Am I crazy?

Welcome to this site! I’m Cindy Bolbach. I’m an elder who lives in Arlington, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C. I have been honored to be endorsed by National Capital Presbytery as a candidate for Moderator of the 219^th General Assembly. I hope you’ll take a look at some of the material here and find out a little more about me.

More than once when I told someone I was thinking about standing for Moderator, they would say something along the lines of, “are you out of your mind?” Quite possibly – and maybe for reasons that have nothing to do with standing for Moderator. But I hope to use this space over the upcoming weeks and months to talk a little bit about why I am doing this.

One reason is to encourage and elicit continued discussion and conversation across the church about the issues that affect all of us who seek to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ in the 21^st century. I hope on this site to lay out my thoughts and concerns, but I also hope to hear from you about where the P.C. (U.S.A.) is – or ought to be – going.

There are obvious issues that I’ll be discussing over the course of the next few months: the continuing battle over ordination standards; the question of whether we as a denomination, bruised and battered by that continuing battle, can ever trust one another enough so as to live faithfully and effectively together; the overtures and reports that will come before GA in 2010, including the proposed new Form of Government (once you read my bio, you’ll have a good clue about where I stand on this one).

And there are issues and questions that no overture or no General Assembly can answer or solve immediately, but which demand our attention and discussion. Are we attracting sufficient committed, talented, and faithful persons to the ministry of Word and Sacrament? How can we address the fact that many pastors, especially first call pastors, choose to leave congregational ministry? How can we at long last shatter the “stained glass ceiling” that is still alive and well, and that still, more than 50 years after women were first ordained as pastors, restricts the opportunities and salaries offered to women? How do we reach out and attract those of different ethnicities and backgrounds – as members, as ruling elders, as pastors?  What can we learn from the emergent church movement? How do we proclaim the Gospel to someone who was not born and raised Christian, who doesn’t have a clue about what we mean by “liturgy,” or “communion,” or “intercessory prayer,” and who has never heard of John Calvin, let alone sung “I Greet Thee Who My Sure Redeemer Art?”

And here’s a critical, but extraordinarily basic issue: who, and what, is the  Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as we near the end of the first decade of the 21^st century?  Does a denomination still make sense, and still have value, in a 21^st century world? My good friend and fellow Form of Government Task Force member the Rev. James Kim, pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in The Colony, Texas, asked in his blog a few weeks ago, “If the P.C. (U.S.A.) Shut Its Doors, Would Anyone Notice?”  A similar, although more focused, question was asked by Rodger Nishioka, of Columbia Theological Seminary, at the Big Tent event last spring: “If your congregation were to close down,” he asked, “would anyone in the neighborhood notice?”

We’re certainly not the first Presbyterians to face challenges to our identity or to our survival. John Calvin himself was rudely booted out of Geneva before being asked to return.     

My fear is that we’ve been so worn down by our conflicts, by our membership losses, and by the changes within our society that have pushed Christianity, let alone the P.C. (U.S.A.), outside the mainstream, that all we want to do is to retreat into our religious cocoons, huddling together with the people we know and who know us, hoping for the best, trying to convince ourselves that we’re doing all that we can do.

But Calvin, whose 500^th birthday we have been celebrating this year, calls us to flintier and sterner stuff. Calvin didn’t hesitate to suggest new ideas, he didn’t hesitate to suggest changes, or to innovate, even at the risk of losing his status or his position. And neither can we.

I don’t have all the answers about how we as a denomination can survive into the 21^st century. I’m not sure I have even one answer. I do have some thoughts that I will share here in the coming weeks and months.

Most important, I know that we need to talk together about how we continue as a denomination, and about how we seek to address some of the questions noted above. 

Let the conversation start now. What do you think is the major issue facing the P.C. (U.S.A.)? What, pragmatically, does “reformed and always reforming” mean for us today?