eLINK is the name given to an overture that will be before the 208th General Assembly of the PC(USA). This article helps explain some of the reasoning that went into eLINK's creation.

eLINK:  Blending within the Bounds
by Jeff Arnold, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Beaver, PA
and Bill Teague, Pastor, Langhorne Presbyterian Church, Langhorne, PA 

Recently one of our congregations asked a consultant to take a look at the way we were doing things with an eye to suggesting changes that might make our ministry more effective.  They discovered several things, but none more significant than the way one of our widely perceived strengths was tripping us up week after week.

Several years ago we had begun to blend praise choruses and other contemporary music into our otherwise traditional worship service. The congregation and visitors alike responded well.  The quality and style of our worship service became one of the most attractive features of our life together.  But then things changed just a little bit.  The praise music moved just a just a step or two towards the edgier side of things, though hardly radical by any measure.  At the same time, the new church organist, a brilliant musician, began to take our wonderful pipe organ to places it had not been in years with the kind of repertoire that has given glory to God in the higher churches for 250 years.  Hymns were played with a flourish that sometimes lost the melody line and slightly outpaced the singing ability of the congregation. Suddenly our worshiping community was very anxious.  We had embraced blended worship with enthusiasm, but something had gone wrong.

The consultants saw that we were attempting too much of a good thing.  As long as our blend of music and styles stayed within a reasonable range, we were able to move within that range without the awkward transitions and jarring contrasts that were now making us all so anxious. 

Thanks to the insight of the consultants, we’ve begun to move back to a bounded blend and we can sense the easing of congregational anxiety Sunday by Sunday.  Our organist wishes she could play a little more Bach and the praise group misses some of their more syncopated favorites, but the congregation is worshiping together and is being sent more effectively by and from worship into mission in Christ’s name. 

The Logic of Blending
We realize we are speaking about blending worship to an American church that cherishes an almost unlimited smorgasbord of worship styles, from traditional to seeker, Celtic to liturgical, leather-clad biker to Pacific Islander. For some “blended” is one of those styles; the style that attempts to figure out how to use a hymnal and a PowerPoint in the same service. 

We are suggesting that blended worship is more than that.  Whatever the chosen style of a congregation, blending already occurs in every worship situation.  Each congregation has a preferred range of music and worship style that "works" for that congregation, whether that style is spelled out explicitly or understood implicitly.  For some the range is from pop to grunge; for another the range is from Bach to traditional hymns; but if it “works,” it works within bounds – grunge to Bach rarely works.

Denominational Blending
We believe that the logic of soft blending, “blending within the bounds,” applies to denominations as well.   Specifically, we have in mind the historic mainline denominations, of which ours is one, that are attempting unsuccessfully to hold themselves together as communities that celebrate their diversity – a diversity that extends from conservative, historic Trinitarian orthodoxy to the heterodoxies of sexual liberation, neo-gnosticism and social deconstructionism.

Diversity of approach and understanding can be a very good thing in a denomination just like blending of music and worship styles can be a very good thing in a local church congregation. But just as a single worship service cannot effectively blend jazz, reggae, gospel, spiritual and heavy metal with the contents of a typical denominational hymnal, so the historic denominations, in our case the PC(USA), are not equipped to handle exclusive, contradictory belief systems without flying apart.  They are flying apart.  They are not working. The people are anxious.  We are attempting to blend theologies and worldviews; but the bounds of the blend are too wide.  We become focused on process rather than product, method rather than mission

What Alternative?
While intent on celebrating diversity, i.e. blending without bounds, our denomination has not offered much of an alternative to business as usual. The advocates of radical diversity ask us to stay the course, trusting that our wild blending will somehow work out in the end as we come to understand each other.  Another option, often proposed by conservatives who by nature are more individualistic and idealistic, is schism by any other name.  The dream of schism is that if we keep forming more and more denominations, at some point we will get "church" right.  Presbyterians in the United States have been chasing the dream of “getting it right” for nearly three centuries.

