Monthly Archives: June 2013

Presbyterian News Headlines For The Week Ending June 22, 2013

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With the numerous Assemblies and Synods that have been happening over the last few weeks I have pushed the news headlines off to the side in favor of my following and commenting on the meetings. Having gotten a bit caught up, let me offer a few of the headlines that caught my attention last week and maybe I will later do an omnibus to cover a couple of interesting items that transpired in the earlier weeks.

First, a few interesting items not from a Presbyterian body but other Reformed bodies that have parallels or application to Presbyterians.

From the Christian Reformed Church General Synod:

Join a Faraway Classis If You Must, Synod Tells Churches – The Banner. CRC Churches allowed to join a non-adjoining classis for theological affinity.

Synod Approves New Study on Ministry to Those Who Are Gay – The Banner

And so far from the Reformed Church in America (The meeting is still going on):

Reformed Church Removes ‘Conscience’ Exemption for Women’s Ordination – Christian Post

Problems at the Presbyterian University of East Africa with financial and academic scandals:

Presbyterian University of East Africa given six months to comply with law – Standard Digital News: Need to get a charter or else license will expire

Students expose more rot at troubled Presbyterian University of East Africa University – Standard Digital News

Uhuru Kenyatta’s principal secretary nominee caught in varsity scandals – Standard Digital News: Political nominee was chair of the University Council

From the Mizoram, India, Synod:

Marriage should be between man and woman only: Mizo church – Times of India

Mizoram Presbyterian Church issues dress code for women – Mizonews.net

In other news…

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance receives grant from Red Cross –
Disaster News Network: To coordinate housing for Sandy relief workers

Obituary: Elizabeth Anne Cameron ‘Betty’ Walls, former general secretary of the Overseas Council of the Church of Scotland – The Scotsman

182nd Meeting Of The Synod Of The RPCNA

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Beginning in just a few hours the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA) will begin its 182nd meeting at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana.

While there is no streaming of this meeting there is a good representation in social media. The best place for official updates and discussion should be the RPCNA Facebook page. In addition, we can expect updates from their news site Reformed Presbyterian Witness. Finally, RP Witness also has a Flickr stream which we can watch for images from the meeting.

For unofficial updates and maybe commentary The Aquila Report has indicated that they will be publishing updates from TE Nathan Eshelman. Also, based on previous years, the blog Gentle Reformation could provide some updates and review as well.

I am not aware of an official Twitter account for the RPCNA but they have been actively letting people know that the official hashtag is #rpsynod. There is some various activity there already but let me point you to TE Eshelman (@pastoreshelman) for now. I would also add that @FakeRPCNA could be interesting as well, particularly with this early tweet.

To my knowledge the documents for the meeting are not available on-line but for the polity documents you can download the full constitution with secondary standards from the Convictions page.

Reformed Presbyterian Witness provides a preview of some of the business the Synod will consider, including one that has an interesting echo from another meeting. This is a paper ascending from Alleghenies Presbytery that asks that a section be removed from the RP Testimony that states that presentation of offerings is warranted in worship. This is similar to an overture that the Presbyterian Church in America considered, and rejected, that would have added a similar line to the Westminster Confession of Faith.

In addition, the Synod will be considering polity changes that would clarify the relationship of pastors at a multi-pastor church. There is also a recommendation to move churches in Colorado and Wyoming from Midwest Presbytery to Pacific Coast Presbytery and rename the latter to Western Presbytery.

Finally, there has been some buzz on the internet about the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the closest cousin of the RPCNA in the Presbyterian branches, accepting an invitation for concurrent Synod meetings at Bonclarken in 2015. That could lead to some interesting discussion in this year’s and next year’s meetings leading up to the concurrent meeting.

And so we offer our prayers for the discernment of the commissioners to the Synod and wish them well for their meeting.

33rd General Assembly Of The Evangelical Presbyterian Church

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Beginning tomorrow morning the Evangelical Presbyterian Church begins ramping up to the start of the meeting of its 33rd General Assembly. There are a variety of workshops tomorrow, Tuesday 18 June, and then the keynote workshop for everyone on Wednesday 19 June. It is not until Thursday morning 20 June that the Assembly actually convenes and the formal business sessions begin and those will continue until noon on Saturday 22 June.

The meeting is being hosted by Cherry Hills Community Church in Highland Ranch, Colorado, on the southern edge of he Denver metropolitan area.

