The General Assembly Season continues with a regular GA that has been delayed from the usual week in the Spring.
Tomorrow morning in Belfast the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will convene their 2021 General Assembly in Belfast with a worship service and the installation of the Moderator, the Right Rev David Bruce. If the name sounds familiar, he was installed as Moderator in 2020 but without an Assembly to preside over. It was the consensus of the church that he should serve a second term thus giving him the opportunity to preside over an Assembly.
The Assembly runs through Wednesday 6 June in an Assembly Hall and an overflow conference room with socially distanced seating. There will be no in-house gallery with observers.
Here is some info to help follow along:
- I expect the live stream to be embedded on the PCI home page or maybe in the 2021 Assembly Overview page. The overview page also includes links to just about every other resource for the GA.
- The 2021 General Assembly Business Page has a summary docket of report dates and times.
- Each day of the Assembly will also have its own detail page: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The schedule is also available as a single PDF.
- Most of the resources for the Assembly be found on, or linked from, the Assembly Overview page. The Reports, i.e. the “Blue Book”, is available on their own page and the Supplementary reports will download automatically from this link.
- The polity documents include the main document, The Code, as well as the helpful A Guide to Assembly Procedure.
- The News page will carry official press releases and news items including the pre-Assembly press release which contains a rundown of the major moments and business at the Assembly this year.
There are plenty of social media contact points for the Assembly, beginning with the official Twitter account @PCIAssembly which always provides a detailed and comprehensive report of the Assembly. Please note the comprehensive part, because the level of detail can make the feed very busy. This is generally a good thing but you have been warned that the number of tweets will be very high. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) The official moderator’s feed at @PCIModerator has become a great source as well, but don’t count on a lot during the Assembly itself. We will see if Mr. Bruce tweets during GA. The official hashtag for the Assembly is #pciga21. And it is worth keeping an eye on the PCI Facebook page as well. I would add at this point the church’s divinity school, Union Theological College (@UnionTCollege).
My list of others to watch for interesting and useful updates always starts with outside reporter and insightful commentator Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast). For following some of the active leadership of the church, I would point to former Moderator Rob Craig (@RobCraig54) and Cheryl Meban (@cherylmeban) who is a university chaplain and has been active on church committees. It is also worth watching the folks at PCIcast (@PCIcast) who do a podcast about the activities of the church. And so far David McCullagh (@wdsmccullagh) has popped up but others have been a bit quiet up to this point. I will be updating over the next day as things get rolling.
The business of the Assembly this year is extensive and for a better review, I would point you to the GA preview news article and the comments there by the Clerk of the General Assembly, the Rev Trevor Gribben. In particular, Tuesday will be a particularly busy day and that specific preview is available as well.
A couple items coming up Tuesday are an extension, or maybe better termed “fallout”, from the 2018 Assembly. One of these is the adoption of language of membership that referred to “a credible confession of faith” for admission to the Sacraments and pastoral guidance in relation to homosexuality. This was a term that caused some confusion and was used without substantial guidance as to what it meant. A task group is bringing a report on this (found in General Council Report – Section 2) which includes two resources on these areas that have already been reviewed by the presbyteries and revised by the task force.
This Section of the General Council Report also includes a resource on Human Identity from another task group which will certainly be closely watched as well.
Another important report from a task group reporting under the General Council Report (this in Section 3) looked at how the General Assembly operates and how controversial items are handled, especially when they are so actively discussed leading up to the GA. Their report on “Decision Making and Dissent within the Presbyterian Church of Ireland” outlines some additional discussion that can occur on the Presbytery level leading up to the Assembly as well as Assembly procedures during the meeting.
To get the 10,000-meter overview you might want to check out the Executive Summary in Section 1. It is important to note that the General Council Report (in four sections) makes up almost one-half of the whole Blue Book.
There is more in the General Council Report so it should be a full day. One other item in the spotlight ahead of the Assembly is the Council on Global Mission’s report including recommendations for a “divest and engage” policy regarding fossil fuels as well as a statement about “Reviewing PCI’s Investment Policy” that talks about the importance of creation care in the how the church invests its money.
There will be lots going on in the next three days and this will be an Assembly to watch closely. Our prayers are with the commissioners and leadership of the Assembly and the church for this meeting and the year ahead.
