Category Archives: GA business

General Assembly 2010 Of The Presbyterian Church Of Aotearoa New Zealand

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Spring is in the air and it is time for another General Assembly…

Of course, if it is Spring the Assembly would be in the Southern Hemisphere, and so we look forward to the convening of General Assembly 2010 of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand at St. Andrew’s College in Christchurch in just a few hours.  It will conclude this Sunday October 3.

The theme of the Assembly is “Making Disciple-Making Disciples,” a topic chosen by the incoming Moderator, the Rev. Peter Cheyne.  As Rev. Cheyne says in the press release announcing the theme “It is about making disciples who become sufficiently mature to then make another generation of disciples.”  There is a booklet available on-line that will be used at the Assembly for six small-group Bible study discussion sessions on the topic.  Rev. Cheyne has started blogging, including a reflection on this topic.  (From a technical perspective it appears that the RSS feed is for the whole church web site and there is not one specific to his blog.)

So, for those GA Junkies playing along at home here is what you need to know:

Two important items I have not found yet are the docket and an on-line news page.  I will update here when I do find them. But this is a note that there will be audio files available of certain events so keep an eye out for that. UPDATE: The News and Audio Page is now being updated.

Similarly, I have been searching but have not found anyone tweeting the GA, officially or unofficially, and no hashtag.  Again, will update if I find anything.

The back story to this GA is the September 4 magnitude 7 earthquake near Christchurch.  For those not familiar with earthquake behavior the aftershocks behaviour is very typical (GNS calls it “textbook“) and they continue with five in the magnitude 3 range in the last day reported by the GeoNet official agency information.

Since the earthquake there have been a number of information reports and updates from church-related sources.  Linked to the GA web page is an update related to the Assembly.  And thanks to notes from the Rev. Geoff King of Knox Church, Christchurch, as well as the Presbyterian Research blog for posting the accounts, we have Pastor King’s three updates about the situation after the earthquake with one that day, another the next day, and the last a week on.  (That is the ecclesiastical perspective, for the geological angle I really appreciated the great photos of faulting that GNS has up on their scientific response page.)

So in the same way that prophet Amos marks time with an earthquake in his day this GA will probably be remembered for its temporal and geographical proximity to the Darfield earthquake.

Stay tuned in the coming week and let us see what God does among his people as they meet on the South Island.  Prayers for the meeting.

PC(USA) Constitutional Amendment Booklets (Mostly) Available

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Well, you knew this would be big, and not just in a metaphorical sense…

The Office of the General Assembly has made available on their web site the publication with the changes to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Constitution that the 219th General Assembly is sending down to the presbyteries.  It comes in three parts so get those reading glasses ready!

Part 1 is the nFOG , or technically the new Foundations of Presbyterian Polity section and the revised Form of Government section.  Fifty eight pages long — All the new Book of Order text plus the “Advisory Handbook for Councils for the Development of Policies and Procedures Required by the Form of Government.”  Then there is a second eight-page booklet to serve as a guide in considering the nFOG with links to the online resources about the revision.

I say that the booklets are mostly ready because the spot for the second amendment booklet is there but no link is provided yet.  By process of elimination this must be the proposed amendments to the Book of Confessions, the addition of the Belhar Confession.  I will revise and link here when posted.

Part 3 is all the other amendments to the Book of Order.  There are 15 amendments in all covering the G, W and D sections with numbering for the current Book of Order.  If you are keeping count, that will be another 32 pages of reading. For each G section amendment there is an editor’s note about how that would translate into the nFOG. 

(It is also interesting to note a typo in the cover letter to Part 3 that says Belhar will be part 3.  No big deal.)

But here is an interesting insight into how Presbyterians do things:  According to those editors notes five of the eight G section changes would add language to the Book of Order if the nFOG version is adopted.  Only one, the change to current section G-6.0106b, would actually change wording in the nFOG, and two amendments would be rendered moot by adopting the nFOG.  So we reduce our polity and make it flexible only to immediately start adding to it. I’ll analyze all that another time.

So start downloading and have at it.

The 219th General Assembly Of The PC(USA) — Not Business As Usual For One Item

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Please allow me to be cynical about the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for a moment as I reflect on my observation that most of the items before the Assembly and how the Assembly dealt with them were pretty much “business as usual.”  There was of course that unique session where both the Final and Minority reports of the Special Committee on Civil Union and Christian Marriage were commended to the whole church. But for the most part I frequently found myself thinking “been there, done that.”

Part of this was because so many high-profile items were really reports back from committees and task forces the last Assembly created.  Some of the deja vu was because these are items that keep coming back to every Assembly, like the ordination standards. And some is because the business contains a lot of routine items  like approving minutes, transferring churches, and creating presbyteries.  That is, until that last one stops being business as usual…

On the morning of Thursday July 8 the Committee on Middle Governing Body Issues late in their report brought a simple request from the Synod of South Atlantic, item 04-08:

The Synod of South Atlantic overtures the 219th General Assembly (2010) to approve the organization of a new non-geographic Korean language presbytery pursuant to its powers under G-13.0103n.