Lots going on at this meeting so here is information to help you follow along:

  • For the first time there will be live streaming – see the bottom of the Documents and Webcast page. Not clear if only the business will be webcast or if any of the workshops and worship will be as well.
  • Most of the necessary documents can be found on the Documents and Webcast page including the complete Commissioners Handbook as a single document or by all the individual reports, documents and communications on that page. Please not that at the bottom of the page are a number of replacement pages.
  • There are a number of schedules for the Assembly posted on the Assembly page, but maybe the most useful for those following the business of the Assembly is the General Assembly Schedule Summary
  • The polity documents include the Book of Order, the Westminster Standards and the Essentials of Our Faith
  • Official news about the Assembly will be found as both press releases and in their electronic newsletter EP News and probably their Facebook page as well.
  • The official Twitter hashtag for the meeting is #epc33 and the church tweets as @EPChurch
  • As the meeting gets going I will update with other individual Twitter accounts to follow, but for starters let me suggest @Matt_Everhard.

In looking through the material for the meeting it is clear that one thing the EPC is working through are changes related to its current rapid growth. For those that may have missed it, churches requesting dismissal from the PC(USA) are going to both ECO and the EPC in roughly equal numbers. As a consequence, this will be the largest GA the EPC has had with 620 commissioners from around the world. In terms of the denomination’s structure, there is a proposal to create the Great Plains Presbytery from regions currently covered by the Mid-America and the West Presbyteries. There is also an overture from the Presbytery of the Pacific to add to its region part of a valley with churches, some coming from the PC(USA), that have an affinity with the other churches in that region.

In another sign of growth, and also of the general situation in the nation regarding new health care regulations, the Assembly will be asked by the Board of Benefits to grant commission status to the Administrative Committee for the limited purpose of evaluating and considering whether the “EPC Medical Plan should be retained, revised, outsourced, or terminated.” And, the EPC now has a Chief Operating Officer, Phil Van Valkenberg, who will be introduced at the Assembly.

To further understand the growth in the EPC you can have a look at the Stated Clerk’s Report where under the statistical information he reports a growth of 92 churches in 2012 for a total of 416. In his report the Stated Clerk also reports that on the advice of the Fraternal Relations Committee he sent a letter to the World Communion of Reformed Churches supporting the membership of ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. (And the Assembly will be asked to endorse this action.)

OK, on to other business of interest…

The EPC has been revising their constitutional polity documents and at this meeting the Revised Book of Government will be brought for a second reading and approval and the Revision of the Book of Worship will be brought for a first reading. The approval of the Book of Government is requested to take place under special rules for approval of the full report without amendment. The press release about the meeting says of the revision: “The revisions produce a more consistent use of language and formatting
changes. The revisions do not represent significant changes in polity.”

In other business from the Fraternal Relations Committee there is a request to approve the Fraternal Agreement with the Evangelical Reformed Church of Kazakhstan (ERCK).

As I mentioned at the top, the first two days are loaded with workshops and seminars including Wednesday’s keynote seminar on the theme of the Assembly: “In Christ Alone” A day with Lee Strobel and Mark Mittleberg. It should be interesting.

And so we wish the commissioners well and offer prayers for the guidance of the Holy Spirit over the next few days, especially for their discussion and discernment in the issues before them.

183rd General Assembly Of The Cumberland Presbyterian Church

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  The second of the three General Assemblies this week is the 183rd General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church convening tomorrow in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Not one of the higher profile Assemblies it will have no streaming and probably very little social media traffic, but definitely some interesting issues that will be considered that have parallels in other branches.

UPDATE: There is some notable Twitter traffic under the hashtag #cpga13. I see no official tweets but @mcBROwn91, Matthew Gore (@cumberlandpres – maybe official?) and Jeff Biggs (@jeff_biggs) are providing helpful, frequent and some entertaining tweets.

Pretty much all of the information for this meeting can be found in the somewhat non-obviously named 2013 Preliminary Minutes of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. For the polity documents, the By-laws of the General Assembly Corporation can be found starting on page 12 of that document while much of the rest of the governance can be found in the Constitution.

The Preliminary Minutes also contain the reports for the meeting (beginning on page 32) and I wanted to walk through those and highlight a couple of business items.

The very first report (pg. 32), the Report of the Moderator, contains a couple of interesting items about synods. The first is this paragraph about the church’s structure:

When the Church realigned presbyteries and synods in 1988, the goal was to have stronger presbyteries with professional staff. For the first few years the synods were to be courts of review, however, I feel strongly that it is time to re-evaluate the role of the synod in our Denomination. Presbyteries are weak and have difficulty developing new congregations due to limited resources. Working co-operatively with presbyteries, the synods were the primary source of developing new congregations.

