Belonging to a Broken System: For The Mudroom

One of the main reasons I stay at my church is also one of the things I dislike most about it.

This is it: it’s a large institution.

I go to a biggish Presbyterian church. A “Presbyterian” church is literally a church governed by “presbyters”—Greek for elders, or leaders.

That’s one of the big reasons I love my church: it is democratically and representatively governed and also part of something larger than itself.

Elders serve our church on “session”, like a small congress. Our session sends representatives to our county’s presbytery. Our presbytery sends representatives to a synod (who came up with these names?) for our region. And that synod elects representatives to send to a national general assembly.

If this is sounding like your high school civics class, that’s no accident. Presbyterian forms of government inspired many founding fathers (along with, say, the Iroquois Confederacy).

I don’t think all this representative government is cool just because I’m a history buff. I think it’s actually life-saving.

Here’s why. Back when I was in high school, some really bad crap happened at my church involving a) sexual abuse in my youth group (which was not prosecuted because of a lack of evidence, like many sexual abuse cases) and b) our senior pastor, who abused his power to have sexual relationships with two women under his authority (also not prosecuted, because it wasn’t a crime).

These two abuses of power had two very different outcomes because of institutions.

The youth pastor responsible waltzed off to non-denominational churches where he is still in ministry. Many people from our church tried to warn the welcoming pastors…who chose to ignore the information. And because the pastors had pretty much complete discretion, there wasn’t much anyone could do.

The senior pastor, however, was subject to a trial within the Presbyterian church and was prevented from serving as a minister again for years.

To me, the Presbyterian church means accountability. Not perfect accountability, but some accountability…

I was over at The Mudroom yesterday, talking about the pros and cons of belonging to something bigger than myself. Join me?