By Paul Seebeck, General Assembly Mission Council
Office of Church Growth

Just over a month ago, the great lawn of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was swarming with people. They came from all over the country, and the world, to participate in the Louisville Ironman Triathlon. As they walked in front of the Presbyterian Center, a new worshiping community known as Team Sweaty Sheep was reaching out to athletes and fans with bottles of water, words of encouragement, prayer and PowerAde, connecting them to Presbyterian mission and ministry. … Read the rest of this article at the PC(USA) Website

The idea is for the PCUSA denomination to host a global Passion Summit on the off years of the General Assembly, similar to how the “Big Tent” functions now.  The Summit would link through virtual media large regional gatherings (possible Synods) across the United States and globe.   A variety of process modalities (Theory U, Appreciative Inquiry, Conversation Café, World Café) at the regional gatherings would help cultivate and harvest the deep passions, visions and ideas which are emerging within the PCUSA consciousness across cultural, theological and ecclesiological worldviews and geographic locations.  (I would especially encourage us to look at Theory U as a contemplative and inclusive discernment model.)

This information would be linked and shared through virtual media to every regional gathering in real time, allowing everyone participating to see and discern the deep threads that are emerging.  It would allow us to collectively listen to the voice of the Spirit as it speaks through energy, passion and calling.  This emerging awareness, would be harvested in a variety of forms at a central hub and then pushed back out to the regional gatherings to be creatively enacted through self organizing “prototypes” (described below).  Individuals and smaller groups at the regional level would self organize around individual passions and intentions seeking to implement in their own contexts the deep passions and threads emerging in the consciousness of the whole denomination.   These self organizing groups within each region may stay within established group identities to do their work (i.e. Presbytery groups, local congregations, Sunday school classes, women’s groups) or they may form a new action groups, communities and networks around a shared missional initiatives and intentions which cross traditional identity boundaries and geographies.

During and after the Passion Summit Synods, Presbyteries and local congregations would reorganize themselves as they seek to provide support and guidance to these local initiatives and self organizing groups.  These governing bodies would continue their regulatory practices as before, but would also have available new energy, ideas and initiatives arising from below from which would help shape their identity and work.   These governing bodies would be invited to provide leadership by listening, giving permission, providing support and equipping communities to embody the passions and intentions of the Spirit.  The Passion Summit would not replace our current system but would instead provide alternative ways of being together and structuring ourselves so creativity and innovation would be encouraged.

A “prototype” which would be one of the paradigms for self organizing groups is a short term event, program or experience that embodies the original intention and passion but is also designed for praxis learning and co-evolving.  These prototypes would have built within them opportunities and expectations to share with the larger system what is being learned so everyone benefits from what is being learned at a local and contextual level.  Congregations, Presbyteries and Synods would organize themselves around this learning and insights that emerge allow the whole system to evolve.   We would not only learn from the best practices emerging from the prototypes  but would co-evolve as a denomination in the process.

The Passion Summit, through the regional gatherings would be open to anyone affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, with an emphasis on those who are at the margins of our congregations and communities.   The traditional voices and centers of our denomination (elders, pastors and judicatory leaders) would seek make their regional gathering as diverse as possible and function as the hosts and facilitators of meaningful conversation not as decision makers, gate keepers or vision castors.   The whole process would intentionally seek to listen to the outer edge of our denomination where good ideas naturally arise.  After the traditional centers of power seek to practice the art of hosting and listening they would become equippers and midwives of passion and intention.  The process reverses “hierarchical”  and “centered” approaches to organizational formation trusting that energy and passion will create their own structures.

A Passion Summit and a traditional General Assembly would honor the organizational forms of more worldviews and allow for both “hierchacal/centered” organizational forms and “self organizing/decentralized” forms of governing.    This type of process would also allow us to redefine the important and essential

These types of global discernment processes are already being done by large non-profit organizations and global corporations.  The technology is already available and just needs to be harnessed to serve our Reformed theology and values.