The second is a note and formal recommendation about unity with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America (CPCA). The outgoing Moderator urges several of the synods to hold general synod meetings this year that are union meetings with their corresponding CPCA synod.

This theme of potential union between the CPC and the CPCA is seen throughout the reports with it being mentioned under ecumenical relationships in the Stated Clerk’s report as well as a request by the Ministry Council (pg. 125) to delay their assigned task of setting Priority Goals until there is a unified body to set goals for. Along the same theme the Report of the Unified Committee on Theology and Social Concerns (pg. 266) encourages congregations to read the study paper Reflections on a Divided Church.

Towards the goal of unification of the CPC and CPCA a joint Unification Task Force (pg. 268) has been set up. Among other things, they present a three-phase program for working towards a union vote at each of the respective GA’s a year from now. They are asking that they can get the word out by visiting presbytery meetings throughout the coming year.

In an interesting recommendation regarding polity the Permanent Judiciary Committee (pg. 258), jointly with the Theology and Social Concerns Committee, had referred to it a memorial concerning ministers of other denominations serving communion in CPC congregations. The joint committees are recommending that the 1987 action permitting this be rescinded as a matter of “strengthening our Cumberland Presbyterian identity and connectionalism.”

In other business, the Ministry Council brings a handbook (begins on pg. 92) with the recommended process for training and certifying Elders as Lay Leaders for Small Congregations. And the Board of Trustees of Memphis Theological Seminary (pg. 224) asks the Assembly to encourage all probationers to consider being trained for ordained ministry at their seminary as well as a request for permission to undertake a capital campaign.

It should be an interesting meeting and I look forward to whatever updates or reviews of the discernment are made available. Prayers for the Holy Spirit’s guidance in your deliberations.

41st General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church In America

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  For American Presbyterians coming up this week we have a triple-header of General Assemblies with two beginning on Monday and one on Tuesday. Let me start with the 41st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America which will begin on Monday 17 June in Greenville, South Carolina. Committee meetings and pre-Assembly workshops and seminars happen on Monday and most of the day Tuesday with the Assembly formally convening Tuesday evening.

There is plenty of info related to this meeting. Here is some of the most useful and important material.

There should be no lack of activity on Twitter for this Assembly and the task is really to narrow the recommendation down to a reasonable number. As already mentioned the official news feed is @PCAByFaith and the hashtag will be #pcaga. As for individuals at GA… where to start? A few that have jumped out so far include Fred Greco (@fredgreco) who is promising coverage as well as Burk Parsons (@BurkParsons) and Ligon Duncan (@LigonDuncan) who are fairly high-profile in the PCA and active on Twitter. Probably should include Tim Keller (@TimKellerNYC) and Harry L. Reeder III (@HarryLReeder3) to the list but we will see how actively they are tweeting the meeting. The other early active and informative folks include William F. Hill Jr. (@WmHillJr). And for organizations you can include Ligonier Ministries (@Ligonier) although I suspect they will be tweeting more about their activities around the meeting than the meeting itself. There are a couple more I people expect to be active but have not seen them check in yet so I will update here if they do start tweeting.

Finally, I would be remiss not to bring to your attention @PCAPresbyter and his own unique view of the Assembly. And there is mention that there might be a microphone bingo card for the meeting (who gets up to speak) as opposed to my parliamentary bingo card.

There are several interesting seminars at the Assembly. On Thursday night Ligon Duncan and Tim Keller will be dialoging in a session titled Working Together in the PCA to Address our Cultural Moment. Thursday morning will be another seminar, Commending and Defending the Total Truthfulness of Scripture, with Ligon Duncan and Albert Mohler. In addition, the Gospel Reformation Network will be hosting a pre-Assembly conference on What Grace Does with keynote speakers Harry Reeder, Ligon Duncan, Richard Phillips and Al Baker. There are full lists of all the pre-Assembly activities and the seminars. And the seminars page does say that they will be recorded and available for purchase.

As far as business for the meeting, there are a number of very interesting overtures that I look forward to the discussion and discernment around. There are a significant number that involve judicial process, including requests for the Standing Judicial Commission to rehear or take original jurisdiction of certain cases. At this time I would note their inclusion in the business and will strive to produce a separate post regarding that business and the associated history.

