Life in the Presbyterian Center is strange sometimes (but good! That’s why you should work here… check out www.pcusa.org/onedoor, hee hee). Today, for instance, is the staff picnic. Forget the loads of bureaucratic paperwork, the hierarchy that is corporate church—I never feel more like I’m working for “the man” than when I go to the annual all-staff picnic. I think my co-worker Ann wrote a paper on this phenomenon in college. The whole point of corporate picnics is to create a family feel, but it really consists of 500 people, who largely don’t know one another, awkwardly schmoozing for the free food. So I’m about to go off and get my face painted at the staff picnic. Maybe there will be horsie rides, too. But hey, I’m not one to question the wisdom of free food.

The conundrum of our fine Presbyterian system at work is the creation of a peculiar phenomenon—the church as corporation. When you all out there think of “the church,” you think of saintly people praying a lot, doing good works, and just generally sharing the love of God… uhh, maybe that's just me. But after nearly two years of working at the Presbyterian Center, I know better. Behind the church is the corporation—imagine the movie Office Space, but your boss prays with you before giving you the pink slip.

The corporate church is the system that allows all the rest of you to be saintly. We create the resources you use in Sunday School. We plan the awesome conferences you attend—and personally pick you up from the airport, too. We do the training for the missionaries spreading the Gospel in Honduras, and publicize opportunities for you to become missionaries yourselves. In general, we distribute the money you put in the offering plate for the benefit of the entire Presbyterian Church (USA).

Actually, I only distribute a very tiny portion of your money. The “guy upstairs” (no, not God, silly—some man on the 6th floor, I think) distributes the money to me. But one thing you should learn quickly in this world, my friends—where your treasure is, there your bureaucracy will be also. The money I get has all sorts of strings attached. This ranges from the funds our office has because some rich Presbyterian in 1850 willed her entire estate to support “young ladies’ benevolent societies” or something like that, to the money that depends solely on how much you all donated last Sunday when the offering plate came around.

So just like your big Fortune 500 companies, we live and die by paperwork that keeps track of how we’re spending your money. I just finished up filling out a twenty-five-page position profile that described my job in its entirety, and then filled another one out for the intern. I probably used five or six pages of the form just describing what I do every day. But hey, it’s all about documentation.

Before you get too cynical about the corporation we call the Presbyterian Church, though, remember this—the real and only difference between PC(USA) and any secular corporation is that the people in this building are truly seeking to live and follow the risen Christ in every action. We believe in God and we believe in our ministries, or we wouldn’t kill ourselves trying to do them through staff reductions, political frays, and reduced budgets. We know that our call is to partner with the Spirit in nourishing people’s deepest needs. And we know that, whether it seems apparent or otherwise, we sow mustard seeds that will grow tall and strong.

“Because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” --2 Corinthians 4:18

Kelsey

PS—I just got back from the staff picnic. No face painting, but we did have cotton candy and a guy on stilts! I also got a bunch of free stuff, so it was totally worth it. Special kudos on the potato salad.

A 25 page position profile...that's not a profile, that's a short story.