presbytery :: blog

As you know from my presentation (below) I’ve been playing around with the themes of structure, mission and ministries as a core framework to initiate some presbytery-wide dialogue about who we are, who God’s called us to be, and who we are becoming. One small step council took last week to ensure that we begin that dialogue was to postpone the termination of Jerry Poole’s service from May 31 to August 31.

The reason for this action is simple (and has been true for some time): that the work of serving our congregations demands more of our time and resources–and perhaps in the future, even a full-time person in addition to the executive presbyter. This fact coupled with the fact that we need to begin a process of discernment (vision process) as a presbytery adds even another dimension to this work. Taken together, council was persuaded that at least temporarily, time and resources were were needed to make sure weBut let me unpack that, first from the angle of experience and second from a statistical perspective. 

The Experience Angle :: Jerry and I have worked well together since I came on board in May and despite the enormous amount of things to learn about this new position, I have never felt overwhelmed–thanks in large part to Jerry’s diligence in pacing this transition process out over a month’s time. Yet even with all of the conversations we’ve had relating to the work of an executive presbyter, we were always navigating a rather large and somewhat unexpected obstacle–the delegation and distribution of an (at times) overwhelming amount of congregational/presbytery transition and transformation. This (in my opinion) is part and parcel of the larger structural challenge of coming to terms with the fact that we are not adequately staffed to meet the needs of our congregations. 

The Statistical Analysis :: Let me illustrate with a statistic. Seattle Presbytery is the largest presbytery in the country in a very interesting and I would say important category–the percentage of membership in worship. Most presbyteries hover around the 50th percentile when it comes to the percentage of its membership in worship. And what this effectively means for a presbytery is that there are potentially more “per capita” dollars available to presbyteries who have large memberships but less people in worship. To say that in another way, a presbytery like Seattle might have the same amount of “people in the pews” on Sunday morning than a presbytery half again as large as us.

So in that “interesting but important” statistic regarding the percentage of our membership in worship–Seattle Presbytery leads the nation (in presbyteries of our size) at 73%! To put that statistic in context–there are only 7 presbyteries of our size (20,000+) with 60% or more of their membership in worship. And at the top of that list is Seattle Presbytery at 21,266 members and 15,500 of those members in worship.

So what’s this all mean? Two things: First, Presbyterians in the Seattle Presbytery are actively involved in the life of their churches and second, the responsibility to adequately resource the mission of those presbyterians is drawn from less people than it is for other presbyteries our size.  

I’ll tease this out more later. The gist of what I am trying to say is that if you or your congregation get a call or visit from Jerry Poole, don’t be surprised that he’s calling, he’s still working on behalf of the presbytery as we continue to work through some transition.

Peace. Scott