle in a single week. The vast majority of this business comes not from the grassroots—the presbyteries and their commissioners—but from the various church entities that are supposed to serve the Assembly. The entire denominational structure of staff and boards works like a massive business-producing enterprise that feeds the General Assembly far too many reports and resolutions for it to handle responsibly, conscientiously, or even consciously at times!
At the same time, COGA has worked over the years to tighten the screws on commissioners’ resolutions and presbytery overtures, the two most democratic and grassroots ways for business to percolate up to the General Assembly. The already-stricter restrictions on timing and subject matter now seem ready to be joined by a possible process for the somewhat arbitrary side-tracking of some overtures or commissioners’ resolutions deemed to be “less important.” This innovation would serve to dampen further the ability of a commissioner or a presbytery to introduce business that could enhance the life of the denomination.
Apparently, the cottage-industry production of the common commissioner or a given presbytery takes second place to the mass-produced business items of the denominational machine. If COGA wants to recommend ways to limit business to a sane amount, which is not a bad idea, the place to begin is not to toss out commissioner and presbytery concerns, but to slow the mass production of business by denominational entities—including COGA itself.
Some Business Finalized in Committees?
The most controversial idea tossed out by Gradye Parsons from OGA was the proposal that a unanimous General Assembly committee vote on a business item would be considered a final action of the General Assembly. In other words, if a piece of business were so routine and uncontroversial that no one in the committee voted against it, the item would never go to the whole Assembly in plenary, but would be considered approved by the Assembly through the unanimous committee vote alone.
Parsons noted that the proposal would include several major exceptions—business so important to the General Assembly that even after a unanimous committee vote, it would be brought to plenary anyway. Business such as constitutional amendments, changes to the Standing Rules, setting the per capita rate, and establishing the budget would require consideration in plenary.
Also, with 50 votes in plenary, the General Assembly would be required to take up business otherwise concluded with a unanimous committee vote. When asked if such a motion to consider the business would be debatable in plenary, Parsons replied no. Thus, if a commissioner would want the full Assembly to consider an item of business previously finalized in committee, he or she would have no opportunity to explain why it should be brought to the floor. A vote would be taken immediately without discussion, and unless 50 commissioners sided with those wanting to consider the item in plenary, the proposal would fail.
“We’ll bring this back [to COGA] for action in February,” Parsons advised concerning his proposal. If the plan does get COGA approval at that February meeting, the San Jose General Assembly would then have this important piece of procedural business to consider in June.
COGA approval in February didn’t sound assured, however, based on the discussion at this meeting. “I’m wondering if it will save time,” cautioned one COGA member. “There is something to be said about the whole Assembly taking action on an item,” added another.
In 2006, the General Assembly considered a total of 277 items. Of those, 171 received a unanimous vote in committee—62 percent, nearly two thirds. “Of the 171 items unanimously decided,” Parsons noted, “only 76 were put in a committee’s consent agenda.” That meant that nearly 100 unanimous items were taken up in plenary.
“An item gets complete discussion in committees, but then it comes to the floor for discussion again,” complained COGA chair Catherine Ulrich. “How can we move business along?” She felt commissioners needed to “trust the process,” and she thought it a good idea to make some changes to speed that process.
General Assembly Moderator Joan Gray was not so sure, although she does remember moderating the final night of plenary in 2006. “It was getting close to 1 a.m.,” she recalled. “We do need to be efficient and get rid of late-night meetings. But on the other hand the committees are committees and contain people who are not elected [advisory delegates]. My gut-level reaction is to err on the side of letting the commissioners have the last word.” Moderator Gray has written a book on Presbyterian polity, and her instinct is to give the business to the whole Assembly to consider and decide.
Discernment Is from God, Not a Trendy Technique
The term “discernment” was often on tongues at the COGA meeting. For instance, in Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick’s written self-assessment for 2007, he wrote that “new forms of discernment, community building, and theological understanding” are approaches that “will also be a central part of our planning for the 218th General Assembly.”
But the bandying about of the term “discernment” led Moderator Joan Gray to voice a caution and a corrective. “I have a real concern about ‘discernment,'” she warned. “It has become all the rage…. However, what I fear is happening is that we believe that discernment is a technique. That is a fatal error. Discernment is about who we are, about a spiritual focus, about putting yourself in the hands of God…. We put a lot of focus on people who are discerning, but rather than a technique, [discernment] is much more about having a godly focus.”
And that remark deserves a hearty amen! Commissioners yielded to God in prayer and in their study of Scripture can exercise discernment in a parliamentary process, or in some other format.
The purpose of the process is to enable the body to frame the question before it, to hear the wisdom of many voices, and then to make a clear decision. A weaker body with a fuzzier process will have a harder time framing the questions, hearing the voices, and making the decisions. But even the strongest body will make foolish decisions unless its voices have found their wisdom in the Word of God and the Spirit of God.
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