Getting On With It

The 2010 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) appointed a "Commission on Mid Councils" to study and recommend ways in which to adapt the structures of the denomination to current realities. The commission completed its report prior to the meeting of this year's General Assembly, which you can read (here) if you are interested.  It is a long, detailed report, which will certainly be important to future historians when they write their histories of the mainline church in the early 21st century.

On page 14 (lines 7-13), the report states, "Our data clearly shows that many Presbyterians are calling for a shift from the top‐down model of our current structure to a model that is characterized by a church‐wide commitment to build up and support local congregations. Generally, congregations do not feel well supported by General Assembly agencies. Only 26% of session‐level respondents rated the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) "excellent" or "very good" and only 33% gave those ratings to General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC). There is a significant disconnect between local congregations and the agencies of the General Assembly."

I should say before anything else that it is easy for me as one who has not been involved in this process to stand on the sidelines and comment.  A great deal of time, effort, and prayer went into the report, which was devoted to listening to the concerns of Presbyterians across the church.  It is not fair to simply dismiss that time, effort, and prayer as wasted, even in the face of the fact that the 2012 General Assembly rejected the recommendations of the commission almost entirely (see here).

That being said, it seems to me sitting here in a quiet, distant corner of the denomination that investing huge amounts of effort in trying to reform national and regional church structures almost certainly isn't going to get us anywhere.  Where the PC(USA) and the other mainline churches will live or die is in the trenches of their local congregations and nowhere else.  It is time, then, that congregations and their leaders work out for themselves the relationships, connections, and real-time structures best suited to their needs.  As a humble example, four churches at the northern end of Utica Presbytery, New York, have taken action in the last 18 months to develop a cooperative partnership that may lead in the near future to a formal agreement to share resources.  All it took was for the two of the pastors involved to decide to "do something" and begin the process of consultation with their own sessions and the other churches.  In fact, these four churches are creating their own "missional structure" without benefit of General Assembly studies, reports, and debates.

One of the recommendations of the commission report was to establish experimental "non-geographic" presbyteries, something more conservative Presbyterians would like to see happen so that they can work together in like-minded presbyteries.  Instead of going through a big institutional struggle, those folks who want to start working more closely with other churches of a like theological mind should just start doing so.  Get together.  Do things together.  Start your own projects and programs.  Don't waste your time trying to change a whole denominational structure, which unsurprisingly is refusing to be changed for your convenience.  It is well past time that church leaders at every level of the church stop investing vast amounts of time doing things that don't really matter any more.  It is time to do what needs done and not worry about how those things fit into the larger structures of the church.

FPC Back Then

FPC, Lowville, 1943

A few weeks ago, I was scouting around looking for information on Utica Presbytery, the presbytery that First Presbyterian Church, Lowville, belongs to, and came across a 1943 centennial history of the presbytery that contains historical sketches and photographs of the churches in the presbytery.  Although the FPC building, a.k.a. "The Stone Church," is widely photographed, I suspect that this is one that most of those connected with the church haven't seen before.  And, the historical sketch is interesting as well.  So, here they are.

THE LOWVILLE CHURCH

Founded 1803

In 1803 sixteen pioneers organized the Congregational Church of Lowville at Stow's Square, a mile north of the present village, meeting in homes and the school house. This church was connected with the Black River Association and functioned regularly. A church was built and dedicated in 1819, and in the same year the relationship with the Black River Association was dissolved, and the church, assenting to the Presbyterian form of faith, united with the St. Lawrence Presbytery
on February 23, 1820. Thus Stow's Square Church became the First Presbyterian Society of Lowville.

In the meantime, in the village of Lowville, a church was organized in 1807, and was known as the First Congregational Society of Lowville. The pastor of the Stow's Square Church also served this church. This condition continued until July 11, 1822, when twelve persons, members of either the Stow's Square Church or the Congregational Society of Lowville, constituted themselves into a branch of the Presbyterian Church. Out of this organization grew what is now the First Presbyterian Church of Lowville. The early reports of the church were made to the Presbytery of St. Lawrence under the name of the Second Church of Lowville, and it was not until 1870 that the church reported to Utica Presbytery.

The clerk of the Stow's Square Church recorded in 1850 that there had been no meetings of that church for a year, and that its members were all supporting the church in Lowville. The fact is that the Lowville Church had absorbed the Stow's Square Church, and called itself the First Presbyterian Church. A monument now marks the spot on which stood the original Stow's Square Church.

In 1826 the Presbyterian Society of Lowville purchased the building of the Congregational Society and used it for services until it burned in December of the same year. A new church was built and dedicated on January 15, 1829, and this church burned almost exactly one year later. Undaunted, the church which now numbered 82 members, built a new stone church, which was completed and dedicated in 1830. This is the building which still stands at the head of the park in Lowville and is still in use. Extensive alterations were made on this building in 1906 and again in 1937, and today it stands as a monument to heroic souls of a day gone by, and is loved and cherished by all its members.

The manse was purchased in 1848, and the Session House, now known as the Chapel, was built in 1853. Twenty-three ministers have served the church since its founding in 1822. The present pastor. Rev. O. Theodore Anderson, was installed in 1929, and serves a congregation of 406 persons.