The Synod had passed this overture on a unanimous vote and the Assembly committee had also approved it by a wide margin, 43-2.  Seemed like a slam-dunk but it was not.

A few commissioners, including two young second-generation Asian-American women pastors, rose to speak against forming the non-geographic Korean language presbytery and their pleas were so persuasive that the Assembly disapproved the item 125-514-7. (If you want to watch yourself check out the Video On Demand, Session 5, Part 9, at 1:09 except the video cuts out before the end)  Every Assembly holds a few surprises and for the 219th this was one of the biggest for me.

There were a couple of arguments against the new presbytery – lack of women leadership and challenges for clergy who serve in English ministry in Korean congregations.  The speakers argued that it is difficult to advocate for women clergy and young leadership in language presbyteries that tend to not favor those in their culture.  In addition, for ministers that speak English and serve second-generation ministries in Korean churches but do not speak Korean, or do not speak it well, participating in the life of the presbytery is difficult to impossible.  It makes it challenging to develop new young second-generation leadership speaking English in a language presbytery.

As you may be aware the GA’s relationship with non-geographic language presbyteries is a bit conflicted.  For example, the 218th GA sent a mixed message.  On the one hand they passed a Book of Order amendment which would provide a bit more flexibility in membership in non-geographic presbyteries but in doing so made sure to include a clause that non-geographic presbyteries should have an end date – they are to be transitional and not permanent.  On the other hand, the Assembly, from the same committee, approved another item that granted the continuation of Hanmi Presbytery without term limit.  So what message is being sent here?

Returning to the 219th GA, I should note that later in the day on Thursday there was a report on Twitter, but I have not verified it from a second source, that one of the women who spoke against the motion was physically assaulted for taking that position against the non-geographic presbytery.

Related to this is the rough time the PC(USA) has, and maybe American Presbyterians in general have, with being a racially diverse church.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I was a bit surprised that the Rev. Jin S. Kim, a minister with extensive service to the denomination and high name recognition, would have polled the lowest in the voting for Moderator of the GA.  A friend suggested that maybe this was not in spite of his name recognition, but because of it.  This could be very true — He directly speaks of the lack of racial diversity in the PC(USA) and what that means in terms of the changing demographics of the U.S.  In his candidating speech to the GA I heard him say what he has said before about this.  Here are excerpts from that speech (Video on demand, Session 3, Part 1, 53:40)

Those of you who know me know that I have no shortage of critiques of our denomination.  I quarrel with this church every day… I quarrel with our sense of entitlement to the prestige of a bygone era.
…
I quarrel with a racism that makes us even now a 92% white Eurocentric denomination in the 21st century, unable to embody the sovereignty of God and the priesthood of all believers in our local congregations.
…
The U.S. Census estimates that whites will be a minority by 2042 — are you making the connection? While the liberals blame the close-mindedness and homophobia of conservatives for our decline, and the conservatives blame the lack of commitment to biblical orthodoxy of the liberals, both seem to miss the massive demographic shift that really is the critical reason for our decline… The basic problem in my view is that we remain a Eurocentric, white, middle-class church wedded to a way of doing faith as deeply dependent on enlightenment rationalism.  But since the sixties the U.S. has become a post-modern nation in which the rational is only one of many competing ways of interpreting God.

This is his concern for the church and the starting point for where he sees that the denomination needs to go.  You will see similar themes in the news article about his sermon to the 218th GA.

And finally, American Presbyterianism has a segregationist past as well.  While there are a number of resources related to this, let me just mention that a bit of a fuss has recently arisen over a new book that looks at some of this history.  Yes, the focus is on institutions that are now affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America, but the history is longer than either the PCA or the PC(USA) and extends back to our common ancestor, the Presbyterian Church in the United States.  In the extensive comments on the post I would point you to one in particular by TE Ligon Duncan, the current pastor of one of the churches prominant in the book talking about how the church has moved on.

So somewhere between our past history and being the Body of Jesus Christ in the future where there is no majority ethnic group in the U.S., the church finds itself today.  What can we learn from the past to help us move into the future?  Are non-geographic presbyteries a useful tool for transition or a structure that allows congregations to isolate themselves – a form of modern segregation – that is holding us back?  While I don’t know if this GA made the right decision, it was refreshing to hear the arguments and see them faithfully wrestling with the question.  Prayers that they did faithfully discern the will of God.

UPDATE: The Rev. Theresa Cho, the first commissioner to speak against the new presbytery, has posted on her blog about this item and her perspective on it.

The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — Summaries Of The Assembly

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With the conclusion of the meeting of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) earlier today the reports of what the Assembly did are beginning to appear.

