GACOR members in 2022 with committee support staff member Jihyun Oh at bottom right, Louisville (missing in photo from current membership: Adolfo Santana Cordero and Byron Elam). Photo courtesy of Nicole Cruz-Talkington.
“Representation is not simply having more diversity in gatherings, but discerning in such a way that a multiplicity of voices can be heard,” said the Rev. Eric Thomas, co-moderator of the General Assembly Committee on Representation (GACOR).
Thomas was talking about the committee’s process observation during the last General Assembly, when its members moved between assembly spaces, observing discernment and decision making in committees and plenaries. He could also have been summarizing a core principle of all GACOR’s ministry.
During its recent fall meeting in Minneapolis, multiplicity informed the committee’s discussions about the upcoming 226th General Assembly (including a proposed item of business addressing family leave and paid time off), synod data reports that give GACOR snapshots of representation at mid councils across the country, and GACOR’s engagement with communities wherever it meets —what Thomas hopes will serve as a model for other church groups.
“We paid attention to who was speaking and how often,” Thomas said of last assembly’s process observation. In Minneapolis, GACOR members reflected on those GA225 observations, discussing one committee, for example, where a single commissioner with conservative views spoke much more than other commissioners. Expressing conservative views is not a challenge to full representation, of course, but speaking time going overwhelmingly to one person can be.
“This kind of thing is an issue at every level of church council,” Thomas said, noting ways Robert's Rules of Order can intimidate speakers who have less familiarity with PC(USA) meeting and business procedures. “There are certain voices that find their way to the mic again and again. This needs to be interrupted so other voices can be heard.”
He said process observation helps GACOR members ask questions about power, “like where are the young voices, the voices of people of color?”
In Minneapolis, GACOR members also talked about the previous assembly’s BIPOC space. “That was definitely an affirmation of the BIPOC community,” Thomas said. “People were able to decompress.”
For the next assembly, a similar space has been proposed for LGBTQIA+ attendees. Thomas said such an area is needed because LGBTQIA+ identity is still a point of contention in the church. “Even though the Book of Order has changed, the culture of the church hasn’t.” As with dismantling white supremacy culture, building a culture of inclusivity for gender and sexual orientation requires sustained church resourcing through the years.
GACOR members in Minneapolis heard from Kate Trigger Duffert, Director of General Assembly Planning, about GA226 preparations eight months out. Later, the committee discussed a draft item of business it is considering submitting to the assembly on reimbursing wages and family care costs to members of standing and special committees. GACOR is currently drafting language to use in consultation with other groups, such as advocacy committees and staff of the Office of the General Assembly.
Thomas described the item of business draft as “a work in process” that “speaks to the ability of more people to participate in GA.” GACOR members are among those impacted by family care and work leave issues. Thomas left the Minneapolis meeting a day early to lead Sunday worship at his congregation, Siloam Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York.
The Rev. Nicole Cruz-Talkington, a GACOR member from Austin, Texas, shared how the draft proposal would improve her ability to serve a simultaneous local and national call.
“Covering the loss of wages and caregiving expenses will allow for greater participation from younger people, from people with family members they care for daily, from blue collar and mid-level career people, and from specialized ministers like myself who basically lose income when we participate in General Assembly work,” she said.
“I currently work at a psychiatric hospital that will only allow a chaplain position if it remains a contracted position. It is important for me to continue to be at this hospital where I have served for nine years. Many of the patients are homeless or low income on the adult units, or from the foster care system on the adolescent unit.
“My husband and I also have two children and an elderly father with Parkinson's who lives with us. When I show up for GACOR [meetings], I lose important income needed to buy my family groceries. In my opinion, the church should not be asking me to choose between caring for my family, showing up for GA work or just not participating at the GA level at all because of cost. Of course no one is saying they want me to choose between these things. But until we reimburse all committee members for their work on behalf of the denomination, that is exactly what our policies say.”
GACOR members also heard from Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation President Kathy Lueckert on behalf of the Unification Commission, which will deliver a status report during GA226. Lueckert invited GACOR members to answer questions for the commission about its hopes for unification.
“As we’re thinking about scarcity and abundance and fear around scarcity, we hope that the commission takes additional steps to ensure who gets to participate in that abundance,” Thomas said. “What does abundance mean for churches with 100 members or less? For African American or Latinx congregations? For teaching elders who have needed to become bi-vocational?”
