Category Archives: General Assembly

GA Registration Problems: Site Overload?

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Well today my son got his registration materials for GA this coming June.  But I would guess a bunch of others got their materials today as well because we started following the directions for him to register and the PC(USA) web site is timing out.  Reached maximum connections?  System overloaded and it crashed?  It’s now 9 PM on the left (west) coast.  We will try again tomorrow evening.  I hope PC-biz can handle the strain of having 1000+ people logged in at the same time.

The Church and New Technology — The Thrill and the Threat

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Today I had an interesting synergy of several items that got me thinking and reading about technology and the church.  In my web surfing today over lunch I read or found:

All of this got me going on my comments on the Church in a Web 2.0 world.

Bruce and Shawn have some great points about what churches are (should be?) doing in the new technological environment and how it fits with our past concepts.  I’ve got a few extensions:

First, as Reformed churches, we are a people of community.  Our religious life and government are completely about community.  Web 2.0 is also about community, but about a community that is not necessarily all in the same geographical place but in the same virtual place.  But since the gathering is virtual, does this still reflect the new covenant community that we are called to be?  Maybe, maybe not.  I’ll save that for another time, but note now that the question is there.

Second, in my coverage of Presbyterianism globally on this blog, I think I can say that many Presbyterian branches have nice web sites, the new EPC site being an example, but the best Web 2.0 interactive site I can think of is the Free Church of Scotland Online Forum.  The PC(USA) now has some limited blogging, such as Linda Valentine‘s which does get interaction in the comments.  But at what level should we expect the online community to be built or gathered?  If it is indeed “viral” (spread by non-standard communication) we would expect to see the communities organized around affinity groups or distributed across several nodes (blogs?).  Don’t expect things to be the way they used to be.  But this is fully compatible with ministry being carried out at the most practical level closest to the congregation and with being a missional church.

Finally, a brief comment on bringing in a younger audience.  While I fully acknowledge that Web 2.0 will get the attention of a younger generation, and it might get them in the door of a church, will it actually have an impact on the age of those involved in Presbyterian government?  I would note that Bruce and Shawn are both ministers.  They do church as a profession.  For elders, it is a vocation, and we usually have to have jobs to pay the bills.  I was fortunate that I have a wonderful family that is supportive of this crazy Presbyterian government stuff, and I have been blessed by an employer and supervisor who have provided me with the flexibility and generous vacation days to actually follow this calling.  It is the unfortunate situation that many younger Presbyterians, while they might serve on their church sessions, and follow all this Web 2.0 stuff, are too busy with a young family and young career to have the time necessary to serve on a Presbytery committee, to say nothing of taking over a week’s vacation to be a commissioner to GA.  Yes, elders of any age must make a choice about being active in the government of the church, but once we are older, we have accumulated the necessary vacation, and our career is more stable, then we have a greater comfort level being active, especially being GA commissioners.

For the last 15 years I have frequently been the youngest elder in the room at governing body meetings and committees.  I have taken it as a part of my calling to encourage younger elders to become active in church government above the session.  And to encourage governing bodies to modify the way they do things so that younger elders are able to participate around their jobs.  A couple of presbytery committees have moved their meetings later for me and others, much to the dismay of some respected ministers who wanted to get it out of the way early in the day.  But if you want younger elders, you must compromise for them.  You can expect them to compromise some as well if you make the effort to show you are serious.

Anyway, my contribution to the discussion for now.  I think this one has legs and will continue for a long time to come.  As I look at this post I think I raised more questions than I answered.  And about all this new technology…  Way back in 1997, as an elder commissioner to the 209th General Assembly, I believe that I was the first GA commissioner to post my comments and pictures daily to a web site for my presbytery to read.  I have it archived and I’ll find a place to repost it some day.  Ya, I was always this geeky.

And the Designee is… Results from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland

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No, its not those election results.  For us GA Junkies there is a more interesting election tonight, the selection of the next Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

This is the most interesting of Moderator selection systems, at least to me, because the 21 presbyteries meet, all at the same time, and each votes for their choice.  It gets phoned into Church House in Belfast and the Moderator Designee is…

The Rev. Dr. Donald Patton, minister of Old Church, Randalstown.  Rev. Patton received the nominations of 11 of the 21 presbyteries.  He was selected from a group of seven candidates, all ministers, from whom the presbyteries chose.

