Category Archives: PC Australia

47th Session Of The General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church Of Australia

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The 47th Session of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Australia began this evening at the Chinese Presbyterian Church in the Surry Hills area of Sydney, N.S.W.  The GAA meets on a triennial basis with much of the governance of the church happening in the General Assemblies of the state churches (e.g. Presbyterian Church of Australia in the state of New South Wales ).

The incoming Moderator of the General Assembly is the Rev. David Jones of Hobart.  In honor of the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation a special service will be held on Tuesday night with the message brought by the Rev. Dr. Sinclair Ferguson.

That is pretty much the extent of the official information I can find.  For the unofficial I recommend the Rev. Gary Ware.  His writing can be found on his blog mgpcpastor’s blog where he has already posted a GAA 101 with a great overview that will satisfy both the GA Junkies as well as the more casual observer.  He has also posted a two part entry about the opening session and worship service.  His writing includes nice details as well as pictures of the Assembly.  I should also say that the Rev. Ware is on Twitter at @gjware but it looks like his tweets are generated automatically when he updates his blog.  I’ll keep watching for other Twitter users or a hashtag and update if I find anything.

So my best wishes for a productive meeting from the PCA and I look forward to the news that will come out of it.

New Official Blogging And Blogging Officials

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There have been a couple of notable additions to the world of Presbyterian Blogging in the last month or two that I wanted to pass on to you.

First, it appears that we will have another blogging Moderator:  The Rev. Stafford Carson of First Presbyterian Church of Portadown, Northern Ireland, has begun a pastor’s blog.  (h/t Sean Michael Lucas)  For a G.A. Junkie, this will become more interesting in early June when Rev. Carson will be installed as the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.  We will have to see the balance that he strikes between the parish and the denominational work.  If nothing else, I am curious if the work of the Moderator of the PC Ireland takes as much time as the Moderator of the GA of the PCUSA who has broken his moderatorial blogging out from his personal and parish blogging.

(And we are still waiting for an RSS feed from the Church of Scotland for their Moderator’s Blog.)

Second, for a while now we have had the entertaining and enlightening blog Being Presbyterian by Colin Carmichael from the main office of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.  Now, while more of a news feed than a blog, there is PC-Connect Daily to which you can subscribe by either e-mail or RSS.  Interesting stuff from a Presbyterian branch that is taking new technology seriously.

Finally, a blog that is not new itself but is new to me…  I have been doing some research to try to get myself up to speed on the Presbyterian Church in Australia.  I’ll get that packaged up at some point, but in looking through the various sites I have found very little in the way of RSS feeds and e-mail updates available.  To some extent this may be due to an interesting de-centralization of that branch to the state level.  But one interesting RSS feed I did find was for Presbyterian Youth in Victoria.  It is pretty much a news feed with upcoming events but some are interesting, like the Fuelled Training Day and the Short Course on Youth Ministry.  My youngest was interested in their summer camp since that is our winter, such as winter is in Southern California anyway.

Speaking of Youth, I see that the announcement for the 2009 National Youth Assembly of the Church of Scotland has been posted.  Since this event is Web 2.0 intensive I would expect an official blog for it like the NYA 2008 blog, but I can’t locate it yet. But keep watching because I am sure it will appear soon.