“[The Rev.] Kelle Brown-Smith [GACOR member from Seattle Presbytery] said, ‘We would love to see the tree understand its own pruning,’” Thomas recalled, adding that he would like to “a sturdy analysis of power” to be included in the unification process. “As we’re looking at people paying a lot of attention of others' budgets and to per capita, how is this work ‘Reformed and always reforming’? How is it about change but also impact?”
Images from Liberty Community Church and Northside Healing Space, Minnesota, September 2023. Photos courtesy of Eric Thomas.
Thomas shares co-moderator duties with the Rev. Anna Kendig Flores, Anti-Racism Coordinator for the Presbytery of the Twin Cities. In addition to hearing from members of Minnesota mid councils who joined meetings at Westminster Presbyterian Church, GACOR learned about synod representation work from its synod data reporting team.
Thomas said GACOR enjoyed connecting with mid council leaders from the Minneapolis area and gathering in Westminster’s “dynamic and community-engaged” spaces.
“We also went to the Northside Healing Center at the Liberty Community Church to sit with ministry leaders. For some time it has been providing space for young people, book discussions, art making, spiritual direction and a host of ministerial outreach services in the community. In a Matthew 25 'when did we see you' sense, the center is connecting to the community to make ministry relevant.”
GACOR members also visited the George Floyd Global Memorial.
“It was transfixing to be in that space and interact with keepers of the grounds who said the system isn’t broken in that community, it’s working exactly how it was designed to work,” Thomas said. Despite the worldwide outcry after Floyd’s murder, Thomas was told that locally, “nothing has changed.”
That lack of progress left him thinking about denominational accountability.
“As we invite people into nominations and look at decision-making opportunities, how does the multiplicity of our denomination show up, making us stronger as we discern?” he asked. “How do we live into a theological and missiological understanding of representation as going beyond bean counting and making sure different people are in the room at the same time — including people of color in meeting spaces who are not just additive to the normativity of whiteness.”
For theological inspiration he goes back to Pentecost, “where the Holy Spirit empowered people to speak in their own tongues and be understood. No one changed on Pentecost.”
Close up of GACOR activity canvas, Minneapolis, September 2023. Photo courtesy of Nicole Cruz-Talkington.
On Sunday, GACOR members attended worship at New Life Presbyterian Church in Roseville. Following the service, they spoke with the congregation’s pastor.
“After we had decided Minnesota was going to be our [fall] meeting place, we connected with the Healing Center and with New Life,” Thomas said. “Same the restaurants and vendors we worked with.”
Land and labor acknowledgements are important, he said. “But how do we lift up materially those places and people we’re naming at the beginning of meetings? That’s a praxis of GACOR wherever we go: activating intentional sharing of resources.” Thomas hopes this example serves as an invitation for other commissions and committees to do the same wherever they gather.
On their next to last day in Minnesota, GACOR members sought to reinspire and reaffirm their own sense of purpose, working together on a communal reflection activity cutting fabric into boat shapes they then placed together on a canvas.
“Nicole came up with that activity,” Thomas said, noting that each member “wrote the names of people we carry with us wherever we go onto our fabric piece … It was very crafty but also very meditative. In the end the pieces together looked like a quilt but with glue instead of thread.”
Cruz-Talkington said her inspiration for the activity was a passage from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ letter “Do Not Lose Hope, We Were Made for These Times.”
“I think remembering the love our committee is rooted in helps us do the difficult work that is always before us,” Cruz-Talkington said. “Remembering the love we are rooted in, and remembering that people of every faith in every time have been faced with great challenges, helps us to see our work in a hopeful way ... At the end of our last meeting, I cut out each piece and handed it back to our members with a blessing. Love goes with us, before us, and behind us, always, wherever we go.”
Thomas encouraged synods to submit their data reports to GACOR, because they are an important part of GACOR’s understanding the multitude of representation stories throughout the denomination, and how “representation is manifesting in [each] vineyard.”
For anyone interested in becoming a committee member, he recommended contacting valerie izumi, Assistant Stated Clerk, General Assembly Nominations.
“We are grateful to work with a whole bunch of people working on GA226 plans and helping to reform our place of being into a higher, more just, more representative ground,” Thomas said.