A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Bob Bettridge is the minister of Willowdale Presbyterian Church, North York, Ontario.

In many ways this year’s General Assembly will be remembered more for what it did not say than for what it did. To be sure, there were several significant matters to report and there are several events which I will recall fondly in years to come. In particular I appreciated the contribution of the Young Adult Observers. Their rousing rendition of “We Are Marching” (an African praise song recently popularized by Graham Kendrick in this year’s March for Jesus) had the entire Assembly rocking and marching in such an indecent and disorderly manner that one of the huge floral arrangements gracing the platform pitched over! It was wonderful!

What was adopted and implemented was done generally with a great degree of accord, including some important guidelines for congregations and presbyteries regarding matters of Sexual Abuse and Harassment. This magnanimity was accomplished principally because not much else of substance was brought to this year’s Assembly. This past year has been the first year of operation for the newly formed Service Agency and Life and Mission Agency. Consequently the Assembly Council has been working through the trauma of the restructuring that our National Church Offices have had to endure and the growing pains which of necessity come from being thrust into positions for which no clear guidelines or job descriptions have been prepared. Thus much of the reporting being done was for information, or to announce progress on the work being done. The church was asked to be patient and wait until mission statements, and mandates for ministry could be properly drafted, hopefully for presentation for next year’s Assembly.

It is precisely at this point that I was most stimulated to reflect. We are at present a church without a clearly defined reason for being. We have our Bible, our Subordinate Standards, our Living Faith; we have our Vision Statement, yet we are being told that we still don’t quite have it together as the church in the 1990’s. A quote from the introduction to the Report from the Assembly Council:

“A new thing”… It could well be the theme for this Assembly and for this report. New structures, new approaches to the mission of the Church are accompanied by the prayer that God will provide us with new vision and energy for the purposes of God’s rule on earth. God’s new thing for the 1990’s, and on into the 21st Century, seems to involve the political paradigm for the human enterprise. Change comes, nevertheless. God’s people are always charged to be sensitive to the signs of the times and to the ways in which God is active in events. The Assembly council… is also conscious of the expectations of the Church for it to take a prophetic and planning role, which implies being a change agent.

Such a statement causes me to stop and ask what paradigm shifts are they anticipated? What changes are they planning? And in what events do they see the activity of God? As defined by what and by whom?

Far from being an alarmist, I believe the potential for a major paradigm shift was more than illustrated in the debate over the Church Doctrine Committee report on Human Sexuality:

Committee on Church Doctrine 
Recommendation No. 1

That the Committee on Church Doctrine undertake to clarify, amplify, and revise the report on Human Sexuality in response to the submissions received, recognizing that the Report on Human Sexuality has been adopted as an interim report by the 1992 General Assembly and that a large majority of presbyteries and sessions replying have responded favourably to the Report, and that the Committee present a final draft of the report to the 120th General Assembly.

This one recommendation took up hours of debate, throughout the week, even to the last sederunt, with several revisions being made, before the recommendation was finally adopted. All this effort and we did not even get to debate the substance of the Report even though the approval expressed by the Presbyteries and Sessions for the document was in general reported by the Doctrine Committee as being overwhelming. The debate over the recommendation displayed the plurality of opinion within the church. Although I believe the large majority of the Assembly expressed their desire to see the Human Sexuality Report clarified, without major revision, and that it be prepared for next year’s Assembly, still there was a vocal minority which indicated they hoped to see a report, less rigidly defined by Scripture, and more affirming of alternative sexual lifestyles. I expect that this minority opinion will be even more vocal and aggressive when the actual report will be placed before the church for its consideration. Just as there is an attempt in our society to revise our understanding of sexuality, there are those in the church who would have us conform to the world, rather than to the teachings of Scripture. What other paradigm shifts are being contemplated by the modern day “reformers” of our church?

In the preamble to the Presbyterians Sharing Report, the Life and Mission Agency quotes these words from Loren Meads’ The Once and Future Church:

We are at the front edges of the greatest transformation of the church that has occurred for 1600 years.
The task ahead is the reinvention of the church:
A new church is being born. It may not be the church we expect or want.
The form of the new world and new church is not in our hands.
What is in our hands is the chance to respond to God’s call.

I too see changes for the Presbyterian Church in Canada. In the future we will continue to be marginalized in a society which has turned its back on the mainline church. We will need to learn to live in a hostile community which no longer considers itself as a Dominion under God. However, we live in a field which is white unto harvest, with many persons seeking a spirituality which has substance and integrity. If we are to be effective for the Kingdom of God we are going to have to make changes; changes in the way we live our lives, changes in our consumption patterns, changes in the way we relate to each other in the church, changes in how we relate to persons who do not share our faith. However, let those changes be directed by the Lordship of Jesus Christ, by the power of his Holy Spirit and in obedience to the Father’s will as revealed in Scripture and as discerned in prayer and community. In making these future changes remember the ground on which we stand, all else is sinking sand.