Rev. Patton is a parish minister, having served at Randalstown for the last six years.  He was ordained in 1975 and has served his entire career in parishes.  He has all three of his degrees from Queens University, Belfast.  Of himself he says that he is “a warm evangelical teacher and pastor intent on reaching out with the
Gospel to the wider community on issues that are relevant to them.”

More details are available in the news story from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

And a recognition to William Crawley, a BBC Northern Ireland broadcaster who accurately handicapped this election in his blog on Irish religion “Will and Testament.”  He posted his analysis before the meetings today, as well as his wrap-up afterward.

There may be more tomorrow as the Moderator Designee traditionally holds a press conference the next day.

Moderator Election for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland

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The upcoming selection of the Moderator of this year’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) is attracting attention for a couple of reasons.

The first is that one of the nominated candidates on the list is the Rev. Ruth Patterson.  Rev. Patterson has received votes before, but in the wake of the gender controversy at Christmas her nomination this year takes on additional significance.  As a quick reminder, two churches in Portadown join together for a Christmas service, but this year the minister of the host church declined to let the pastor of the guest church preach, as is the tradition, because the pastor is a woman.  As I mentioned in my post at the time and as discussed in a current Belfast Telegraph article, this is within the polity of the PCI under the 1989 “liberty of conscience” clause.  The PCI has never had a female Moderator of the General Assembly.

Within this debate it is interesting to note that the Rev. Patterson was the first woman to be ordained as a Presbyterian minister in Ireland, in 1976, following the 1973 change opening the ministry to women.  Rev. Patterson serves as the Director of Restoration Ministries, has been the Moderator of the Belfast Synod, and is the daughter of the late Very Rev. Dr. Tom Patterson, the Moderator of the General Assembly in 1977.  There is another Belfast Telegraph article about Rev. Patterson and the Moderator selection process.

But there is a second point of interest in the current news, a point discussed in the second article and that I have subtly hinted at in my wording above.  The Moderator selection process has changed this year.  In the past, all the presbyteries have met on the same evening and each presbytery voted on their choice for Moderator with the individual receiving the most votes being elected.  Previously this was done without an advance list so each presbytery was free to chose as the Spirit led them.  This year there is a nomination process to create a list which the presbyteries will vote from and the Rev. Patterson is one of the seven names on the list.

Upcoming PC(USA) General Assembly — Late January Update

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Things are beginning to pick up as we approach the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in June.  Here is an update of new developments since my last post about this a couple of weeks ago:

The number of candidates for moderator have now increased to three.  Back in November National Capital Presbytery endorsed the Rev. Bill Teng as a moderator candidate. ( Presbyterian News Service Article) At the time of my last post San Francisco Presbytery had just endorsed the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow as a candidate on January 15.  Rev. Reyes-Chow quickly announced the news by starting his moderatorial campaign blog and the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) caught up with Web 2.0 with their news story last Thursday.  Rev. Reyes-Chow is the founding pastor of Mission Bay Community Church that the news story describes as a “multi-cultural, multi-generational New Church Development of San Francisco Presbytery that makes extensive use of cyberspace to communicate and conduct its ministry.”  The news story also describes Bruce as “a highly sought-after speaker.”  The fact that the news story makes significant use of his blog as a source is noteworthy.

On January 18, shortly after that endorsement, New Castle Presbytery endorsed the Rev. Carl Mazza as the third candidate for moderator.  According to Friday’s Presbyterian News Service article, Rev. Mazza is the founder and leader of the organization Meeting Ground, described in the article as “a community-based ministry with the homeless and other marginalized people.”  The extent of the organization’s ministry is impressive, running two shelters, a transitional house, and a residential facility, as well as a winter homeless shelter ministry that combined provided over 21,000 bednights and 30,000 meals in 2007 according to the news story that cited the groups annual report.  In the web page about his endorsement on the Meeting Ground web site Rev. Mazza describes his ministry with this opening sentence: “The call of my life, and my reason for entering the ministry, is with and among persons who are experiencing homelessness or otherwise struggling to survive at the margins of our society.”  And in a Web 2.0 touch, there is an page about him and his moderatorial campaign on the New Castle Presbytery wiki.  This appears to be the same content as is on the Meeting Ground site.

In looking over these PNS articles again, I would note an interesting style difference in the news story about the Rev. Reyes-Chow.  While the other two contain embedded links to at least the endorsing presbytery, Rev. Reyes-Chow’s contains no embedded links at all.  A simple omission I am sure since I know from my writing this blog it is difficult to chase every possible link.