There is a third alternative, but unfortunately it is the subject of too little discussion.

The 218th General Assembly has before it Overture 03-05, the eLINK Overture from Beaver-Butler Presbytery.  The eLINK overture makes small changes to the form of government so that presbyteries and synods may form and re-form within theological and missional, rather than solely geographic boundaries.  Imagine that, Presbyterians getting together because theology and mission form the heart of who we are and what we do.

We might call eLINK the soft blend alternative to the mind-numbing and wild blending proposed by the progressives and institutionalists on the one hand, and the ever-narrowing and increasingly isolated dogmatism of the new denominations, on the other.  Its boundaries are generously wide, but not so wide as to trap us in a structure that protects diversity but immobilizes mission. 

If eLINK were to pass, congregations languishing in unfriendly presbyteries – places where they are simply too far outside the accepted bounds of theology and mission to be able to participate in common ministry – would be able to move to friendlier places, or to create new judicatories. Presbyteries and synods dying of too much of a “good” thing, a diversity so wide that all energy is spent on maintaining that diversity, would either make adaptive changes (bound their diversity) or face extinction.  Conservatives and/or liberal congregations, who assume the justice and rightness of their causes, would be free to unite with like-minded folks in presbyteries and synods of their own choosing.  But then these blended-within-bounds communities of congregations and presbyteries would be required to prove that they know how to do, and be, church.  The discussion just might move from schism (among conservatives) and tolerance (among liberals) to ecclesiology and renewal.

ELINK doesn’t favor one theology over another or one set of boundaries over another; it favors effective ministry for the sake of Christ. 

Imagine, a denomination focusing on belief and mission instead of division or worse, mindless connection (that is blending with no bounds).

Well, it appears that we will be left to imagine.  The response from conservatives, progressives and the denominational bureaucracy has been underwhelming.  Progressives accuse us of trying to break apart our unbounded, diverse denomination as if the status quo is healthy.  One group of conservatives is plotting exit strategies, looking for a safe, narrow blend of people just like themselves, while another is bent on imposing a rigidly bounded blend on all. 

Meanwhile, the Advisory Committee on the Constitution recommends disapproval of eLINK mostly because it is new and different, citing historic patterns and generations-old assumptions as primary reasons to reject the new idea.  So rather than being open to a new thing, we are left to battle ordination standards, property regulations and a new Form of Government that seems to provide more fog than clarity.  

The eLINK overture will create space within the PC(USA) for the incubation of new ideas, connections, and purposes.  We understand that an eLINK world will be different, messy and unpredictable.  We have a hunch that is why most of our leaders would rather ignore it than discuss it.  One denominational leader told us that he thought our idea had merit, but that few of his colleagues would support it since many them are hoping this "thing" (the PC(USA))holds together until they reach retirement age.  Score one for the honor of God and the building of Christ's kingdom.  A key renewal leader, declining to endorse or reject eLINK, cautiously offered that "we must be careful to not anticipate where the Spirit might be leading us next."  You don’t have to listen too carefully to hear in his words a beautiful definition of non-leadership.

It’s not surprising that lay persons and elders appear to "get" eLINK a lot faster than pastors and the institutional leaders of the denomination.  They get it, because it's wonderfully simple. They understand that reasonable blending makes sense. McDonald’s doesn’t sell hammers and Home Depot doesn’t sell hamburgers.   Professional church leaders don't get it because they fear loss of a kind of control.  The crippling paralysis of unbounded blending guarantees their positions.

Renewal group leaders, progressives and denominational bureaucrats read eLINK and then hope it goes away.  Why? Because they all have a vested interest in the jarring, anxiety-provoking, unbounded blending that has come to define our life together. 

eLINK modestly suggests that theological and missional blending within the denomination needs the same kind of generous boundaries that go to make blended worship effective in so many of our churches.  Would you at least give this overture a chance? 

The text of the eLINK overture is available at here

or by clicking on the 03-05 link at the official GA site. 

You may contact us by clicking here or using the contact tap above.