For many years I have produced a summary sheet for my congregation and the last few years I have had requests from others asking if they can to use it.  So here is my Brief Summary. Feel free to use it if you find it helpful.

There are already a series of official responses from the PC(USA) including:

In addition Robert Austell has put up on his GAhelp.net site a collection of Post-GA information including an index of the business, Post-GA commentaries, and the News/Opinion feed.

While it is tempting to start commenting on the inaccuricies in the reporting of the popular media I will leave that for another day.  However, one of my favorite blogs, GetReligion, has posted their first piece.

So, the 219th is in the books. Lots for the presbyteries to vote on.  I’m still working on my summary thoughts, but for the moment we are on to the General Synod of the Bible Presbyterian Church in a couple of weeks.

The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) — The Clock Is Ticking

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While I am working on a longer post about some of the racial-ethnic issues that have surfaced in the PC(USA) and the wider Presbyterian family in the last few days I wanted to break away for a moment to make a brief comment about what happened in the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Thursday night and Friday morning.

To summarize the actions: Thursday night the Assembly took the recommendation of the Commissioner Committee on Civil Union and Marriage Issues and amended their recommendation commending the Final Report of the Special Committee so that it now commends both the Final Report and the Minority Report from the Special Committee to the denomination.  Only a short while later the Assembly voted 348 to 324 to have the rest of the items from the Assembly Committee answered by the action on the Special Committee’s reports.  This effectively said that changes to the definition of marriage in the Book of Order, which was outside the charge to the Special Committee, would not be considered this year.  Friday morning, as probably anticipated by every polity wonk tracking this, the motion was made to reconsider the previous night’s action and after some debate the Assembly voted 275 to 407 not to reconsider.  I am guessing that result was also anticipated by most polity wonks, although I must admit I was surprised by the large margin of the vote.

OK – impartial observer mode off and commentary mode on.  Beware of snark…

1) As a member of the Special Committee on Civil Unions and Christian Marriage I would like to personally thank the Assembly for the confidence you placed in our report to make it, the whole thing with Final and Minority combined, the final word on marriage from this Assembly and for the PC(USA) for the next two years.  I truly appreciate the word to the church to have them study what we wrote — I know that I learned a lot about the topic from researching the report.  But aside from the definition of Christian marriage, the church finds itself in an interesting situation right now where we have in W-4.9001 an inaccurate definition for civil marriage in certain jurisdictions, still saying civil marriage is between a man and woman while some states have moved away from that.  Hopefully the church will use this time the Assembly has given it to contemplate how to better define Christian marriage while acknowledging that the definition of civil marriage is changing in some places.

2) While acknowledging that a lot of people are frustrated, to say the least, by the Assembly deferring the issue all together, this whole sequence points to a much larger issue related to the Assembly — the Assembly has far too little time to do way too much business.  Both the move to quickly answer all the other business with the report as well as the strong response not to reconsider it today are, in my observation, an indication that the commissioners are setting priorities for what items they are willing to engage in lengthy debates about and they essentially said that this was not one of them.  Back at the 209th GA when I was a commissioner we reached 1 AM on Friday night (i.e. Saturday morning) and just started referring business to the 210th GA to finish off the docket.

Please be clear that I am not saying that the commissioners were looking to ignore the issue, wanted a quick fix, or needed an easy out, especially because of the late hour.  What I am saying is that in the multitude of factors that the commissioners were weighing, consciously and subconsciously, the fact that they had a limited amount of time to deal with an overwhelming amount of work was a factor that influenced some and, I believe, the original resolution passed at that hour when it probably would not have passed at an earlier hour of the day.

After tracking GA’s for a number of years I have come to understand that an Assembly has one good debate per day in them.  It appears that Thursday’s debate was on the issue of ordination standards.  The commissioners saved their energy for that and when finished they then had enough of hot topics for the day.  Again, this is not a reflection on the inherent importance of the topic itself, only the tendency of the Assembly to prioritize the use of their time and energy.

If you are wondering about the energy level of the Assembly, it was clear from the commissioners at the microphone that by Friday morning the energy was starting to fade — There was one commissioner that had lost track of which day it was and another that had lost track of which vote they were taking.

Now, my comments here are not a conservative’s plea of “Let not deal with it and keep the status quo.” This is a realist’s plea to say “Let’s find a better way to deal with it.”  That is also part of the message of our Special Committee report.  The Assembly has a limited amount of time to deal with a whole lot of business.  For the most part the commissioner committee process is successful and the full Assembly tends to trust the intense discernment and study each committee puts in on the topic.  But there are still enough major issues to eat up more time than the GA has to faithfully deal with them.

So, can we step back for a moment and ask if the PC(USA) is trying to do too much business with too little time?  Are we giving ourselves space to be the body of Christ together in real discernment listening to each other.  That is what the Special Committee did and our conclusion was that we were brothers and sisters in Christ around that table and while we could not come to agreement on that topic, we were still around the table together.

