Ordination committee convenes on its first day of meetings on June 25, 2024, with commissioner Sonya McAuley-Allen, a teaching elder, serving as vice-moderator. Photo by Randy Hobson
Ordination committee convenes on its first day of meetings on June 25, 2024, with commissioner Sonya McAuley-Allen, a teaching elder, serving as vice-moderator. Photo by Randy Hobson.
Gently charging the members of the GA Ordination Committee to be “flexible, patient and kind” with one another as their first long day of business got underway, committee moderator, Ruling Elder Laurie Warren Jones of The John Knox Presbytery, promised online participants that they would “all get through this together."
In fact, the very attributes that Jones invoked were much in evidence as members wrestled with the committee’s first two items of business, ORD-05 from the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, and ORD-06 from The Presbytery of the Highlands of New Jersey, both of which dealt with sensitive issues affecting individuals seeking ordination.
Both overtures, which occupied the day’s agenda, were borne out of the selection of Judges 19:1-30 by the Presbyteries’ Cooperative Committee on Examinations for Candidates (PCCEC) for the Winter 2023 Bible Exegesis Exam. The PCCEC is a permanent committee that manages the exams process for candidates for the ministry. Its choice of the story of the Levite’s concubine, an episode of extreme sexual violence and bodily dismemberment, generated considerable outcry and elicited an apology from the PCCEC.
Presenting ORD-05, On Amending G-2.0610 Regarding Documentation for Alternative Exams, to the committee, was the Rev. Emma Neishloss, overture advocate from the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta.
“Less than a month into my tenure, candidates were given Judges, and so began for me a new relationship with the senior ordination exams,” Neishloss said. “We have dealt with alternate requests for a variety of reasons — such as culture, language and neurodivergence — but this was the first time that we took it up for reasons of trauma.”
The overture, if approved by the Assembly, would strike from the Book of Order the requirement that a record of what “made the exam impossible” for the candidate be included in the public minutes of the presbytery.
“My committee believes strongly that we are to be shepherds,” Neishloss said. “It is always our hope that everyone comes out of this process as whole as they can be. Placing a detailed record of a traumatic encounter does little to help our committee do its important work.”
The overture, as amended twice — once to mirror the advice from the Advisory Committee on the Constitution and a second time to ensure that confidential details as to why a candidate had requested an alternate exam not be communicated to the presbytery — was approved by a vote of 37-6.
“I think the newly amended language does a good job of making clear that we are giving presbyteries or CPMs the option of protecting the privacy of individuals seeking ordination,” said MAD Dori Hjalmarson of Santa Fe Presbytery, “but we are also giving different ordaining bodies latitude and trust to communicate with each other without doing harm to a person seeking accommodations.”
As its second and final business item, the committee took up ORD-06 from The Presbytery of the Highlands of New Jersey, On Appointing a Committee to Review the Preparation for Ministry Process.
Overture advocate, the Rev. Tom Brown said the essence of the Highlands overture is to review and evaluate the process for those seeking ordination to the ministry of Word and Sacrament as well as call for an assessment to make changes to the PCCEC.
“Last week I took a team of youth and adults on a mission trip, where we learned that having the right tools is essential to doing the job well,” Brown began. “A similar realization has been percolating among other CPMs that these tools are a bit worn out or maybe they aren’t the right tools anymore. This overture would open up a larger conversation about the process with either recommendations to improve it or to start a new process.”
Sean Chow, a teaching elder member of the Task Force to Explore the Theology and Practice of Ordination — which was approved by the 225th General Assembly (2022) and is requesting an extension of its work until the 227th General Assembly (2026) — also spoke to the overture.
“Our recommendation is to add this to our charter because we are already doing this work,” Chow said. “To have an additional committee looking at it would be hard to coordinate.”
Leanne Masters, corresponding member with the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA), then reminded the committee that the denomination already has in place a permanent committee of the church that is charged to review the PCCEC.
“This committee will have its work reported to the 228th General Assembly (2028), but if the Assembly so chooses, it could request that it be presented to the 227th GA (2026),” Masters said. “That’s another option rather than forming another new committee.”
PCCEC moderator Rob Lowry, a teaching elder from the Presbytery of Arkansas, advocated disapproval of ORD-06 for much the same reason, namely because other groups within the PC(USA) are already working on these issues.
“Our advice to the committee is to embrace the idea in the overture,” Lowry said. “We would welcome the current task force having this work added to their brief and have us work with them in any way that we can. Our advice to disapprove is a problem of timing rather than content or intent.”
Because hearing from a diversity of voices on the subject of ordination was cited by the committee as being of paramount importance, members also heard from Courtney Steininger of the Advocacy Committee for Women and Gender Justice (ACWGJ) and Noha Khoury-Bailey of the Racial Equity Advocacy Committee (REAC).
Corresponding member Deborah Boucher-Payne, co-moderator of the Task Force on Ordination and synod executive for the Synod of Mid-America, assured committee members that if the motion were to be referred to the task force, it “already possesses the diversity that has been articulated.”
“It took a year for the moderators to achieve this level of diversity,” she added. “It would postpone the process and burden the structure by having two committees working on the same issues.”
ORD-06, following three failed motions to amend, was ultimately disapproved by a vote of 11 to 31. Subsequently a motion to refer ORD-06 to the Task Force to Explore the Theology and Practice of Ordination, along with the request that the next standard review of the PCCEC be reported to the 227th General Assembly (2026) as suggested by the Committee on the Office of General Assembly, was approved by a vote of 38-2.