Please don't shoot the piano player: give thanks for the mortal but gifted people willing to serve through national church structures.

After eight years here at church offices, I sometimes still have difficulty navigating my way around or finding the person I need. And I work here! During my tenure, the physical building has been revamped and the interior reconfigured several times. But more important has been the constant turnover of personnel. How many of the new staff hired during restructuring in 1991 and 1992 have survived? Not many.

As a result, the past Assembly made a number of appointments, including the appointment of Ian Morrison as the "permanent" general secretary of the Life and Mission Agency. Several others received two-year appointments, perhaps reflecting a cautious attitude in the wake of restructuring, but also leaving the future open to respond to new directions from the think-tank and Assembly. But this action alone gives me no confidence we have learned from our past experiences.

Before moving on, we need to reflect on past decisions. What happened to restructuring? A process, initiated by the General Assembly with high hopes and enthusiasm, lies in ruin.

Some, noting that a number of the non-survivors are women, have suggested anti-feminism lies at the root of the problem. If true, it does not seem to inhibit us from appointing more women to important positions. Although numbers alone don't answer this challenge, I suspect that when the dust settles there will be as many women serving here as under restructuring.

Others suggest we have witnessed the old guard fighting a rearguard action to avenge a restructuring process they never liked or accepted. I fail to see evidence of this. But that may be because I am part of the so-called old guard.

Some claim restructuring chose the wrong people for the right jobs. Others that the right people were chosen for the wrong jobs. Some lay blame on the new people brought into the system while others contend the system itself was defective.

The restructuring committee chose people through a national search by committees having all the proper balances and geographical representation -- a process hailed as the most democratic and through ever conducted by our church. Whether the system itself is defective, someone wiser will need to comment. I find good people, given the opportunity, can usually make even poor systems work.

The heart of the answer, however, lies elsewhere.

A parable of our predicament played out at the recent Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). It refused to confirm James Brown for a second term as executive director of the General Assembly Council despite the unanimous recommendation for renomination by the committee reviewing his performance. The decision stunned many. Four years previously, Brown had been carefully chosen by his church to lead it out of the wilderness. To some observers, it appeared the Assembly returned to the practices of the Middle Ages when disputes were "solved" by beheading the king. But another observer noted: "Brown came to the office four years ago as a caring, sensitive pastor. He came to be viewed as a tyrannical, uncaring despot."

Neither Brown's supporters nor our restructuring committee accurately gauged the feeling of alienation between the national office and congregations. Although restructuring talked about decentralization, the view that there must be a strong central office so congregations could be directed to do right prevailed in the end. Many believed, despite warnings to the contrary, that restructuring would resolve all our problems, reverse the statistical decline, increase youth participation, act for justice in society, and on and on -- impossible expectations.

To operate these new structures, we sought saviours who, like Brown, paid a price for the mythology under which we operate. Unfortunately, beheading is never bloodless.

The Old Testament tells of the people demanding a king so that Israel could become prosperous and powerful. Over the protests of both God and Samuel, a king is chosen. With a king, not only do the people still have many of their old problems, but new ones surface. Suddenly, they had a palace to maintain, an army to feed and skyrocketing tax bills.

The new people now at church offices are probably more sensitive and hard-working than we deserve. They are not interested in maintaining an inflexible and autocratic system but in doing a faithful job in partnership with you. I hope we will give them that opportunity. And, in the month when we pause to give thanks, we might add to our list the names of those mortal but gifted folk who, despite everything that has happened, still willingly serve the national church.

The king is dead. Let us not attempt to replace him.