I don’t know the answer.  I ask myself if we need to limit the business to an Assembly.  Do we need to restructure the way business gets done.  Do we need more Assemblies, each more specifically focused.  I’m still thinking and have not decided yet.  But it is my conclusion that at the present time the General Assembly feels the constraint of the clock too much with too much to do in too little time to properly work through it.

My thoughts for today — your milage may vary.

The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) — But Will The Presbyteries Concur?

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Yesterday at the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) two high-profile business items were approved that will now require the concurrence of the presbyteries.  As a change to the Book of Order, or maybe better expressed as a revision of a major portion of the Book of Order, the new revised Form of Government and new Foundations of Presbyterian Polity sections will require a majority vote of the presbyteries to be adopted.  On the other hand, the Belhar Confession will require two-thirds of the presbyteries to agree to be included in the Book of Confessions.  After these were approved by the Assembly plenary I was musing on my commute home from work on the basic question – “Will the presbyteries concur?”

Well, if I ponder something long enough I usually head in an analytical direction and this was no different.  So in the spirit of the alternate hashtag for GA – #presbynerdfest10 – this post is about to get really geeky really fast.

Let me begin with the data:  The nFOG passed the plenary by a vote of 468 yes to 204 no, a 69.6% yes vote.  The Belhar Confession was endorsed by the plenary with a 525 to 150 vote, a 77.8% yes vote.  Clearly, if the presbyteries mirror the Assembly in their voting than both will be approved.  However, we know from past experience that this is not the case.  In the most recent example the 218th General Assembly approved the change to G-6.0106b by a 380 to 325 margin, a 53.9% yes vote but the presbyteries voted 78 to 94 on 08-B with only a 45.3% yes vote.  The ratio of presbytery “yes” to assembly “yes” is 0.840.  If we apply that to the nFOG vote we get 58.5% yes in the presbyteries and for Belhar 65.4%.  nFOG passes and Belhar is very close.

Why is there a difference between Assembly and presbytery votes?  As polity wonks know, this is really a comparison of apples to oranges.  In the presbytery voting each presbytery has equal weight regardless of their size.  The smallest presbyteries’ votes count just the same as the largest and as a general rule the smaller presbyteries tend to be more conservative.  The other element in play here is that past voting patterns have shown that commissioners to the General Assembly are, on balance, more progressive than the average elder back home — or at least the elders back home are more resistant to change.  Finally, there is more time before the presbytery votes allowing for more organizing and educating of commissioners that can influence the final vote.

While I won’t go into the details, mathematicians will quickly realize that the ratio is not the only, and probably not the best, way to go in this case and rather we would be better served by having more data.  Much to my surprise, there is none from the 218th GA — Until I went searching I did not realize that every other item from that Assembly that went to the presbyteries for concurrence was approved by the plenary on voice or other non-recorded vote.  (There is something interesting in that alone but I need to do some more thinking about that.)

So, as another measure of the Assembly’s strength of opinion let me turn to the vote in the committee for each item since that is required to be a recorded vote.  Here is what happened in the Assembly committee and the presbyteries.  The link for each item takes you to the PC-Biz page for that item.

Item  Comm. % Yes Presby. % Yes
 08-A  96.1%  64.3%
 08-B  78.8%  45.3%
 08-C  94.7%  88.9%
 08-D  98.3%  93.6%
 08-E  100%  89.5%
 08-F  100%  65.3%
 08-G  100%  88.3%
 08-H  100%  89.1%
 08-I  79.3%  57.6%
 08-J  100%  95.9%
 08-K  100%  98.8%
 08-L  100%  93.6%
 08-M  100%  99.4%
 08-N  100%  98.2%

So looking at 08-B, the only one with counted votes in all three arenas, we have 78.8% yes in committee, 53.9% yes in full Assembly, and 45.3% yes in the presbyteries.

Taking this data and graphing it gives the chart below. It is a bit busy but the primary data are the blue squares.  I’ve included the full Assembly vote on  08-B as a red square for reference.  Statisticians will quickly see that while the left-hand blue data points are nicely clustered together, they are away from the other points and do leverage the best-fit line in blue.  I’ve put on the bounding lines in black.  The two thresholds, 50% and 66.7% are marked in purple.


Now, using this as a predictor, we see that a Book of Order change should get greater than 78% in committee and for Confessions above 87%.  nFOG was 37-5, 88% so probable passage.  Belhar was 43-11, 79.6% so it would fail on the main trend and closer on the upper bound.  Revisions to ordination standards was 69.2% so also a predicted failure by presbyteries to approve.

But is this valid?  This was the correlation for the PC(USA) after the 218th GA, does this correlation still hold for the church today?  I don’t know but we will see what happens in the next year.

Anyway, some speculative geekiness.  I will say that I do think the church has changed enough that the correlation probably won’t hold.  We will see how close it is.  Stay tuned.  Now, out of geek mode and back to polity wonk — next topic: the defeat of a non-geographic presbytery today.

