Of the several important decisions made by the PC(USA)’s 217th General Assembly
(2006) that have yet to receive much attention, the formation of the
“Form of Government Task Force” (F.O.G.) is at the top of the list.
This new Task Force has been charged with proposing a re-written Form
of Government (the “G” section in the PCUSA’s Book of Order) to the
218th General Assembly (2008).

I had the opportunity to observe the second meeting of this task force, which was held in Louisville on June 19-21, 2006. Leslie Scanlon has written a good descriptive article on the meeting, and her story is available here.

The basic idea behind this project is to develop a polity that serves the ministries of local congregations better. The G.A. mandate instructs the Task Force to make the provision of “leadership of congregations as missional communities” the primary focus of a new Form of Government, while maintaining presbyteries as the central unit of church government. The G.A. mandate also takes the sexuality and property debates off the table – these are elements of the Form of Government that may not be touched – given the fact that tampering with either one of these provisions has “the capacity to obfuscate the constitutional renewal efforts.”

Thankfully, I found the nature of the work of this task force so far to be very different from the work of the PUP Task Force. The PUPTF was dealing with the sexuality debate and often behind closed doors, which, whether or not appropriate, contributed to a sense of being “in the dark,” not being transparent, etc. And they were also discussing matters about which hundreds of books have been written, subjects that have been talked to death for the last thirty or so years. And in the end their polity recommendation was a tweak of a particular constitutional provision about which there is a huge amount of debate.

Yet the FOG Task Force’s meetings were transparent, even unguarded in the open-ended and rather candid discussions about Presbyterian distinctives, the purpose of governing bodies, and the meaning of the missional church movement that they hope informs their own work. And though they have met only twice, we are already receiving drafts of their work. (The draft of their rewrite of the first four chapters of the Book of Order is available here, and the draft of their re-write of chapter 7 of the current FOG is available here. A draft of the outline for the new FOG is available here. I haven’t had the time to scrutinize them carefully yet.) And, frankly, to the degree that they are trying to do genuine theological work on the intersection of missional theology and Presbyterian polity, they are working on a project about which the first book has yet to be written. So, it’s at least stimulating discussion (something I never thought I’d say about a G.A. level committee meeting). It’s a good thing when a G.A. committee reads Darrell Guder’s The Continuing Conversion of the Church.

Of course, we will have to take things one step at a time and see how their effort proceeds. They have invited feedback from the church, so if you’re interested in this sort of thing, you should review their drafts and offer your feedback. I will offer some further comments over the next couple of days, beginning with a post entitled: Missional Polity: Will It Really Help The Church?