I would also note that we now have three Ministers of Word and Sacrament but no Elders endorsed for Moderator.  I have to wonder if the new biannual format of General Assembly has made it more difficult for an elder to take the time to serve as Moderator, but that is a topic I will delve into more in an upcoming Commentary.  Stay tuned.

Turning our attention to the business before the GA, the Business page is now up to thirty overtures, counting Overture 3 which was withdrawn.  Three of the seven new overtures address social witness policy.  Overture 24 is from Heartland Presbytery and is titled “On Reinstating the Office of Environmental Justice as an Integral Part of the Mission of the Church.”  Unfortunately, the link from the official business page is broken and the minutes from the presbytery meeting where it was passed no longer seem to be posted, but there appears to be a copy in Word format on the web site of Presbyterians for Restoring Creation. (Isn’t Google wonderful.)  The title of the overture is pretty much the action item in the overture and the rest of the text is reference to past GA statements and actions.

Overture 25, from the Presbytery of Lake Huron, calls for the PC(USA) to encourage and advocate for assistance to, and resettlement of, Iraqi refugees, and particularly for action from the U.S. government towards those ends.  And the Presbytery of Chicago has overtured GA ( Overture 26) “On Pursuing a Culture of a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine.”  This overture calls for internationally recognized human rights in Israel and Palestine, denominational advocacy with the U.S. government to work towards that goal in the Middle East, and for PC(USA) groups to study the situation there.

Along other lines, Overture 27, from the Presbytery of Central Nebraska, would have the Board of Pensions of the PC(USA) “Expand the Definition of Medical Necessity to Include Habilitative Services for Children with Congenital Developmental Disabilities.”  This expanded definition would then have the Board of Pensions medical plan covering speech, physical and occupational therapy for children with conditions such as Downs Syndrome and Autism.  At the present time the medical plan only covers “restorative” therapy to recover from accident or illness and the overture rational cites studies to show that the additional cost would be very minimal.

Reading through Overture 30, this sounds like a “ Blood on Every Page” development where the overture was occasioned by specific financial irregularities in a church in the Presbytery of the Pacific, the originating presbytery.  The overture requests changes to the Form of Government and the Rules of Discipline to tighten up financial practices in churches.  These new rules include not having any pastors serve as a corporate officer, making sure the annual financial review is done by two unrelated persons, and making changes to accounts an act of the session and recorded in the minutes.  Reading through the proposed changes it is possible to put together a specific scenario that led to this overture.  F
inally, the Discipline change would make the three-year limit on disciplinary action for financial misconduct start at the time the misconduct was discovered.

And the “Reverse the PUP” overture in this batch is Overture 28 from the Presbytery of Central Washington which basically does what the title says: “On Requesting That All Actions of the 217th General Assembly (2006) Related to the Report of the Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity Be Fully Rescinded.”

I have saved Overture 29 for last because it hinges on a polity subtlety that a GA Junkie would appreciate.  This overture, titled “On Amending G-5.0200 to Add the Vows of Membership to the Book of Order,” from the Presbytery of Mission, is motivated by the fact that members of a congregation are received by the Session unlike elders and deacons who are elected by the congregation and ordained and installed in public worship.  At the present time the membership “vows,” actually statements from which worship books have provided specific vows, are contained in the Directory for Worship (W-4.2003) right along with the ordination vows (W-4.4003).  But this sets up an interesting paradox – the session receives the new members but they declare their faith, take their vows if you will, before the full congregation.  This overture would add the specific vow language to the Form of Government section of the Book of Order (G-5.0200) so that the vows are taken before the Session at the time of reception into membership.  There appears to be nothing in the overture to remove it from the Directory for Worship so it would seem that new members would declare their faith twice in the membership process.

Finally, I wanted to mention that there is at least one name floating around as an applicant for the position of Stated Clerk of the General Assembly.  Toby Brown on his blog Classical Presbyterian mentions in one of his posts that the Rev. Ed Koster, currently the Stated Clerk of Detroit Presbytery, has his name in the pot.  Toby gives no source so it may be personal contact, and I have found no other mention of his name, or any other names, elsewhere in connection with the Clerk job.

Looking Ahead: More News about the 218th General Assembly of the PC(USA)

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Within the last few hours the Presbyterian Church (USA) web site has posted a news article with the first endorsed candidate for Moderator of the 218th General Assembly.  The candidate is the Rev. Bill Teng from National Capital Presbytery.