Update:  Between the time I wrote this and when I proofed and posted it the 219th GA voted on item 06-09 to propose a change to G-6.0106b.  As I said above the committee vote would predict not enough presbyteries concurring based on past trends.  With full Assembly approval by 373 to 323, a 53.6% yes vote.  This is almost identical to the vote on the corresponding item for the 218th General Assembly and may suggest little shift in the church since then.  If the ratio from the last Assembly holds this Book of Order change would again fail. Time will tell.

The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) — The GA At The Midway Point

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We have reached Wednesday morning and the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) takes a short break to catch its breath and get some reading done.  The last two-ish days have been committee work and the next three-ish the full Assembly will act on the recommendations of each committee.  Looking at what the nineteen committees have done over the last couple of days there are not too many recommendations that I find surprising, although a number are disappointing to some in the church.  I’ll return to comment on the ones coming up today in a moment, but I’ll just highlight a few and probably the best place to get a better compilation is over at the GAhelp site.  And of course, full results are on PC-Biz.

I did want to highlight some of the twists and turns committees took and not being there in person here are a few of the tweets I found most interesting and informative from those who were in the committee rooms.

cvpotweet Very proud of the YAADs and TSAD on #cmte09 who were the main force behind the creative solution for the 09-20 YAV overture! #ga219

gspcrobert #cmte04 guy just quoted yoda in debate – love it #nerdfest on so many levels #ga219

brc_live Wowza. Motion to reconsider 04-06, MGB Commission. Oh good golly. #cmte4 #ga219

brc_live This #cmte4 is struggling around parliamentary procedures; not sure it is a helpful tension. #ga219

brc_live The word-smithing during committee meetings may be frustrating for those of us that “know better” but it builds ownership. #ga219 #cmte4

gspcrobert ACC guy in #cmte05 trying to quote the BOO – “I’m more familiar with the nFOG than the current one… how embarssing is that!” #ga219

lauraviau Seeing the desire to do rightby people in #cmte6 but also the frustration of not seeing how to do that #ga219

pasta_amy Wondering why there are folks who believe that our book of confessions is all about sex – seems like it #ga219 #cmte6

rugger_lav@HeySonnie What? Presby’s making amendments that are too long for 140 characters! Unheardof! #cmte12 #ga219

HeySonnie CONFUSION REIGNS! Moderator andparliamentarian consulting. #cmte12 #ga219

gspcrobert #cmte12 – commish trying to move neither report, and only approve covenant – how does that work with 2 other motions on floor? #ga219

Thanks to all these folks and the many in the Twitterverse helping me, and others, feel connected with the process.

So what happens now.  In a little bit (probably before I actually finish this post) the plenary will begin.  Robert has the docket posted on GAhelp so we know that after all the updates (Bills and Overtures and Financial Implications — we will now see those every plenary session) we will have Committee 15: Church Growth, Christian Education and PILP.  There is then an order of the day for the report of Committee 16: Theological Issues and Institutions at 4:30 pm.

In the evening session we can look forward to Committee 7: Form of Government Revision and Committee 17: Review of Permanent GA Committees.

Committee 15: Church Growth, Christian Education and PILP has one high-profile item and that is the Report of the Youth Task Force.  The committee unanimously recommends the Assembly approve this report.  Other business includes the transfer of churches between presbyteries, approval of union churches, and a commissioner resolution to help plant churches in Triana, Albania.  The committee recommends that the latter be referred to the GAMC.  If you want an indication of the routine nature of this committee’s work, with all due respect to the Youth Task Force report, according to the official tracking twitter this was the first committee to finish, completing all of their work Monday leaving Tuesday for a field trip.

Committee 16: Theological Issues and Institutions warrants our first order of the day (i.e. Drop whatever you are doing to now do this) because they will bring the recommendations regarding changes to the Book of Confessions.  Regarding the Heidelberg Catechism the committee is recommending approval of the Special Committee’s recommendations, including the renewal of the Special Committee to participate in a complete new translation of the Catechism, as opposed to new translations of specific questions as approved by the 218th GA.  Also part of the committee report is the recommendation that the church continue in the process of adopting the Belhar Confession, that is, send the Confession out to the presbyteries for their concurrence. On this the committee vote was 43-11-1 and in response to an overture that requested only commending the Belhar the vote was the same to recommend answering that overture with the approval of the Confession.  There are also a couple of other Book of Order changes from the committee, one to add “prayer” to three questions in the ordination/installation service recommending approval, and two others recommending disapproval.

Committee 7 will be recommending the approval of the revised Form of Government with amendments.  This is coming out of committee on a 37-5-0 vote and I would think additional wordsmithing will happen this evening.

Committee 17 is pretty routine stuff and all that they have is the recommendation to approve the minutes of three GA permanent committees that they reviewed.

So there is the line up for today.  Get your live streaming ready to follow along.  Much of this will probably be coming to the presbyteries so you will likely see this again — now is your chance for the “first reading.”

