GA BLOG: Lunch with the Vice Mod

Landon Whitsitt, the 33-year-old pastor of First Church in Liberty, Mo., near Kansas City and I had lunch today. Image by Erin Dunigan

Just two pastors sitting down at the pub for a friendly lunch – with my recorder. Landon is Moderator Cindy Bolbach’s pick for Vice Moderator, so the assembly will almost certainly confirm him as Vice Moderator in a vote later this week.

I’ve known Landon in a web way for a while, as he has been active in conversations with Presbymergent, tweets in Presbyterian Twitter circles, and produces The God Complex internet radio show. Finally, though, I met Landon in the flesh (and took in his famed PC(USA) tattoo).

Before getting to the nitty-gritty of PC(USA) policy, we cleared up a few bona fides of another variety.

Q: iPhone or Android?

Whitsitt: Android, specifically the new myTouch 3G slide with plans to root it ASAP

Q: Mac or PC?

Whitsitt: I own an iMac but am awaiting shipment of a Linux computer with Ubuntu
Adam: That’s acceptable.

Q: Do you tweet what you had for breakfast?

Whitsitt: No. Even I find that boring.

Q: So, you were rocking the jeans on Saturday night?

Whitsitt: Yeah. I know when to dress up but I rarely need to….I will wear a tie when I speak to the assembly before they vote on me. If the context requires a tie, I will totally wear one.

(I was going to ask “Keen” or “Converse” but he was wearing old-school Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars so I didn’t need to.)

      Our wide-ranging and engaging conversation about social media, technology, and the church kept noting the many ways Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow and Vice Moderator Byron Wade conducted themselves during and after the 218th General Assembly. Landon and I agreed that Bruce and Byron opened many helpful social-media doors that will make the life of the current Moderator and Vice Moderator much easier. Already, however, Landon is finding himself self-censoring his tweets in a way he did not prior to the election Saturday night. Such is the life of an office-holder in the national church.

      “It’s no longer a sprint, but a marathon” Landon said, referring to the two years facing him and Cindy Bolbach. They plan to host a regular podcast for conversations with the church, and uphold a high standard for transparency in their duties. Both the moderator and vice moderator’s Facebook friend requests have grown exponentially in the past few days. Their walls are plastered with supportive comments.

      Since he’s a busy young pastor with four kids, I asked Landon the obvious question of his decision to stand for Vice Moderator: “Are you crazy?” He laughed, paused a moment and said, “Define crazy.”

      Landon comes from a long line of pastors, and though the pastors in his family and he don’t always agree – they aren’t Presbyterian, but more fundamentalist – he feels supported and affirmed by his family. Landon pointed to his time as a Theological Student Advisory Delegate at the 2003 General Assembly held in Denver as an important factor in his pastoral development. “General Assembly is where I learned how to love my church,” he said. “You show up at a meeting like this, where people passionately disagree but passionately love the church, and you see that the Holy Spirit does what is promised and shows up…and [the Spirit] makes us do things we never thought we would do, and empowers us to do things we always hoped we might do.”

      Before we parted ways, I asked Landon for a few blog recommendations which included PC(USA)-related blogs, broader church-related blogs, and non-church sites. A smattering:

      -GA Junkie by Steve Salyards, http://blog.gajunkie.com/

      -Pomomusing by Adam Walker-Cleaveland http://pomomusings.com/

      -A Wee Blether by yours truly (I’m just reporting what he said) http://adamjcopeland.com

      -the blogs of Bruce Reyes-Chow and Byron Wade, http://www.reyes-chow.com/ and http://presbyterian.typepad.com/vicemodblog/

      -The Church Geek, by Jim Bonewald, http://www.thechurchgeek.com/

      -Tribal Church by Carol Howard Merrit, http://tribalchurch.org/

      -Seth Godin’s site, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

      -and a number of modern design and architecture sites

      Landon remarked that the new PC(USA) website is “very pretty” and a huge improvement over the previous interface. Though he, and I agree there could be some tweaks to help easy navigation and we both are pining for RSS feeds of GA News

      A graduate of Louisville Seminary, Landon has served the larger church on the Committee on Theological Education. He is currently working on a book tentatively entitled, “Open Source Church.”   For sample chapters, see his blog at http://landonwhitsitt.com/ and follow him on Twitter @landonw.