The Reasons For Alternative Discernment Processes

The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) finds itself in the midst of the creative tension of re-formation.  This is not new for the Presbyterian Church or the Universal Body of Christ.  God is always incarnated in the particularities of our lives and experiences with the invitation to be renewed and transformed.  This re-formation however, is especially significant, because it involves shifts in our foundation and the need for the emergence of new structures, not simple a creative rearrangement of what already exists.  This re-formation includes changes on the “being” level, not simple a rethinking of the surface structures.

The energy from which I share the Passion Summit idea arises from a concern that we do not yet have the appropriate containers (processes) for the new organizational structures to emerge which can hold and honor the complexity of our domination.  By a “container,” I specifically mean the ways in which we gather with one another at all levels of our communal life (small groups, committees, sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, General Assembly) We do not have or use appropriate “social technologies” which allow for creativity and emergence to happen.   The General Assembly, as well as most of our meetings, are not intended to be a creative spaces for new ideas and passions to emerge and take shape. This is true at many levels of our denominational life.  New information poured into the same container and processed through the same structures will not be able to produce the new systems which honors and facilitates the new “ways of being” Christian community.  I do not believe new organizational structures and forms will emerge from the same containers (processes) which we have been using.  This is echoed in the statement by Albert Einstein, “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”  Consciousness and form arise mutually and are interdependent.  I believe the “postmodern” consciousness already exists for many in our denomination, but it is being poured into “modern structures” which are inadequate in order to be creative and constructive.

At this point, instead of seeking to significantly change all our organizational structures and processes in local churches and in the denomination, we should create alternative structures which can then be in dialogue with the established structures, potentially transforming both into something novel.  My assumption is that the PCUSA is being invited to become a more complex system, able to integrate an additional and emerging “postmodern” worldview within its already large umbrella.

I understand there to already exist multiple worldviews within our denominational umbrella and reformed tradition, each worldview giving rise to unique and appropriate theologies, eclessiologies and organizational forms which are appropriate to those worldviews (premodern, modern and postmodern). The process of growth and development for any system when healthy, is one of integration marked by the process of transcending and including.   Whatever we become in the future must transcend the complexity of our past through the process of inclusion, not exclusion.  We can not go back, nor can we become more simple.  Each worldview must be able to “find itself” within the umbrella, which means their needs to be multiple theologies, ecclesiologies and organizational forms within one umbrella.

Our General Assembly and the “Book of Order’” which are primarily “modern” organizational structures, need to be included and transcended, not illuminated or changed to the point where they no longer honor or speak to those in a modern worldview.   I think the majority of Presbyterians in North America are working from a modern worldview.   Our current system is a creation of that worldview and still works for many of us.  So I don’t believe it should be replaced.

Again, in order to hold more diversity we must become more complex, not less.   The only way to relieve tension created by paradoxes of multiple worldviews is to move to a higher level of consciousness where the tension no longer exists.  A more inclusive perspective which emerges from a more integral consciousness allows the diversity of worldviews (traditional, modern and postmodern) to exist as creative energy not anxiety.   Ultimately, I believe this looks like some type of “Reformed Denominational Federation.”  However, I don’t believe that this type of structure or organizational form can emerge until we have been able to fully integrate the values and “ways of being” of postmodernism.   Seeking to hold within one PCUSA umbrella the values, theology, ecclesiology and organizational forms of premodernism, modernism and postmodernism will create enough paradoxical energy that a new level of consciousness can emerge.  As a denomination, I believe we are another 10-20 years away from that capacity.  However, we have the capacity to experiment with postmodern denominational structures, which I believe the Passion Summit represents.

In summary, my idea of a Passion Summit is not to fix the problem of denominational decline, but instead an invitation to create a different type of  “container” from which the Spirit can birth a new level of consciousness.  From this more “integral” consciousness appropriate organizational forms will naturally form and take shape.  The Passion Summit is one way a new consciousness can emerge not through lessoning the creative potential of chaos, but through giving it new channels and direction from which to do its creative work of expansion.   Consciousness and form arise together.

My hope is this idea joins with many others in generating an environment of new ideas, innovations and experiments in Christian community throughout our denomination.  I appreciate feedback, responses and reflections and the opportunity to process with other in open and contemplative dialogue.