Monthly Archives: December 2013

Looking Ahead To The 221st General Assembly Of The PC(USA)

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Tomorrow we will reach the six-month point ahead of the meeting of the 221st General Assembly (2014) of the the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As we look ahead to the meeting of that Assembly a number of things are already in place but so much more is to come.

The GA will meet from June 14-21, 2014, in Detroit, Michigan, and while the city has had some highly publicized problems all concerned with the Assembly are assuring us that the issues will not affect the Assembly. The Office of the General Assembly (OGA) issued a statement of support following the city’s bankruptcy filing and the Committee on the General Assembly (COGA) visited the site this fall and was satisfied with the preparations and location. Regarding the situation with the city, the Rev. Tom Hay, OGA’s associate for assembly operations, made the following analogy in the article:

Detroit has much to teach the church, Hay said. The city is an
institution that trusted in old patterns after they stopped working.

“In many ways, that’s something like us,” he said.

In addition, in a bit of a test run, the Fall Polity Conference was held in Detroit in October. However, that was a much smaller gathering and so was held in a hotel and not in the conference center.

The Committee on Local Arrangements (COLA) is up and running and has a web page on the Presbytery of Detroit site, a Facebook page and a Twitter feed (@DetroitCOLA). They have a 23 minute video, Abound in Hope, that introduces the church to Detroit and the PC(USA) ministries and history of the area.

“Abound in Hope” is the theme of the Assembly and will be reflected in the worship. One of the more interesting and significant changes this year is that the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper will be a part of each daily worship service. In addition, GA Moderator Neal Presa has announced on Facebook the individuals who he has invited to preach at these services:

Delighted that Mark Labberton (President of Fuller Theological Seminary), Anne Emile Zaki (Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Egypt & Calvin Institute for Worship), Luke Powery (Dean of the Chapel, Duke University), and Martha Moore-Keish
(Associate Professor of Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary) have
accepted my invitation to serve as the preachers and presiders at the
daily celebration of the Eucharist at the 221st General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) next June 2014 in Detroit, MI.

The
five of us will preach from the Assembly gathering text Romans 15:13
and theme “Abounding in Hope” with each of us connecting that text to a
Gospel reading.

Jazzed!

Including Mr. Presa, it appears that the list is all Teaching Elders in academia, but it should be good preaching.

The business is accumulating and the PC-Biz system is up and running. It currently lists 31 overtures on the usual wide variety of topics that includes boycotting HP, to a study of drug control policy, to the consultation before redrawing presbytery boundaries. I have so far spotted four overtures related to the definition of marriage in the Directory for Worship and two regarding divestment in companies – one related to involvement in the Middle East and another for fossil fuel producers. There are also those of the “blood on every page” nature suggesting changes to the Book of Order that originated from particular polity issues that have arisen over the last couple of years. I hope to have a closer look as some of those soon.

Along with the overtures the affinity groups are starting to get their priorities together. The one that I have seen published so far is from the Covenant Network. More are sure to come (or I have missed them).

At the present time there are two announced and endorsed candidates standing for Moderator of the 221st General Assembly – RE Heath Rada and TE John Wilkinson. If typical patterns hold there are one or two more waiting in the wings.

A number of special committees and task forces are trying to wrap up their work. Maybe the most closely watched is the Mid-Councils Commission (Continuing) that the last GA rearranged a bit but as of the September meeting it looked like they would be recommending fewer/larger synods but their additional recommendations were still being considered. Likewise, the Special Commission on the Belhar Confession has still not decided on a formal recommendation whether the church should again consider it’s inclusion in the Book of Confessions. It has however produced a study guide, The Bible and Belhar, for the church to look at. In addition, a study document on marriage has been produced and congregations and other groups in the denomination are encouraged to participate in this six-week study ahead of the Assembly. A special committee looking at the Preparation for Ministry Process has released an interim report. These, and a couple other groups, have until February 14 to submit their final reports and recommendations.

Finally, there is a unique video project called Were You There? being curated by Andrew Yeager-Buckley. It is a bit more than Snapchat in that all of us who have been to previous GA’s are invited to share our experiences in up to 60 second videos. As the web site says:

Record a short video on your cell phone or video camera – no more than
60 seconds – that tells what lessons you learned as a commissioner or
advisory delegate. What do you wish someone had told you before the
Assembly, or what would you have done differently during the gathering?
And, don’t forget to tell us your name, presbytery and the Assembly you
attended.

(And the Assembly we attended? For some GA Junkies that could be all 60 seconds. )

Finally, for those of us thinking of going it looks like registration and housing info is not up on the sites yet, but there is a handy link to the tourism site at VisitDetroit.com.

I am personally still mulling over whether I will be there in person but I will certainly be watching as the business and news items build up.  Stay tuned…

UPDATE (12/29/13): An interesting article from the LA Times about Detroit becoming a tourist destination to view the decline and abandoned buildings.

Moderator Candidates For The 2014 General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church In Canada

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As I anticipated in my last post, early this week we got word of the nominees for Moderator of the 140th General Assembly (2014) of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. And in the nominees we have three distinguished ministers from across the country and each from a different type of ministry setting.

