PC(USA) All-Agency Review Committee meets in Denver

First day deliberations include agency review reports, articulation of mission

by Gregg Brekke | Presbyterian News Service

Deborah Block, All Agency Review Committee Moderator, listens to comments. (Photo by Gregg Brekke)

DENVER – The All Agency Review Committee of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is meeting May 1 and 2 at Central Presbyterian Church for its second face-to-face meeting. Topics have included a review of the 2010–2016 General Assembly mandated agency reviews and more discernment of the scope of its work.

Following an opening devotional, Deborah Block, committee Moderator and teaching elder from Milwaukee, read a recent article that described how the board game Monopoly had the dropped the boot, wheelbarrow and thimble from its collection of playing pieces, replacing them with the T-Rex, penguin and rubber duck.

Saying “what do we need to let go of, and what do we need to replace it with,” she asked committee members to consider what long-held and cherished things might need to be replaced in the PC(USA) in a similar, if not unsettling to many, way.

Ending the day, the group briefly deliberated whether it should continue to call itself the “All Agency Review Committee” or if it should consider renaming itself the “Committee to Review the Whole of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) and its Six Agencies” in an effort to better understand its outcomes.

As part of these outcomes, teaching elder David Davis suggested the committee “might make recommendations that critique the General Assembly itself,” looking deeply into the polity and inner workings of processes of the denomination.

Way Forward Conversation on OGA-PMA Merger

Jim Wilson, a ruling elder from Ohio, gave a report on All Agency Review Committee participation in a Way Forward Commission call, saying it was a “much more relational call than they’d previously experienced” during the group’s February meeting.

Wilson said the Way Forward Commission had sought partnership with the All Agency Review Committee, saying the Way Forward’s initial focus had been broader than its mandate may have suggested and was now directed more toward the relationship between the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) and the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA).

“We have to follow up with them so we coordinate our messaging so the agencies don’t hear two different things,” he said. “The most focused conversation was about what to do with shared services, and more specifically, the legal and administrative structure. The consensus was that some of that should fall more directly under the Stated Clerk.

“Overall, I think it was an encouraging call and I do think the church will be best served if we find common ground with them.”

Noting the Way Forward Commission “will have to take an OGA-PMA merger to the General Assembly because any structural changes will need to go before the Assembly,” Wilson said coordination of efforts was required “for both shared services and going down the road of merger [of OGA and PMA] isn’t something they have great enthusiasm for.”

Ruling Elder James Tse noted, “The review of all six agencies is a big task and adding the discussion of merger is something we may not be able to accomplish by the Feb. 14, 2018 deadline.” Block responded, “We don’t want to do something that meets a timeframe—we want to do something that meets a need.”

“We’re talking about the OGA-PMA merger as if it’s a done deal,” said Ruling Elder Claire Rhodes, voicing her concern about the assumed outcome of the review committee’s work. “But we need to know much more.”

Wilson and Teaching Elder Eric Beene both reminded the committee that neither the OGA nor PMA review committees has recommended merger; instead, they asked a General Assembly appointed committee to look at the possibility of merger.

“The church keeps revisiting the issues, so the possibility [of an OGA-PMA merger] is something we need to pursue and recommend for or against, and settle it once and for all,” Beene said. “Another way to get at this same question might be some clarity about what it means for the other four corporate entities that respond to the GA.

“If we look at what we do with OGA and PMA, what do we do with the four others?”

“Our task is to review and analyze and look at the information in front of us,” said Teaching Elder Mihee Kim-Kort. “Our first task needs to be that. But we’re focusing on the issues of PMA and OGA, and governance and structure, and lack of collaboration. I don’t know if that’s helpful to a broader engagement of all the agencies in reviewing that work.”

Expanding on Kim-Kort’s analysis, Block offered, “Our task may be to articulate a tangible ecclesiology for the church today—one that expands on the great ends of the church.”

Clare Lewis, vice president of sales and marketing at the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program, speaks at the All Agency Review Committee meeting in Denver. (Photo by Gregg Brekke)

Hearing from the six agencies of the church, the group gathered keywords from each agency’s mission statement onto a word map, looking for common threads and places where a unified vision could be ascertained.

“How does this affect people in the churches?” Rhodes asked. “We can do all this work and still not impact the work of the local church.”

“As long as we are the Presbyterian Church as it has been, there won’t be a single voice,” Wilson said. “As long as we have our existing structure, there will be competing visions for what they should do. It puts the most stress on those agencies that hear the most from the General Assembly.”