Rev. Teng is the pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, VA, and served as the presbytery Moderator in 2004.  Teng was born in Hong Kong and has lived in the United States since he was 18.  He says “I look at myself as a product of Presbyterian mission,” and he is a fourth-generation Presbyterian pastor.  This echoes his vision for the church where he is quoted as saying that the PC(USA) needs to “go back to the basics.”  Later in the article there is a quote where he elaborates on this saying “there needs to be someone who could stand up and remind our church
what its primary calling is, and that is to go back to the basics, to
put our emphasis on mission and evangelism.”

In other business, there are three more overtures now posted on the 218th business web site for a total of 16.  Two of these are social witness actions.  Overture 014 directs the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy to develop a new, comprehensive, AIDS and HIV policy.  The other, 015, endorses a movement know as “Publish what you Pay” which would have corporations in the “extractive industries” (oil, gas, minerals) in developing countries publish a full accounting of their finances so that corrupt practices would be visible on their balance sheets.  The third overture, 016, asks the GA to receive the report of the Form of Government Task Force and then declare a two year (or more) period for the church to study it rather than dealing with it quickly in the single GA.  It is important to remember that the GA can make changes to the rewrite of the Form of Government, but once sent out for presbytery approval, presbyteries can only vote the changes up or down, they can not modify the document.

At this point I expect a bit of a quiet period in announced GA business during the Advent Season, but things will heat up again as we enter Ordinary Time after Christmas since many presbyteries vote on their GA commissioners in January.  And yes, my son will be a candidate for YAD at one of those meetings.

Looking Ahead: 218th General Assembly of the PC(USA)

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For a GA Junkie, two years is a long time to wait.  While the webcast of the Church of Scotland GA goes a long way to helping me get my fix of polity and politics, there is nothing like your own General Assembly to really satisfy the cravings.  So, with a little over seven month to go until the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) kicks off in San José, California, what can we look forward to?

The first item is that the web site is up and running and beginning to be populated.  Now, it takes some real detective work to find the web site because I did not see any links on the major front pages for it.  In fact, in looking for it I found that the Office of the General Assembly General Assembly page still lists the 216th in 2004 as the last one there is information for and the 217th in 2006 in Birmingham is still “upcoming.”  The best way to find the 218th page that I have found is to look for the coverage of the Stated Clerk search.

Speaking of which, that is the major news that I have seen to date.  I don’t think anything has changed there since my “ Want to be a Stated Clerk?” post.  Nominations/Applications are due December 23.  I have not caught wind of any “announced candidates” yet.

A major item, probably the one that will mark this GA, is the report of the Form of Government Task Force (FOG) and the proposed re-write of the Book of Order.  Here there is plenty of action and that web page is loaded.  So loaded that I am still trying to find time to digest it all and figure out what the proposed changes really mean.  This makes me wonder if the commissioners will have time to reflect upon it or will depend on the interpretations from various groups and individuals.  The presentation by FOG will probably be very important in the commissioners decision.  Again, I have not heard much buzz about whether people like or dislike the rewrite and I’ll probably be spending some down time in December digesting it myself.

An always closely watched item are the overtures to GA.  At the present time there are 13 overtures posted.

Of these, three overtures (001, 003, and 013) that deal with the status of churches:  Two form union churches and one transfers a congregation into a Korean non-geographic presbytery.  The union churches seem to be good news/bad news as I read them.  For 001, this appears to be a joint church-plant in Wyoming by the PC(USA) and the ELCA.  The other, 013, in central New York could be interpreted as a PC(USA) and UMC church joining forces to continue ministry in the face of declining membership.  Finally, 003, the transfer of a church to a Korean presbytery, and there are continuing rumors of a push for a Korean synod, even though at one point language presbyteries were to be phased out. 

Overture 004 appears to be a bit of housekeeping to clarify a point in the Rules of Discipline about pronouncing censure.  This may have resulted from some questions that arose in a PJC case I was peripherally involved in and that I had offered to overture from my presbytery.

And overture 002 asks to reinstate the annual mission season offering.

There are the usual overtures about speaking out on national and world situations: 006 on Peace and Justice in Palestine and Israel, 012 on Calling for Tolerance and Peaceful relations between Christian and Muslim Communities, and 008 on the Church Addressing Intergenerational Injustice in America.