The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — Election Of The Moderator

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Congratulations to Ruling Elder Cynthia Bolbach and Teaching Elder Landon Whitsitt who were just elected the Moderator and Vice-Moderator respectively, of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) .  (OK, technically Cynthia was elected Moderator and Landon will be brought up as the nominee for Vice-Moderator at the plenary later in the week but that is a formality.) They were elected on the fourth ballot with 325 votes.  As Ms. Bolbach said at one point in the Q and A — “Elders rule!”

Now, before I continue let me say that I was at a great family event among other Presbyterians this evening so I was not following much of the live streaming.  Comments on the election process are compiled from the plethora of individuals providing details on Twitter as the event progressed.  Also, you will probably want to check out the accounts from other blogs from people who were present.

Having said that let me comment on what I could follow of the election process.  For both the speeches and the Q and A session the Assembly suspended the standing rules and extended the time for each by 30 minutes because of the large number of candidates so they all had reasonable time to present themselves.

I did see some of the nominating speeches and have the accounts of the candidate speeches and they all seemed to be well delivered and touched on traditional topics.  And from the accounts multiple candidates sang parts of their speeches.

From the Twitter coverage the questions to the candidates all seemed like good ones.  They were: 1) Why is it important to have educated clergy? 2) How do both parts of the PC(USA) constitution relate to each other in decision making? 3) What is at stake in the church if you are not elected Moderator? 4) How would you address mission and evangelism? 5) How do you feel about youth involvement in the life of the church and GA? 6) What do you think about civil union and marriage?

As you can see in the table below the vote went to a fourth ballot.  After two ballots there was a motion to suspend the standing rules and change the procedure to drop the lowest vote-getter.  It would have required a 2/3’s vote and the motion failed.  In the Twitterverse Rock-paper-scissors or a penalty kick shootout were also suggested to speed things up.

 Votes 1  2 3  4
 Belle  71  60  73  51
 Bolbach  149  220  272  325
 Kim  57  52  44  25
 Lauterer  76  78  74  49
 Leeth  73  93  111  148
 Nielson  71  53  64  37
 Total  497  556  638  635


I am normally into reading tea leaves and trying to find something in these numbers.  However, I am reluctant to do that this evening for a couple of reasons.  The first is that from reading the candidates’ statements and from their answers this evening these are individuals who do not nicely fit the boxes we sometimes put them in.  Therefore, I am avoiding the usual descriptive terms and will say that I see certain affinities between Lauterer’s views and Bolbach’s views and would think that the drop Lauterer had on the last ballot went to Bolbach putting her over the top.  Similarly, there seemed to be an affinity between Nielson and Leeth and Leeth’s strengthening appears to be at Nielson’s expense.  Those two shifts don’t completely describe what is going on so there are other shifts as well.  I will say that with Kim’s name recognition in the denomination and his home-town advantage I was surprised that he was consistently last in the voting.

(Update: Jim Stochl, one of our presbytery commissioners and a friend of mine, posted his interesting observations about the election last night.  His take was that Jin Kim was too negative in his speech and answers and came across as too radical about how the PC(USA) needed to change.  Having heard Rev. Kim speak at the last GA that sounds like what he said then so he probably came across as not hopeful enough to many of the commissioners.  Thanks Jim.)

The other reason I’m hesitant to say much is because there may be bad data.  If you look at the total numbers of votes in each round you will see that round one and two are significantly lower than three and four.  There was a long interval between ballot two and ballot three as the tech staff checked the commissioners’ wireless voting devices, the commissioners voted in a few rounds of test or practice voting on whether they had dinner, and they trained the Moderator on how to call for the vote.  The consistency in the totals for the last two votes give me confidence that they got the system working.  We will see if these issues continue to be a problem when the Assembly returns to plenary session in a few days.  These problems led to a number of snarky Twitter comments which included such gems as “Lesson 1: Never do layoffs before a General Assembly” (originated with @revkirby I think) and “wireless voting at #ga219 #FAIL” (originated with @ajc123 as far as I can tell).

So, if you want to follow the new leadership on Twitter you can add @cbolbach and @landonw to your list.  (And people are lobbying hard to get Cyndie Bolbach to actually tweet — Landon Whitsitt will probably see to that himself.)  UPDATE: At the later news conference Cyndie Bolbach is quoted on Twitter by Leslie Scanlon (@lscanlon) of the Outlook as saying “I’m no @breyeschow or @bawade. But @landonw is.”

And thanks to Bruce and Byron for your faithful service over the past two years.  I don’t know if other past-Moderators worked as hard as you two did and we just did not know about it because we did not have blogs and Twitter.  But your on-line updates gave all of us a real appreciation for what goes into holding those offices and how much you do for the other 103 weeks of your term.  Thanks to both of you and God’s blessings as your live return to “normal.” (And Bruce, is your life ever anything like most people would consider normal?)  God Speed!

