It's looking for a Stated Clerk, which is a very particular pastoral position. Stated Clerks are responsible for managing the policies, procedures, and protocols that we Presbyterians are prone to inflicting on ourselves. They've got to keep track of everything, be versed in parliamentary procedure, know the Presbyterian Book of Order backwards and forwards, and be able to graciously interpret the byzantine and endlessly emergent thicket of well-meant and impeccably wordsmithed regulations we Reformed-types generate.
That, and be responsive to the needs of scores of congregations, all of which are filled with their own complex interpersonal and organizational dynamics. That, and know the histories of those communities, and the relationships between them, and their connections to and within Presbytery.
Being an effective Stated Clerk requires a very particular set of skills, with which I myself am not blessed. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the souls who've performed that task, because they're rare gems.
Thirty years ago, when I entered the journey of ministry, there was a bench of folks who had that skillset. They were process thinkers who enjoyed and found intellectual satisfaction in the intricacies of the systems we Presbyterians built. They had lawyerly minds, which I say as a positive thing. And they'd spent time studying the process, because someone needed to know what the heck was going on when we fielded a motion from the floor to call the question on an amendment to an amendment to a motion.
This sort of person increasingly does not exist. As the Presbyterian Church USA continues to contract, the souls whose lived experience and gathered wisdom lent themselves to the requirements of Stated Clerkdom are aging out. There are some young folk in the church, sure, but their interests don't tend to bend towards the care and tending of the aforementioned policies, procedures, and protocols.
Thing is, you need those gifts to manage the life of a complex organization. In a small church, that's less the case, which is why I prefer the organic character of the intimate community.
But in larger and more complex communities, the absence of clear decision-making processes can be catastrophic. Where there's crisis or conflict, poorly designed or hazily understood policies can paralyze systems and deepen antagonisms. Like faulty code in a program, the whole thing can crash. Ever see a meeting go off the rails because literally no-one knew what to do next? Or get trapped in a bureaucratic sinkhole that's as merciless as something out of Gilliam's Brazil? Lord have mercy, do we not want that to be our future.
So I had this thought. Perhaps the optimal Stated Clerk would be a cyborg.
Meaning, a person willing to use fully agentic artificial intelligence to support their work. Where a handful of years ago such systems were clumsy and prone to full-on Carlos Casteneda peyote hallucinations, AI is starting to become a more reliable partner. It's particularly good at interpreting and operationalizing complex structural data, meaning legal and regulatory systems. It can respond, via email or verbally over the phone, immediately to queries. It can juggle a functional infinity of varying demands and tasks, and do so twenty four hours a day. It can update itself instantly, as processes shift and change. It would never ever burn out or get frustrated. Such a system could be remarkably useful.
Yes, it's impersonal. Perhaps a weensy bit on the creepy side, assuming you're creeped by sentient machines. That's why you'd not go full AI, but have an adequately experienced homo sapiens sapiens partnering with an intelligent and optimally-pretrained system.
I'm not sure, given the increasingly reflexive resistance to AI, if my progressive comrades would be open to that. Some might not.
But what is AI good at, if not doing those things that require endless patience, granular detail, and a superhuman tolerance for oft-maddening complexity?
Danged if it doesn't seem like a promising option.
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