Finally, the balance of the overtures address the PC(USA) internal issues, principally ordination standards.  With the success of last year’s Authoritative Interpretation (AI) in the PUP Report that provided a polity statement without Presbytery approval, many of these contain new authoritative interpretations.  One interesting approach is overture 010 from Beaver-Butler that would broaden the definitions of presbyteries and permit presbyteries based on theology. (The web page notes that they are awaiting a clarification about something from the presbytery.)  There is overture 005 which would completely rescind the action of the 217th GA regarding the PUP report. And then there is 011 which would strike G-6.0106b and issue an Authoritative Interpretation canceling all previous Interpretations and Guidance on ordination standards.  And in more moderate actions 009 proposes an AI that would apply to G-6.0108 indicating that Freedom of Conscience does not apply to the ordination standards of G-6.0106b.

An in an interesting move, the Presbytery of East Tennessee submits overture 007 that would have the Moderator announce each vote with the words:

As sisters and brothers in Christ, sharing our
common faith in, and allegiance to, Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
let us proceed to vote on the question before us.


As commissioner voting is just beginning it is a little bit early to start tracking Moderator candidates.  The one that I know of is the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow who, in modern style, announced in his blog on Friday that he would be asking his presbytery, San Francisco, to endorse him as a candidate for Moderator if they elected him as one of their commissioners.  I’m sure we’ll be hearing about more moderator candidates soon.  But in a similar vain, my son will be going before our session this month to ask to be endorsed as a candidate for Youth Advisory Delegate (YAD) from our presbytery.

Finally, I need to mention that the Committee on Local Arrangements (COLA) has their web site up and running at this time as well.

General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America: Approval of the Federal Vision Report

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The 35th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America has just voted to approve the Report of the Ad Interim Study Committee on Federal Vision, New Perspective, and Auburn Avenue Theologies.  The vote was by a show of hands and from the view on the webcast it appeared to pass by a very wide margin.

The time for the delivery of the report and debate was set at one hour and was subsequently extended twice, once for 30 minutes and once for five minutes.  The third vote to extend debate failed.

The debate was decent and in order, but also emotional and strong.  There was a procedural motion that I did not get the exact wording on but which would have referred it back the study committee and added two Federal Vision proponents to the committee with a new report to next year’s GA.  This procedural motion was actually what most of the debate was on. That motion failed by a narrow enough margin that the hands had to be counted.  Sorry, I did not get the count from the webcast.

I’ll give a more comprehensive account of my impressions of the GA as a whole at another time.  At this point the GA moves on to more routine business and we will see what the blogosphere does.

General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland

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There are several Presbyterian items that I need to get caught up on, but being a GA Junkie, I will turn first to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland which began in Belfast on Monday and continues through tomorrow.

There are several high-profile items of business, but as with many Presbyterian denominations, same-sex issues top the list.  These come under the report of the Board of Social Witness.  While the report deals with many of the ministries of the church to society, the report also contains a section (starting on page 21 of 31) titled “Pastoral Guidelines — Homosexuality.”  This section was written in response to action at last year’s GA requesting “guidelines to help our Church to develop more sensitive and effective pastoral care.”  The writers of the report, to avoid labeling someone as “homosexual” and thereby defining who they are by that title chose to refer in the report to “people who have same sex attraction.”  In addition, this report was not setting the PCI position, that is still the report of 1979, but rather provides guidelines.  The report begins with some stories from individuals and families to illustrate the need for pastoral care and then states:

We are all fallen human beings and for each one the fall has affected our sexuality as it has all aspects of our being.
    However, as with all areas of sexual attraction, what we do about it as individuals is a matter of choice for which we are morally responsible. This is the sentiment behind the Assembly’s comment on the Report of 1979.
    When we condemn homosexual practice in isolation or single it out as somehow worse than other sexual practices outside of heterosexual marriage then we demonstrate homophobic attitudes.

I am particularly impressed with the footnote that goes with these paragraphs which begins:

4 Despite all attempts in the media to push the idea that same sex attraction is purely genetic the jury is still out and may remain so. While there are studies that point towards biological factors there are other studies that lean strongly towards the nurture side of the debate.

