Overtures

FOG (Form of Government) Proposal

19 May 2008 Update
Many people have asked for a template they can use for letters to their GA commissioner contacts. Below are two links to the same template letter in two document formats.

www.presbymusic.org/files/DearGACommissioner.doc
(Microsoft Word Document)

www.presbymusic.org/files/DearGACommissioner.txt
(Plain Text Document)

If you need assistance in preparing your comments for your commissioners, please contact the PAM office or Craig Dobbins (cdobbins@sewickleypresby.org) or Roberta Jones (rbj15211@aol.com).

Do it now! GA is next month! Thank you!

DETAILS: As many of you are aware, the Form of Government Task Force will be submitting an almost complete revision of the Book of Order to the General Assembly in June. This revision contains nothing that either enriches or protects the lay employees of the church. PAM made suggested revisions to the task force earlier this year, but they accepted none of our suggestions. (For more info on this see the Christmas 2007 PAM Newsletter.) We are asking you to please contact the GA commissioners from your church or presbytery (the presbytery offices can prove a list) and encourage them to vote against accepting the revisions as submitted by the task force, and to instead have the revisions sent to the presbyteries for comment and suggested changes with possible adoption of the revisions in 2010. We are seeking these revisions for all lay employees, not just musicians.

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12 May 2008 Update

As many of you are aware, the Form of Government Task Force will be submitting an almost complete revision of the Book of Order to the General Assembly in June. This revision contains nothing that either enriches or protects the lay employees of the church. PAM made suggested revisions to the task force earlier this year, but they accepted none of our suggestions. (For more info on this see the Christmas 2007 PAM Newsletter.) We are asking you to please contact the GA commissioners from your church or presbytery (the presbytery offices can prove a list) and encourage them to vote against accepting the revisions as submitted by the task force, and to instead have the revisions sent to the presbyteries for comment and suggested changes with possible adoption of the revisions in 2010. We are seeking these revisions for all lay employees, not just musicians.

If you need assistance in preparing your comments for your commissioners, please contact the PAM office or Craig Dobbins (cdobbins@sewickleypresby.org) or Roberta Jones (rbj15211@aol.com).

Do it now! GA is next month! Thank you!

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10 December 2008 Update

The Christmas 2007 issue of the PAM Newsletter contains an article describing the FOG Proposal in great detail. The article begins on the cover of the newsletter. Download the newsletter in a PDF format with the link below.

2007 Christmas issue (3.7 MB)	Click the icon above to download your free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

 

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26 October 2008 Update

A message from...

PRESBYTERIAN ASSOCIATION OF MUSICIANS
PITTSBURGH CHAPTER

Dear Colleagues,

Greetings to you all from the wonderful city of Pittsburgh. The information in this letter is a bit complicated so we urge you to print it and have it in hand for better understanding of what has and what must happen. Of course, this is all about our proposed overture. Hopefully you will be able to follow the sequence and comprehend what may seem like some rather bureaucratic language.

The task given to the Pittsburgh Chapter of PAM by the national board of PAM was to take leadership for the overture about which we talked at Westminster Conference and in which we understand there is a lot of interest throughout PAM and in other Presbyterian groups. You haven’t heard from us before, but we have been working!

We learned that the General Assembly has a Task Force working on rewriting the Form of Government section of the Book of Order, that a draft of their proposed revision was on the website, and that the task force was asking for comments and suggestions. With the assistance of our Clerk of the Presbytery, Jay Lewis, and Mark Tammen, the GA staff person working with the task force, we wrote what PAM wants the revised FOG to say about fair and just treatment of lay employees. We wrote a letter to Mark Tammen, the GA staff person working with the task force. This letter went to them in time for their consideration at their meeting in Louisville in August. They were to have revisions and a “final” draft out to the churches in September. Just a few days ago that revision was put on the PCUSA.org website, and we are very sad to see that NONE of our suggestions were included in what they are sending to the churches.
(See PCUSA.org, Form of Government.)

We have one more chance to work on this task force. Now that the proposed revision is out to the churches, the task force is soliciting comment until mid-November and it will then send a final version to GA 218th for an approval vote…
The task force hopes that sessions, presbyteries, and synods will prayerfully study these documents and provide us with comments and feedback by November 15, 2007. At its next meeting, November 29 – December 1, 2007, the task force will prepare its recommendations for submission to the 218th General Assembly for approval in June 2008.

THIS IS WHERE YOUR WORK BEGINS!!
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!!

This must go to your Sessions in October so they can forward it to the Task Force before November 15. If you are not currently a member of the Session in your church, your first step is to ask the moderator of your Session for permission to speak at their next meeting. If you are on the Session, advise the moderator you would like time on the agenda. We need you to go to your Session with the attachment #2 letter (click to download the attachment www.presbymusic.org/files/PAMchurchLtrToTaskForce.doc) in hand and ask them to sign off on it and send it on to the task force. We are asking that the same language come from all of us to have more impact. The task force revision is many pages, so unless your session is really going to look at the whole thing, you probably need to take to the meeting only copies of the sections we want rewritten and, of course, enough copies of the letter to go around at the session meeting .The letter should be on your church’s letterhead and signed by the moderator and clerk of session (perhaps you can have it typed and ready for signature).

Please note that our proposed language is not limited to musicians. There are lots of horror stories out there about musicians and there are lots of horror stories about secretaries and other church staff people. It is probably not necessary to hang out the dirty laundry for your sessions, telling them of specific cases. If it hasn’t happened in your church, it probably has happened nearby, and word does get around. It is a wise move, to ask your session how they could possibly vote against such a positive document which protects dedicated church employees from unfair and unjust employment practices.

You can also ask your sessions to take the letter to the presbytery, asking for approval for the presbytery to submit the letter to the task force. Take the letter to your friends in neighboring churches and ask them to take it to their sessions. We need a lot of letters going to Louisville for the task force to see we are serious about this and our churches are serious about it also. The revised FOG contains nothing about lay employees rights, privileges, or responsibilities; it just ignores us!

If we are not successful, the next time crunch will be tighter. If the task force doesn’t approve it in their Nov 29 – Dec 1 meeting, we will have to go back to our sessions to start the process of an overture to General Assembly.

Thank you for the help you are giving to lay employees everywhere. If you have any questions, please contact any of the following:

Alan Barthel, Executive Director, National PAM, Louisville, KY
888-728-7228 xt 5759 alan.barthel@pcusa.org

R. Craig Dobbins, Director of Music Ministries, The Presbyterian Church, Sewickley, PA
412-741-4550 xt 205 cdobbins@sewickleypresby.org

Roberta B. Jones, Organist, Calvary Presbyterian Church, Indiana, PA
412-431-8161 rbj15211@aol.com

In His Service,

R. Craig Dobbins Roberta B. Jones
For the Pittsburgh Chapter

Click the following link for the attachment attachment #2 letter (click to download the attachment www.presbymusic.org/files/PAMchurchLtrToTaskForce.doc)