38th General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church In America

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The 38th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will convene in Nashville, Tennessee, at 7:30 pm today, Tuesday June 29.  The committees of commissioners began their meetings yesterday.

For more official information on the meeting of the Assembly here are the appropriate documents:

An important resource will be the byFaith site with posted updates, live streaming, and Twitter updates from @PCAbyFaith .

Speaking of Twitter, the hashtag will be #pcaga and there looks like a large crew of folks entering into the conversation.  I’ll pass on highlighting any specifically right now but as the week progresses if I find any particularly helpful I’ll update here.  But have a look because they appear to be a great bunch of G.A. Junkies.

There are no posted reports coming to the Assembly (please correct me if I missed them) but the headline item is the new Strategic Plan put forward by the Cooperative Ministries Committee.  For all the official materials and interpretation refer to the page from the Administrative Committee.  There has been official promotion of the plan at byFaith Online including the latest article from a couple of days ago with links to earlier pieces.  There has been a tremendous amount of analysis, discussion, critique, and criticism of the Plan and I will not even attempt to review it here.  The best compilation of all that has been written (101 total links- see why I don’t want to summarize) is over at Johannes Weslianus but being the geek and statistics freak that I am I must point you to an excellent article by Martin Hedman who points out the substantial problems in the data that underlie the conclusion and recommendations of the report.

Some of the business items are the old perennial ones. There are once again overtures (7 of the 28 total) that deal with the role of women in ordained office or a position that could be seen as similar to ordained office.  The other on-going discussion regarding Federal Vision theology can be expected to arise in the review of presbytery minutes.

Finally, for today, I would highlight an overture that seeks to clarify the polity of the PCA for church planting and mission churches and make it more flexible.  If you are not aware the EPC and the PC(USA) are also taking a hard look at their polity to decide if it can be streamlined and made more flexible for mission.

While those branches are interested in broad revisions of the constitutional documents, Overture 15 from Potomac Presbytery focuses only on one chapter of the Book of Church Order, Chapter 5 on Mission Churches and Organization of a Particular Church.  As the overture says at the beginning:

Whereas, the Presbyterian Church in America has been faithfully committed to church planting since its inception and should only deepen that commitment, and

Whereas, church planting in the Presbyterian Church in America will be served by a process that is clear where necessary and flexible where possible, and

Whereas, certain phrasing in the Book of Church Order has caused various degrees of confusion, inconsistency and even frustration among those involved in church planting

To this end this overture provides a nearly complete rewrite of the chapter. (Don’t let the official title “Revise BCO 5-2; 5-3; 5-4; 5-8; 5-9; 5-10; 5-11; add new 5-5; and Renumber Thereafter” fool you.)  As the rational contained in the extensive footnotes explains, when Emmanuel Presbyterian Church of Arlington, Virginia, organized they found the process confusing.  This is a “Blood on Every Page” overture that proposes changes based on their hard experience.  They say of their experience:

While the organization was relatively smooth, BCO 5 was found to be confusing in many parts, open to various interpretations, and in some places, contradictory to the practices of a particular church. Hearing similar reactions from church planters and others familiar with the organization process led to a consensus that mission churches would benefit from a revision of BCO 5.

From their experience they talk about the basis for some of the revisions:

A guiding principle for the overture is that mission churches should mirror the practices of particular churches as nearly as possible. Not only would doing so thereby adopt the reasoning behind such practices, it also helps establish in the minds of the mission church the correct procedures they will be using after organization.

From both a comparative reading of the overture with the current BCO language as well as spot-checking detailed portions there are only minor adjustments in pure polity in this new language.  There is, as the introduction suggests, significant simplification of the process language.  One example of an point where the language was heavily modified is regarding the selection of officers.

 Current wording Proposed wording
 5-9. The following procedures shall be used in nominating and training ruling elders prior to organization and the election of a Session:

1. All men of the mission church (unless they decline) shall receive instruction in the qualifications and work of the office of ruling elder by the organizing commission or the evangelist.

2. These men shall be examined by the organizing commission or the evangelist concerning their Christian experience, their knowledge and acceptance of the constitutional standards of the church, and their willingness to assume the responsibility of the office of ruling elder according to the qualifications set forth in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. The organizing commission or the evangelist shall present a list of all who are found qualified to be nominated.

3. Not less than thirty (30) days prior to the date of election, petitioners shall submit, from the list of all those found qualified, nominations of members for the office of ruling elder to the Presbytery-designated organizing commission or evangelist. (Compare BCO 24-1)

4. The congregation will determine the number of ruling elders following procedures outlined in BCO 24-3 and 24-1.

5. At the organizing meeting ordination and installation shall follow the procedure set forth in BCO 24-6.

6. Those elected, ordained and installed ruling elders should meet as soon as is practicable to elect a moderator and a clerk. The moderator may be one of their own number or any teaching elder of the Presbytery with Presbytery’s approval.

