I love the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Although not a native, I have found an ecclesiastical home here. Love and loyalty, however, should be neither blind nor naïve. For the reasons I have outlined above (and I can think of more), the OPC model of a small Church ministered to by a solo pastor is not indefinitely sustainable.
I have a very modest proposal to enable the OPC to endure and maintain her witness to Christ for many more years: wherever feasible, merge congregations until the average OP Church has the size and financial resources to weather economic storms and pay two or three pastoral salaries. In many urban areas, this could be done (almost) overnight: join a congregation with a building to one without; continue to pay both pastors; bank the money saved on rent for a rainy day, or even to fund a new Church plant.
As an urban pastor, I am not well-positioned to offer recommendations to rural congregations. However, it occurs to me that one strategy would be to invert the recommended urban program. Rather than consolidating worship facilities and multiplying pastoral staff, consider holding on to the buildings and consolidating pastoral staff. Rather than three or four Churches with three or four pastors, create a circuit of four or five congregations which could be shared by two or more pastors. In Regional Churches with both rural and urban constituencies, urban Churches might be able to assist rural ones with the extra funds they will now have lying around.
The challenges are great, but we already have the resources to meet them. All we have to do is decide to do so. In that sense, it really is a modest proposal.
(And God bless Jonathan Swift.)
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