In the section that followed this I was struck by the balance the writers use and the insight into our culture, both religious and popular.  It is extended but I quote in its entirety:

    5.4 When a church states that it cannot agree with practicing same sex relationships it is most often taken as rejection of the person because of their perceived identity – ie ‘I am a homosexual!’ However, as a church, we believe our identity should be defined primarily in terms of our humanity before God and not in terms of sexual orientation. It would be helpful in dialogue if we focused more on the whole person before God and did not make sexuality the focus of our understanding.
    5.5 Exploring this point of perceived identity would also promote greater understanding of those within the Presbyterian Church who wish to exercise genuine pastoral care yet maintain Biblical integrity regarding marriage as being solely between a man and a woman and sexual practice as being for that relationship alone.
    5.6 There is the need for the church to understand that a consistent approach is needed. Compassion begins in the pulpit and works out from there. Condemnation from the pulpit closes the door to compassionate care outside the pulpit. Pastoral care is built on proclamation.
    5.7 The ‘rights’ dominated culture so aggressively surrounding ‘gay’ issues sends a message to the church that it is not acceptance as people that is being sought but rather endorsement of a way of life. The problem for many within the church is that while they would want to accept people in the name of Jesus Christ they cannot, in all integrity of conscience, endorse a way of life that they see as contrary to God’s Word.

The report then goes on to discuss pastoral care for these individuals.  Some of this is the usual counseling practice about confidentiality and avoiding labels.  Some is the call for the church to be loving, open and understanding to the individuals.  And some is wise counsel that immediately preaching their sinfulness and need of repentance and forgiveness will probably turn them away from the church where they could hear it later after relationship has been developed.

The Assembly took up the report and the reports (official PCI, Belfast Telegraph) indicate that the debate was lively, as I would expect.  It was said multiple times that for some this report goes too far and for others not far enough.  There was an amendment to send the report down to the presbyteries which lost 163 to 168.  The pastoral care report was approved 159 to 120 but the report of the Board of Social Witness was arrested due to the time and it will resume later in the week.

In other actions, Dr. John Finlay was elected and installed as the Moderator of the Assembly.  In his speech he encouraged the church to “practice what it preaches” so they could convince the secular world about the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  In a related action, the Assembly voted down a Business Board proposal to install the Moderator at the end of the Assembly to work for the coming year and run the following year’s assembly.

Today’s business included guidelines from the Doctrine Committee about participation in inter-faith events.  The guiding principles the committee brought were that the “integrity of the Gospel is not compromised” and that acts of worship are “separate and distinctive.”

What is probably the second highest profile decision in front of the Assembly was the sale of the PCI main offices.  This was approved by the 2004 GA but last year’s Assembly voted to rescind the action and the action to rescind must be agreed to by this year’s Assembly under church law.  From the quotes in the daily summary it must have been a very lively debate with arguments for and against the historic nature of the building, cost of upkeep and refurbishment, location in central Belfast, and the relevance, or lack of, to modern culture.  In the end, the motion to rescind was affirmed by a vote of 332 to 234 and the business items related to refurbishment put off due to the hour.

A couple of thing that strike me:  One is the amount of business which has lapsed due to arrested reports.  The Assembly appears to have a busy time ahead of them at some point.  The second is the vote tallies.  Roughly the same number of members voted in favor of rescinding as voted in total for the same-sex pastoral care report.  Where were those extra 234 for those votes?

Free Church of Scotland General Assembly

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At the same time that the Church of Scotland was meeting the Free Church of Scotland was also holding their General Assembly in Edinburgh across the street. 

The best analysis of the Assembly I have found is by the Rev. David Strain, a Free Church minister in London.  He has posted on his blog “Life Towards God” both his comments as well as the text of the moderator’s message urging greater ecumenical unity.  The moderator’s message is also available from the Free Church web site.

This assembly also receives the Lord High Commissioner, and Thursday morning HRH Prince Andrew addressed that body and they in turn assured him that they were still loyal subjects of the crown.

One of the noteworthy events of this GA was the exchange with the GA of the Church of Scotland.  On Wednesday, the Rev. William Brown, convener of the Church of Scotland Ecumenical Relations Committee was invited to address the Free Church GA.  The favor was returned on Friday when three members of the Free Church were welcomed by the Church of Scotland GA.  These included the Free Church GA Moderator Rev. John Ross and the convener of the Ecumenical Relations committee the Rev. Iver Martin.  The Rev. Martin addressed the Kirk GA.  There are articles about this exchange from both the Free Church and the Church of Scotland.  The two churches approved a Joint Statement which can be found in the report of the Ecumenical Relations Committee.  It is Appendix II beginning on page 20.  The statement looks at the Biblical and Confessional basis that they hold in common and then discusses the implications and applications of that for the two churches and their relationship, including a commitment to cooperate and a framework for discussion.