5-10. If deacons are elected, follow the procedures of (1) through (5) above. If deacons are not elected, the duties of the office shall devolve upon the ruling elders.

  5-9. c. When the temporary government determines that among the members of the mission congregation there are men who appear qualified as officers, the nomination process shall begin and the election conclude following the procedures of BCO 24 so far as they may be applicable.

d. The election of officers shall normally take place at least two weeks prior to the date of the organization service. However, the effective date of service for the newly elected officers shall be upon the completion of the organization service.

e. If deacons are not elected, the duties of the office shall devolve upon the session, until deacons can be secured.



That should give a good idea of the simplifications proposed.  The question now is whether that is too simplified or whether the references to other section of the BCO cover the requirements for PCA officers.

So, get ready for a great week of GA watching, tweeting and discussion.  For those in Nashville — enjoy. For the rest of us polity wonks, we look forward to absorbing the wisdom of the “fathers and brothers.”

30th General Assembly Of The Evangelical Presbyterian Church

Next Wednesday, June 23, the 30th General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church will convene in Englewood, Colorado.  Plenary business will commence with worship at 8:30 AM on Thursday morning.  For those following along at home here is what you need to know:

Business
One more thing I did not include in the above list is the notice of a commissioner resolution.  It appears that this was submitted today by the commissioner(s) from the Presbytery of Mid-America asking to divide the presbytery into two different presbyteries with specified “exchange” of certain churches to align congregations with the ordination standards of each new presbytery.  This resolution was submitted because the Stated Clerk ruled that a nearly identical overture, Overture 10-B (p. 8-10), was ruled out of order.  The resolution is a parliamentary move to put the question on the floor provided that 2/3 of the commissioners agree with allowing the resolution. (I have my doubts it will get the necessary super-majority.)

While the rational behind the ruling that the Overture is “not properly before the Assembly” is not listed on the web page and I have not found it in a report yet, it is almost certainly because this overture puts the cart before the horse and a presbytery with the ability to bring neighboring congregations into membership is not yet possible.  That accommodation is included in the report of the Interim Committee on the Ordination of Women Teaching Elders and until the Assembly acts on their recommendations and it is sent to the presbyteries for concurrence the exchange of congregations can not happen.  Yes, sometimes being decently and in order can be slow.  But we will see whether the Assembly agrees to consider the commissioner resolution.  The recommendations from the Interim Committee include one to have the Moderator appoint a Study Group to make recommendations on presbytery boundaries across the whole denomination.

I have discussed the work of the Interim Committee previously and this will likely be a major point of discussion for the EPC since these provisions will help guide the church into the future as they live into their motto of  “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things charity.”  The commissioners will have an opportunity to discuss the report with the Committee at an information/discussion session on Thursday afternoon. 

The two commissions and one other interim committee have submitted reports but there are no action items contained in them.  It was interesting to note the report of the Interim Committee on Constitutional Revision which will report at a future Assembly.  However, as they set to work they began by establishing the following seven points to guide them:

1. “No bloating”: we will continually ask, “Does this belong in the constitution or should it go elsewhere in a supporting document?”

2. Language and stylistic elements are to be governed by the “KISS” principle: seek straightforward language as much as possible for clarity, readability.

3. Standardize nomenclature: identify significant titles and terms uniformly and avoid synonymous descriptions.

4. Keep in mind, Jesus’ commands is not burdensome: maintain a clear delineation between the authority delegated to each level of our governance and the responsibilities incumbent upon officers and members as part of Christ’s Body.

5. Allow the Westminster Confession of Faith and its fundamental principles to guide our work.

6. Recognize and preserve those rights reserved in perpetuity by our standards.

7. Scripture is our law; the Westminster Confession is our interpretation of Scripture; the Book of Order is our application of both.

It will be interesting to see what ultimately comes of their work and how it is received.

The second overture (pg. 7) before the Assembly will be a boundary change to the Presbytery of Florida to now include the Bahamas.  This change will allow two churches in the Bahamas that were dismissed by the Church of Scotland last month to join the EPC as a step towards the goal of creating the Presbyterian Church of the Bahamas in the future.

Finally, I would anticipate some discussion by the EPC of the PC(USA) task force report going to their GA which examined the accusation that the EPC was recruiting from the PC(USA) and found that the denomination had not done that.  This will only come up in the report of the Fraternal Relations Committee and not as an action item because the Committee has chosen to not respond until the PC(USA) GA has acted upon the task force’s report and recommendations.  I’m still digesting the EPC account of the EPC/PC(USA) meeting, details which were absent from the PC(USA) task force report, as well as the Transitional Presbytery Commission report and the membership statistics in the Stated Clerk’s report .  I’ll post more on all that next week after I’ve crunched some numbers.

So lots going on at the EPC meeting next week that will have an impact in several different areas of their mission.  I am looking forward to the discussion.