But there are plenty of other interesting overtures and the ones dealing directly with confessional standards, and how the church relates to them, got my attention. One overture (No. 17) requests beginning the process to add to the list of required elements of worship in the Westminster Confession of Faith 21:5 “collections for the work of the church.” In other words, require the taking of a collection at a worship service. Another overture (No. 7) asks to “Establish a Study Committee on Sabbath Issue in Westminster Standards.” That overture notes that “a large number of officers ordained in the PCA take stated differences to the requirements for keeping the Sabbath or Lord’s Day…” and seeks to get a better understanding of the requirements. And finally, an overture (No. 8) asks to change the BCO section on officers receiving and adopting the Standards so that if an officer finds his views have changed he would have to notify his presbytery that his views differ from the Standards rather than differing from “the fundamentals of this system of doctrine” as is the requirement now.

Another interesting overture is the first one (No. 1) which asks for a special order for each Assembly that would put all the important stuff together starting on the second morning of the Assembly. The idea is to place the business together at a point that some commissioners could come for just one day and be able to have input on the items most important to the church. The overture points out that at the last GA only 25% of the commissioners were ruling elders and less than half of the churches even sent a commissioner – ruling or teaching elder. The hope is that this would consolidate the most important stuff at a given time so attendance can be improved among those who can not attend for the full week.

There is also an overture to form a new presbytery (No. 9) since James River Presbytery has now grown above the recommended upper limit of 30 congregations so it would be divided creating Virginia Tidewater Presbytery. There is also an overture to consider a largely paperless GA (No. 11). And another overture (No. 18) asks to correct a parliamentary problem by adding a line to BCO section 12-6 to restrict called meetings of the session to only those items of business in the call. Presently the GA, presbyteries and congregations — as well as Roberts Rules of Order — have this restriction but not called meetings of the session.

There are lots of interesting topics up for discussion this week and I am looking forward to hearing the various viewpoints expressed on these matters as well as several other. We pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the deliberations and discernment of the commissioners in the coming week.

209th General Synod Of The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church

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With some of my own presbytery stuff as well as a weekend in the wilderness to refresh the soul I have gotten a bit behind on these summaries. So, with apologies for not getting it out before hand, we join this meeting already in progress…
 


 The 209th Stated Meeting of the General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church convened with worship yesterday afternoon, 11 June, at Bonclarken in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

The schedule for the meeting, which runs through tomorrow evening, is posted on the Meeting web page. UPDATE: Business was completed a day early on Wednesday afternoon and the Synod adjourned.

The best way to follow is through the official updates on the ARP News blog with good comments and links to new stories on the official @ARPMagazine Twitter account. There are additional unofficial regular tweets by others including Clint Davis (@cleetus74) and Marty Taylor (@rev_marty). The hashtag is #synod2013.

Documents related to confessions and polity can be found on the Documents page, including the Form of Government, the FOG 2012 Draft, the Book of Discipline and the Directory for Public Worship.

Regarding the business there are two high-profile items that I am aware of. The first is the continuing discussions between the ARPC and it’s school, Erskine College and Seminary. The report of the Special Committee on the Synod-Erskine Relationship was presented this morning and according to the ARP News the Synod adopted revised procedures for removing members of the Board of Trustees and expressed their desire that the College would adopt a matching policy. In addition, it encouraged the team searching for a new president of the College to select  someone who’s views are the same as the Synod’s on the definition of an Evangelical [capitalization as in news report] and subscribing to the ARPC Standards. The Synod also encouraged the cooperation to continue and that the two bodies would have a close working relationship.

The second item is the continuing revision of the Form of Government, with a draft on the web site, as well as the Book of Discipline with special committees reporting on each of these. It will be interesting to hear the reports on the discussions and actions on those documents.

Finally, the ARP News reminds us of a continuing issue at the Synod — that of commissioners leaving early so that few are left to the last items of business and that a quorum is probably not present. A bit of concern and despair has been expressed about this and while this year they are depending on appeals to commissioners’ sense of responsibility there are mentions of possible structural changes to address this next year.

And so, our prayers continue for the General Synod and best wishes to all the commissioners in their deliberations. May they and the new Moderator, the Rev. Jeff Kingswood, be guided by the Holy Spirit as they are about the business of the Body of Christ.

General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church Of Ireland — Youth and Children: A Tale Of The Tweets

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I have been having fun the last couple of days following the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. There is no live streaming so the vast majority of what I can find out in real time is through Twitter.