In alphabetical order, the first is the Rev. Calvin Brown, currently serving as stated supply pastor of a two-point, or yoked, parish that includes Knox Presbyterian Church in the town of Palmerston, Ontario and Knox Presbyterian Church in Drayton, Ontario. That much was given in the press release and I have to admit that I was stumped for a bit in researching his background, but thanks to some pointers from Al Clarkson I am able to provide significantly more background. From Mr. Brown’s LinkedIn page we know that he has been at his current position for about three years now and before that he was the the Executive Director of Renewal Fellowship within the Presbyterian Church in Canada for over 16 years. In that position he regularly contributed the Renewal column in the Presbyterian Record, a publication of the PCC. He has his M.Div. from Knox College of the University of Toronto and his undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He began his ordained ministry with 20 years in a missionary parish in British Columbia. He does have a Facebook page and there are a number of photographs on Flickr from the transition when he stepped down as executive director.

The Rev. Dr. Stephen Farris is currently the dean of St. Andrew’s Hall, the Presbyterian school at the Vancouver School of Theology, and a professor of homiletics at VST. He holds a B.A. from the University of Toronto, an M.Theo. and D.Min. from Union Theological College in Virginia, and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He served five years of service in parish ministry at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Amherstview, Ontario, and then taught for 17 years at Knox College of the University of Toronto before moving to Vancouver. He is the author of numerous books and articles ( example 1, example 2 ) including the Bible Studies for the 23rd General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

The third nominee is the Rev. Stewart Folster the director of the Saskatoon Native Circle Ministry. The Presbyterian Record has numerous stories on this ministry, but one in particular – The Path to Healing: Native Ministries – Relating in Saskatoon
– profiles Rev. Folster. There is another extensive section in The Path to Healing: Sharing the pain of residential schools where he talks about his family’s experience and his ministry now.
He and the SNCM were also profiled in the PC(USA) Mission Yearbook this year. When he was ordained in 1996 he was the first aboriginal minister in the PCC. He has been active in part with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process that has been happening within the church and around the country and the SNCM is mentioned in the special Path to Healing articles and resources from the Presbyterian Record.

To the three nominees we offer our congratulations and best wishes and prayers as they begin on this journey. We will find out in early April who the church elects as it’s next General Assembly Moderator.

Second Moderator Candidate For PC(USA) 221st GA (2014) – TE John Wilkinson

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After a pause of almost seven months from the endorsement of the first moderator candidate we now have a second candidate endorsed and standing for the position of Moderator of the 221st General Assembly (2014) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). This past Tuesday, 26 November, the Presbytery of Genesee Valley endorsed Teaching Elder John Wilkinson to stand for Moderator of the General Assembly.

TE Wilkinson has been the pastor and head of staff at Third Presbyterian Church of Rochester, New York, for the last dozen years and he previously served as Executive Associate Pastor at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago and as pastor of St. James Presbyterian Church, also in Chicago. The Chicago connection continues back to his M.Div. from McCormick Seminary as well as a Ph.D. from Northwestern.

He currently serves as the Moderator of the Presbytery of Genesee Valley and he is on the leadership teams of the Covenant Network and Next Church. His Moderator curriculum vitae shows extensive service to the denomination at all levels including current service on the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly and his recent service as moderator of that committee, as well as his past service on the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church.

Rev. Wilkinson has his official moderator candidate web site up and running and from that we learn that his theme is “With an urgency born of this hope…”, a phrase taken from the second to last paragraph of the Confession of 1967. For context, the full paragraph is:

With an urgency born of this hope the church applies itself to present tasks and
strives for a better world. It does not identify limited progress with the kingdom of God
on earth, nor does it despair in the face of disappointment and defeat. In steadfast hope
the church looks beyond all partial achievement to the final triumph of God.

He speaks to this theme in one of the three posts currently on the blog section of the web site. Among other things he says “And urgency. Not fear, not anxiety, not panic, but urgency. The work to which we are called matters, and is important.”

On the web site you will also find a narrative bio section and a section called A Shared Vision that includes some links to his writing as well as a Presbyterian News Service article about a linkage of city churches in Rochester. And there is a section called Prayers for the Journey that in addition to the prayer printed there invites you to submit your prayers. And I did take note of the fact that the design was by Cleave Design – another Chicago connection but also a Third Church connection.

If you want to follow along with Rev. Wilkinson’s stand for Moderator, besides the web site he invites you to follow his Moderator page on Facebook. If you are interested he also has a personal Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile. I did not see an RSS feed on the site and there is no mention of a Twitter, or any other social media, account.

Coverage of his endorsement for Moderator has included an article in the local media, the Democrat and Chronicle, as well as the Presbyterian Outlook.

As I read through his material what may be the most unique aspect, in my experience, of his candidacy is the letter the session of Third Presbyterian Church sent to the congregation announcing and explaining his candidacy. In the letter is a paragraph linking this possible election as Moderator to the church stewardship campaign:

In a few days you will receive your annual Stewardship mailing, giving you an opportunity to support the staff and programs of Third Church. Given the potential we now have of national, and even international recognition, we encourage you to think carefully and prayerfully about the support you can provide to your Church.

Well, that is a bit of a unique hook for the annual stewardship campaign.

And so we wish Rev. Wilkinson well as he joins the field of candidates standing for Moderator of the General Assembly. Our prayers are with him as well as all the others currently endorsed and those that are still discerning the call.

Having said that, I will finish up for this evening but will note my eager anticipation of word of more Moderator candidates that should be arriving within the next day or two. Stay tuned…   (UPDATE: And if you are curious here they are)