Reviewing Agency Reviews

Leading up to the end-of-day discussion on the extent of its work, the committee read reports from members who had summarized previous agency reports and heard responses from agency representatives, entertaining questions from the committee on these reports and responses.

Andy Browne, vice president of church relations at the Board of Pensions, at the All Agency Review Committee meeting in Denver. (Photo by Gregg Brekke)

Andy Browne, vice president of church relations at the Board of Pensions, said the agency’s new motto, “Serve more, serve better, serve the church,” had come from requests to be more involved at the local levels of the denomination, and were developed alongside a “theology of benefits.”

Asked about the Board of Pensions’ relationship to the PC(USA) as a separate corporation, Browne responded, “There’s no question that we are part of the church.”

A continued discussion of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation (PPC) considered the possible consolidation of publishing activities from the other agencies.

Focusing on curriculum development, Mark Lewis, president and publisher of PPC, said the agency would create new Sunday School and confirmation resources if given the publishing responsibilities for these items.

Barry Creech, director for policy, administration and board support at the PMA, offered that curriculum efforts involve “publishing as a mission of the church [that is] not dependent upon market or profitability.”

Clare Lewis, vice president of sales and marketing at the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program, responded to its review by saying that since the review had been completed, the agency had continued to maintain its financial strength and began offering new loans for accessibility improvements.

The review of the Presbyterian Foundation found it had done a great deal of work in restructuring its organization and becoming more active in socially responsible investing (SRI).

“There’s been a dramatic shift of emphasis toward congregations,” said Rob Bullock, vice president of marketing and communications for the Foundation. “We talked to churches and asked what we could do, and they responded with ‘online giving.’ We used to process about 1,200 gifts per year, and we now have over 1,400 gifts per month we’re processing through online giving.”

Kerry Rice, director of Ordered Ministries and Certification in the Office of the General Assembly and staff resources to the committee, said the OGA has undergone changes in its mission with the arrival of the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II as Stated Clerk.

Notable changes were Nelson’s direct outreach to churches considering departing the PC(USA) for the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians (ECO), additional support for the Korean Presbyterian Caucus, restructuring the fall polity conference, the possible addition of a center of excellence in Louisville for church leaders, and outreach efforts by the General Assembly to connect more directly with people who live in the cities in which it meets. The initiative for GA 223 in St. Louis, in cooperation with the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy, is called “Hands and Feet.”

Ruling Elder Marco Grimaldo speaks on the PMA review at the All Agency Review Committee meeting in Denver. (Photo by Gregg Brekke)

The PMA summary review was led by Ruling Elder Marco Grimaldo with input from Beene, who had served on the PMA review group in 2015. Beene reiterated the PMA review committee’s three recommendations to General Assembly 222 (2016):

• Delay the all-agency review and appoint a committee to explore the merger of OGA and PMA.
• Appoint a group to restructure the PMA Board.
• Explore efficiencies to be found in shared services.

He noted the first point had not been well understood by the Assembly, resulting in the creation of the Way Forward Commission, the All Agency Review Committee and the 2020 Vision group—none of which bear this direct responsibility.

Though a group had not been appointed to restructure the PMA Board, Beene noted the PMA Board was currently in the process of restructuring itself, though those efforts stalled when criticism of the plan was raised by advocacy committees, prompting the Way Forward Commission to intervene.

Finally, Beene said part of the current effort of the Way Forward Commission and the All Agency Review Committee was to look at the third point — the work of shared services and how they function across the agencies.

Creech asked the group to be mindful of how the term “shared services” is used. Shared Services, he said, is a department of the PMA. The generic term “is a broader category that often includes the same people in Shared Services [such as] funds development, communications and research services.”

While shared services addresses priorities within the denominational structure, Creech also noted a recent poll in which church members were asked to rate their highest priorities for the Mission Agency.

“None of the things we do is a priority for the majority of the church,” he said. Results from the survey showed that no single activity of the PMA was ranked as a high priority by more than 30 percent of the church, leading to an inability to cut programming because there is just enough support for many program areas that others cannot be adjusted or prioritized if it means reducing support for another area.

“We continually ask to reduce programs and the General Assembly says, ‘no, put that back in, and no, put that back in,’” Creech said. “It becomes harder to set long-term priorities in that case.”

Saying that 80 percent of the funds received by the PMA are restricted, Creech asked the committee to consider how decisions are made to fund these priorities. “It’s for the 20 percent of unrestricted programming we can control,” he said. “As the church chooses more where it wants its money to go, how do we continue doing the work that GA has mandated if it doesn’t fall into the restricted areas?”

The All Agency Review Committee continues its work tomorrow.