A few transcripts and audio selections have found their way onto the internet. The church has posted the text of the addresses by the outgoing Moderator and the incoming Moderator. To hear parts of the Assembly you can check out a number of audio clips that Alan in Belfast has posted on his blog as part of his coverage of the Assembly meeting.  In addition, he has posted the report of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland Youth and Children Council (PCIYAC) from earlier today. (part 1, part 2)

And getting down to the subject of the Board of Youth and Children’s Ministries, they were fairly vocal in the debate yesterday concerning the proposal by the Structures Committee to reorganize and consolidate Boards. In particular, they were concerned about their loss of Board status as they would be included with the Council For Congregational Life and Witness. In the end the Structures proposal was not adopted this year by the vote of 190 to 119 so they continue as they are for another year.

This afternoon was the report of the Board of Youth and Children’s Ministries itself. The report went well, as you can hear for yourself on the audio clips above, lasting just over 40 minutes. One of the highlights was a video promoting Messy Church. Another was the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the Boys Brigade program and the impact that it has had, including a couple of testimonials from the floor. As for the seven resolutions in the report, nothing controversial that raised any real objections.

What did catch a number of people’s attention was the turnout of Assembly members for the report, at least at the beginning.

When the report began it was preceded by a prayer that included these lines transcribed from the audio clip:

“We thank you for those who serve within this Board, for the work of this past year. And now as they report help them to communicate to us what’s on their hearts and what’s of importance to them and to us.”

Thanks to Twitter we have some comments and pictures of the meeting space at about the time the prayer was being said. Among those tweets are these two:

 
James Currie @JCBelfast

Hall unfortunately nearly empty for the Youth and Children’s Board Report #pciga13 pic.twitter.com/pBrBMJTtD3
 

James McCormick @jamesmcc77

Not much interest in Youth & Children from PCI members. Poor show folks. #pciga13 pic.twitter.com/yUdxIRPj9o
 



As the prayer said “…what’s of importance to them and to us.” Not many of the “us.”

Now to be fair, these pictures were taken at the beginning of the report right after a short 15 minute break and the lines for coffee this week are reported to be very long. And the hall did fill up a bit more after this. Furthermore, this was not the only report with very low attendance at the beginning. But the reports on Twitter still seem to indicate that it never did fill up the way it had for some of the more high-profile reports. And comparisons continued later in the day.

So I am sitting here wondering do I really need to spell this out? Do I really need to point out that when we talk about the younger generation and their importance to the church and then we don’t show up for the report about their ministries it sends a pretty mixed message? Do I need to rant on about the theme of the Assembly being about transformation and then the report about working with the generation we are trying to transform the church for has so few people listening to it?

No I don’t think I need to do any of that. But what struck me about the events of today is that when there is so much concern and discussion about whether the church has a future I must admit that I was very surprised at the apparent lack of attention that was paid to an important Board that has responsibility for the youngest members of the Body of Christ, the ones that have the most riding on the future.

OK, rant over. Commentary mode off.

We now return to our regularly scheduled stream of tweets.

80th General Assembly Of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church

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Tomorrow evening in Moraga, California, the 80th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church will convene.

On the one hand, this is always a very easy General Assembly to follow since a great running daily narrative is traditionally posted by the church.

On the other hand, if you are trying to follow along “live” this is usually not a meeting that provides a lot to follow. There is no live streaming, I have not detected any Twitter chatter (please let me know if I am missing it and I will update) and the reports and business the Assembly will be considering is not posted to the web, at least not that I have found. UPDATE: From the comments the hashtag should be #opcga.

This is a rare occasion with the OPC Assembly on the west coast, in this case at St. Mary’s College of California across the hills from Berkeley in the Bay Area. It was tempting for me to take some time to go observe but this is not the year for me to be doing that.

The one item on the docket that has been discussed is the development of a psalter-hymnal. This is a project that will take almost a decade and at this point the choice of the contents has been made. The news article says that the list will be presented to the Assembly but not for final approval.

If you want the background info you can find their Confessional Standards, Book of Church Order, General Assembly Papers (white papers on various topics) and the Standing Rules on the General Assembly page. There is also a guidelines and policy piece referred to as the Instruments of the General Assembly.

I look forward to following along on the Daily Updates and we extend our prayers for the meeting and for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in your deliberations and discernment.

2013 General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church In Ireland

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Beginning in a few hours we turn our attention to the western side of the North Channel for the penultimate General Assembly in the British Isles. At 7:00 PM this evening, Monday 3 May, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will convene. This year will be a bit different as the Assembly takes one of their very occasional trips away from the Assembly Hall in Belfast (the last time was 22 years ago), this year to meet at the Millennium Forum in Londonderry.

