January's gathering of the Presbytery of San Diego, scheduled for January 16 at Solana Beach Presbyterian Church, will see the installation of Rev. Neal Nybo and Elder Elizabeth Crews installed as Moderator & Vice-Moderator/Moderator Elect for 2007.

Nybo is an associate pastor at Solana Beach.

Crews is a member of First Presbyterian Church of San Diego, and recently headed the Task Force on the Way Forward Committee.

The meeting will begin at 2:30 p.m. and will conclude for dinner at 6 p.m. For a copy of the docket and other materials, see the Meetings Page.

The Human Resources Committee will report on the resignation of Executive Presbyter Rev. Dr. Andy Smith and the financial terms of the dissolution. (See the December issue of PresbyNewsOnLine to view documents.) Presbytery will need to vote to dissolve the relationship and approve any financial terms of the separation, according to Stated Clerk Linda Therien.

The Executive Committee of Council will inform the Presbytery of "next steps" in filling the Executive Presbyter position -- both the Interim and permanent position.

Therien said the Nominating Committee of Presbytery will be prepared to present a slate of nominees to form the Exec Presbyter Search Committee as is required by our Manual of Operations, Part I. The Presbytery will be asked to vote on this slate.

The follow-up committee to the TFWF will be presented as named by the 2006 Moderator of Presbytery and Executive Presbyter and will present a work plan and timeline. This was part of the motion from the November Meeting of Presbytery at which the TFWF Report was presented.

Appointment of an Administrative Commission

Another piece of business at the January Meeting will be the appointment of an Administrative Commission to work with the pastor and session of Christ United Presbyterian Church in San Diego.

Elders and deacons from churches throughout the Presbytery of San Diego will receive training and a greater understanding of their roles and responsibilities at the Annual Leadership Development Day, January 27, at Point Loma Community Presbyterian Church. For more information, contact the Presbytery Office.

PC(USA) Moderator Rev. Joan Gray, who is recognized as an expert on church polity, responded to a series of questions published in a booklet distributed to commissioners and advisory delegates prior to the convening of the 217th General Assembly.

Here's the Moderator's response to the question: What do you consider the most important aspect of our polity?

John Calvin had the radical idea that lay people could actually run the church. Over against more than a thousand years of clergy-dominated church life, Calvin and those who came after him envisioned a system in which clergy and elected laity make decisions together.

In my estimation the single most significant fact of our polity is that in the session, elders always outnumber clergy. The practical result is that few churches will ever rise above the level of their elders.

Based on this reality, I see three imperatives in the life of the church.

First, we must take officer training seriously. No investment of a pastor's time pays bigger dividends in long-term church health than that invested in officer training. Ten hours of training each year is a bare minimum.

If we want strong churches, we must train our officers with as much prayer, creativity, and energy as we can muster.

Second, we must challenge our officers to claim their role as spiritual leaders. The elders of old were spiritual leaders, and the pastor sat on the session as a spiritual leader among spiritual leaders. Somewhere along the way, we lost this.

Today most Presbyterian elders would be genuinely shocked at the suggestion that they too are spiritual leaders. The idea that their primary task is to seek God's will and lead the church to do it is foreign to them. They defer to the pastor, who is expected to be spiritual enough for everybody.

We must make the training of lay people for spiritual leadership and discernment of God's will in community a priority. Until this neglected art is revived, churches will continue to flounder and even the most gifted Presbyterian pastors will be frustrated.

Third, we need to reinvent the congregation's officer nominating committee. It is a sad fact that many a nominating committee functions as a recruiting committee to fill slots with warm bodies. In reality the task of the nominating committee in each congregation should be to discern which members of that church have the spiritual gifts, graces, character, talents and willingness to be servant leaders, ordained or unordained.

The truest purpose of our polity is to help local congregations be as healthy and vibrant as possible to carry forth God's mission in the world at the highest level. Everything in the Book of Order is ultimately tied to this expectation. Until we start reaping the leadership gifts of our laity, ordained or unordained, we will not fulfill this purpose.

--Presbyterian News Service

By Barry Billingsley

The 2006 Synod Assembly met in Baldwin Park from October 26 - 28. San Diego was represented by fifteen of their eighteen commissioners.

What most of those in attendance agreed on was that the Synod is in transition and has been for some time. In fact, the Synod Executive is not referred to as "interim," but "Transitional Synod Executive." We had a presentation and workshop conducted by the Kaleidoscope Institute that during the coming months is working to prepare the Synod for its new role.

Each Presbytery delivered a report regarding the current state of affairs in their governing body. The operative word in each report was "transition" and it became evident that each presbytery is responding to the passage of the Report on Peace Unity & Purity (PUP) and an awareness that what used to work will no longer work as well as a new way of doing things had to be found. Each Presbytery seemed to be looking at significant changes - some from a position of strength and others from a sense of re-evaluation and discerning a call to new directions. Each report was positive in nature and there were healthy signs that the presbyteries were no longer believing that everything is fine the way it is.

The most significant issues were:

• The sale of the Synod building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, and how to use the proceeds from the sale. The proceeds should exceed the cost of new quarters by several million dollars. The building is currently in a somewhat tenuous escrow.
• The adoption of a 2007 transition budget; it was recognized that whether the sale of the building is completed during 2007 will determine how revenue is received. If the sale is completed, some of the proceeds will be used to generate interest income for operations. If not, rental income will be utilized. The significance of this is that the continuing cost of operations is not covered by Per Capita and General Mission giving from the presbyteries, but significantly subsidized by investment income and reserves.
• An undercurrent of rivalry between the presbyteries and synod.
• A continued diminution of power of the constituency groups within the Synod - although their budgets were increased over 2006 levels.

Several people from the presbyteries presented a substitute motion convening a consultation with the presbyteries concerning (1) the relocation of the Synod Offices, (2) the use of the proceeds form the sale of the Wilshire properties, and (3) the transition process regarding the future design of the Synod. We encourage the San Diego Presbytery to be actively involved in this process.

The Chula Vista Presbyterian Church, under the leadership of Pastor Bob Davis, begins a Spanish language worship service at Chula Vista Presbyterian on Sunday, January 14. "The session has been in dialogue with members of the Hispanic community over the past several months and are ready to move ahead," said Rev. David Pierson, chair of the Evangelism Committee of Presbytery. Leaders include Hugo Carbajal, Nicasio Rojas, and Rev. Bill Soldwisch of Pueblos Hermanos.

Jack Shelver, former moderator of the Presbytery of San Diego, has been installed as 2007 Synod Moderator. He is a member of Faith Presbyterian Church in San Diego and also serves as treasurer of Baja Presbyterian Missions, Inc.

Reginald Smith, husband of Elder Mary Elva Smith, former Interim General Presbyter of San Diego Presbytery, was killed in a bicycle accident in Louisville, KY, on November 11. Memorial gifts may be sent to "Project Women, Inc,. at 806 East Chestnut Street, Louisville KY 40204.

Rev. Erin Thomas, who was ordained December 17 at Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church, has received an invitation to serve as an Interim Associate Pastor at the Claremont Presbyterian Church in Claremont, California.