Flexibility in Mission Is Good, But Not Always

Flexibility is generally a good thing. Ballet dancers and athletes work to increase their flexibility so that they can enthrall audiences with feats of beauty and power. I’m no dancer or athlete, but I know that a few stretching exercises might do me some good. Looser joints have a greater range of motion and can perform more actions. 

Nevertheless, there is a limit. A joint can get too loose and become disjointed. For example, a baseball pitcher whose shoulder is too loose in its socket risks a career-ending injury when he tries to throw a 100-mph fastball. 

My analogy applies to mission in the church. The old-fashioned approach is to establish a mission board: a large bureaucracy that raises funds, recruits missionaries, trains them, sends them out, and directs all their work from a single central headquarters. This approach did great things in the 20^th century, extending the Gospel around the world. But it’s also a rather inflexible approach. The only mission work that gets done is the mission that’s prioritized by the central headquarters, and the only people who do it are the people approved by the central headquarters. 

This 20^th century approach to mission is fast fading in the 21^st century. In the PCUSA and many other denominations, our national mission agencies are a shadow of their former selves, greatly reduced in both their income and the size of their missionary force. In many cases, these national agencies diverted their focus to political causes that were not supported by most church members, and they lost their grassroots base. But this change doesn’t mean that mission isn’t being done anymore. It’s just being done in a different way. 

Now many local churches send out their own missionaries, without bothering to go through the national mission agencies. And the new institution through which they work is the mission network. Local churches and volunteers that share a particular concern—say, addiction treatment in their community, or evangelism in Ethiopia—come together to exchange insights and coordinate initiatives. It’s a more flexible approach to mission: lower budget, less bureaucracy, closer to the grassroots. 

Many conservative evangelical churches, which have mixed feelings (at best) about the national denominational structures, are already following the mission network approach. Even our PCUSA mission officials in Louisville have caught on, and now they list no fewer than 78 mission networks to which they relate. The denomination’s role is not to fund or regulate these networks, but simply to bring them together and facilitate their communication. 

Presbyterians involved in mission are more flexible now, and that’s a good thing on the whole. We have networks addressing topics ranging from Guatemala to music ministry. But, as with physical flexibility, there is a potential downside too. That is the theme of the article that I recently wrote for the Presbyterian Layman. 

“There is a danger in these denominationally sponsored networks,” I write. “They can become a vehicle for small groups of activists to appropriate the PCUSA’s name, image, and facilities for controversial agendas that many Presbyterians would not support.” I cite the example of Presbyterians Affirming Reproductive Options, a PCUSA-recognized network that takes an extreme pro-abortion rights stance. Pro-life activists, on the other hand, have to do their work without the denomination’s blessing. 

The main focus of my article is the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). This network promotes boycotts, divestment, and sanctions directed against Israel. It compares Israel to apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the segregated U.S. South. The PCUSA-sponsored network gives favorable exposure to anti-Israel radicals who favor a “single-state solution” encompassing all of historic Palestine, in which Israel would cease to be a Jewish state and Jews would soon be submerged under an Arab majority. It seems to justify violent “resistance” against Israel and minimize the problem of “terrorism.” 

All of these positions are at variance with General Assembly policies, which condemn terrorism, favor a two-state solution, do not endorse boycotts and sanctions against Israel, and do NOT make odious comparisons of Israel to racist regimes. Yet the Israel/Palestine Mission Network receives PCUSA staff support. It processes donations through the PCUSA financial system, using the denomination’s tax-exempt status. It sells its publications through the official Presbyterian Distribution Service. Most importantly, the network has the privilege of using the denomination’s name to lend legitimacy to its one-sided anti-Israel advocacy. 

This pattern of activity goes beyond the normal, beneficial kind of flexibility. It amounts to a blatant lack of accountability. Groups like Presbyterians Affirming Reproductive Options and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network have become disjointed from the church members that they are supposed to serve. 

The PCUSA needs to consider these issues carefully as we move more and more of our Presbyterian mission into the mission networks. We need to take full advantage of the flexibility that the networks provide; however, we also need to be discerning about which networks receive the denomination’s seal of approval. 

Presbyterian Action is here to challenge the church on these matters of political discernment. We don’t want to go from the frying pan of a politically unbalanced central mission bureaucracy into a fire of politically unbalanced mission networks. Thank you for your support that allows us to raise these crucial questions.