If you are interested, here is some helpful information:

  • The Church has produced an excellent outline of their meeting on the Assembly page. There is also a news item with a narrative of the meeting and highlights for each day
  • The reports that were published in advance are available on the Reports Page
  • There are usually news reports from The Press Office. There is the news page or I will update if a separate page is used.
  • If you need a polity refresher you should check out their unified document, The Code as well as their Guide to Assembly Procedure
  • In the past the PCI has done a wonderful and prolific job of tweeting the Assembly at @pciassembly. For the meeting the hashtag is #pciga13
  • Other Twitter accounts related to the church that could be interesting are @PCIYAC from the Youth and Children department and @pciSPUD from the Youth Assembly
  • The best observer of the GA to keep an eye on is Alan in Belfast on both Twitter @AlanInBelfast,  and his blog Alan in Belfast
  • The local news site Slugger O’Toole with their Twitter @sluggerotoole is also a good source that might have some coverage
  • Finally, there will probably be PCI commissioners tweeting. Let me start with the moderator of a past General Assembly @staffordcarson. (And on a side note, Dr. Carson is up for approval by the Assembly to a new position. UPDATE: He was approved as the new Principal of Union College. ) Update: I would add to the list James Currie (@jcbelfast) who is active with PCIYAC and pciSPUD.

Regarding live streaming we have this unfortunate statement from the Arrangements Committee (pg. 7):

Web Streaming and ‘Twitter’
9. The Arrangements Committee regrets that due to technical restrictions, the General Assembly will not be streamed this year.  However, proceedings may be followed on ‘Twitter’

The raises a couple of questions in my mind, one being the quotes around Twitter. (Are those scare quotes?)
But further, in an advanced facility such as the Millennium Forum why are there technical issues with streaming? It seems the key word is… restrictions. It leads me to conclude that the requirements of the venue are that they handle the streaming at a cost which is prohibitive to the church. Another thing I see is that portions will be broadcast by the BBC so there may be restrictions to competition there. It may be something else but those are my guesses at the moment. For those of us who enjoy the stream and are interested in the business and decisions reached we still have Twitter but the lack of streaming is a disappointment when it seems easy enough to do.

There are two evening events of some interest. The first is a series of seminars on Tuesday evening at Magee College. It was founded by Presbyterians but is now a branch of the University of Ulster. The series of presentations will reflect on Presbyterian history and tradition. The second is “Christ Transforming Culture” on Wednesday night in the meeting space. As the description says of the event “Through drama and music the Moderator and others will lead an
exploration of how the Assembly theme, ‘A Place of Transformation’
impacts on the Church and individual Christians and on the culture of
where they work and witness.”

A number of interesting items of business on the docket. There is a report on Baptism from the Doctrine Committee (pg. 13 of the report) The report concludes that baptism by immersion is not necessary and is not the most appropriate method but does not recommend forbidding it.

There is an interesting report from an Advisory Committee to the General Board that includes a section (beginning on page 32) about helping resolve conflict in congregations. The many recommendations include better training of Elders and this:

(iii) The Church should seriously consider the Church of Scotland and PC USA [sic] model of having an interim Minister for up to a year, where there has been a long ministry of say 15 years or more. This would allow a Congregation to adjust, grieve if necessary, think of themselves without the previous Minister, deal with any outstanding issues and prepare themselves for a call.

In my experience, both are good moves and I might suggest shortening that 15 years down a bit to ten or even seven.

There is also some tension related to the trajectory the Church of Scotland is following on same-sex partnerships and the ministry. There are a few points that this may present itself during the Assembly including the Church and Society report as well as Ecumenical Relations. In particular, the Moderator’s Advisory Committee of the General Board is looking to open conversations about human sexuality within the church.

Finally, the Priorities Committee of the General Board (report beginning on page 39) is conducting a Structures Review that is looking at the form and function of the church. Among the issues it sees that resonate with the findings of a similar panel I have been on is about communication between bodies within the church with the report saying ” The current engagement that takes place between Presbyteries and Boards is at times very sparse.” Like that understated wording.

Almost all of there are General Board committees and will be part of the General Board report on Tuesday.

So there is lots going on this week and we look to the social media outlets for updates. Our prayers are with the Assembly and the incoming Moderator, the Rev Rob Craig. May the Holy Spirit indeed be moving among you in your discussions and discernment.