 Like New Orleans, 'now we're having to face reality,' PCUSA official says By Craig M. Kibler Staff Writer The Layman Online Monday, January 15, 2007 NEW ORLEANS – In a stark assessment, a senior denominational official Saturday morning compared the state of the Presbyterian Church (USA) with pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans, saying that, just like the city had to face its problems, "now we're having to face reality."
Kearns is no stranger to change within the denomination's headquarters structure. For more than 10 years, he served as director of the National Ministries Division before a series of ongoing budget cuts eliminated his position. He assumed his present post after a General Assembly Council restructuring plan was put into place last fall. His new duties include overseeing General Assembly coordination for the General Assembly Council, Research Services, cultural proficiency, the Advisory Committee for Social Witness Policy and the advocacy committees for Racial Ethnic Concerns and Women's Concerns, as well as special projects on behalf of the executive director's office. Kearns began his remarks Saturday by talking about general observations he has made about life. "In my years," he said, "… one of the general observations about life that I have made is that humans have a very unique capacity to compensate. We get a pain in our side, and so we learn not to lean toward that side. We discover that the traffic on our route to work is very congested, and so we compensate by finding another route. Inflation cuts into our income and to our budget, and so we compensate by cutting back. As humans, we have a unique capacity to compensate." Devastated areas He then made an analogy between that observation and what some conference participants saw Friday during a morning bus tour of devastated areas in New Orleans that are in various stages of recovery and rebuilding. "One of the observations that I bring to our trip yesterday," he said, "is that New Orleans … had an extensive system of compensation, compensating for things that were badly broken. The city was limping along and making it, pretending that things were all right, until Katrina hit. And there was no way for the city to compensate any longer. New Orleans had to face its problems, it's having to face its problems, and now it has to try and deal with them." Kearns then offered a stark comparison between New Orleans and the state of the PCUSA. "The reality is that the Presbyterian Church has been compensating for years," he said to murmurs of agreement from the audience. "We have been compensating for declining membership and declining incomes by saying that, 'We don't need to grow,'" he said, with some audience members again murmuring agreement. "We have been compensating for a dwindling level of activism by overly emphasizing spirituality. We have been compensating for issues of conscience and faithfulness by getting more and more regulatory." He said the reality is "the Presbyterian Church has compensated for years, but now we're having to face reality. There was a point in 2005 when the General Assembly's agencies of the church had a minimum of 10 – count them, 10 – task forces and work groups working on issues on the life of the Presbyterian Church. The church knew that things needed to change, and suddenly it was at the point where it no longer could compensate." Significant changes Kearns reminded the audience that many of them knew about some of the results of those task forces. Those results, he said, "caused the General Assembly Council to have significant changes in its life – in its staff organization, in its governance structure and, indeed, in the way that it relates to the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association because you were part of the changes that took place." The General Assembly Council has changed, he said, "both in its approach and in its structure, in order to acknowledge, to review and to capture the energy of the church in the places where that energy resides. And it has done that by trying to go to a two-year cycle of looking at mission work and deciding where it should be putting its emphasis, where it should be investing its resources, in assisting the church and helping the church to meet its needs." The bottom line, Kearns said, is that the General Assembly Council "wants to be nimble enough and flexible enough to find the energy of the church in mission and move its organization to a point where it is legitimately assisting the church in doing that. The problem is that system won't work unless the General Assembly Council can legitimately identify where the energy is." He told the audience, "I believe that this group and all of you, successfully through the years, have captured the energy of justice issues within society and within the church." "And I think it is incumbent upon all of you," Kearns said, "to stay connected with the General Assembly Council, and with the church structure, so that there is no mistake at all about where the energy for social justice should be within the church. And so I urge you, all of you, to stay connected, to stay engaged, to stay faithful and determined." Craig M. Kibler is the Director of Publications for the Presbyterian Lay Committee and Executive Editor of The Layman and The Layman Online. He can be reached at cmkibler@layman.org. |
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