Good morning – here we go.
Stated clerk election will dominate the morning. We got almost caught up on business last night so this may not be as long a day as it could be.
So let’s get going!
Last night the 222nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) kept going right up to the 11:30 PM deadline and I am pleased to say that they are almost caught up to docket. There are two business items left. This is a very encouraging sign after the very first report was arrested at the end of Wednesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon only one committee reported.
But with the late hour, I chose the pillow instead of the keyboard last night so there was no wrap-up. Here are a few very brief (I hope) notes about yesterday.
Yesterday was about voting.
I will note at the front that the last item of the night was item 11-05, the LGBTQ/Q apology. While there was a substitute motion to reinstate the language of the original overture but the committee’s alternate resolution was ultimately adopted. While it was agree to by a substantial 90% majority that was no consolation to many. Talking with friends, watching Twitter and just seeing the faces of many I know this was not the outcome they had hoped and prayed for. The PC(USA) is evolving. Too fast for some and not fast enough for others.
The other vote of interest last night was not in the Assembly hall but in the UK. I have been sitting a few seats away from the Rev. Derek Browning, Business Convener and parish minister in the Church of Scotland. Going into the vote the Church of Scotland had supported staying and Rev. Browning though that would be the eventual outcome. He sat in disbelief last night at the results came in and it went the other way. To be noted, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted stay, but England had the votes to pull to leave. All this was not lost on the Assembly and many people came up to chat with Derek during the evening and the Assembly paused not once, but twice, to pray for the future of the country. The second time specifically included prayers for the Church of Scotland. Connectionalism on a global level. And Rev. Browning will be bringing the ecumenical greetings this morning.
Finally, as I watch the Assembly and the vote numbers there seems to be a consistency in many of the counted votes with a lot of votes coming in between 80% and 90% on the prevailing side. It is interesting to wonder if the commissioners are of such a similar mind on all these issues. Or, considering the work load and the backlog the Assembly had, were they putting trust in the work of the committees. Specifically, based on what I would have expected, a couple of synod items and the apology at the end of the night would have gotten more maneuvering. I hope to get a correlation plot up in a bit and see if what I think I am seeing is in the data.
So now we head into the morning session. Up first is the Stated Clerk election. Based on history the search committee’s nominee should have not problem being selected, but we will see if this Assembly has that mind about it.
So here we go… Hang on!
[Live blog coming in a couple minutes]
And we are back with lots to do this evening. Word on the street is this will either go really fast or really slow. The concern is that Committee 4 – The Way Forward is reporting this evening.
And away we go…
Too late for anything else tonight, so…
Thank’s all folks!
And we are back on a misty and drizzly Portland morning. It has been so bright and sunny outside (not that we would know) it somehow feels right to have a morning like this
And so, as the house band warms us up with “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” be get ready to blog
Following worship we are in recess until 1:30 PM
And we are back from dinner at the PC(USA) General Assembly. The band is warming up, and warming us up.
Just a reminder, we have an arrested report and a tribute to Gradye Parsons coming up.
So here we go…
That is it for the Assembly session. Hang on because I have to more items to post tonight.
So here we are again! Back in the Assembly hall for the start of the Plenary half of the meeting.
To watch the live stream check out the GA 222 Web Page.
As a reminder I will be putting my emphasis on Live Blogging the session. I will be doing some broad tweeting at @ga_junkie and more focused tweets at @gajunkie (no underscore).
For good Twitter streams check out @L3_UMD for the play-by-play and @jodicraiglow for color commentary with a bit of wit.
So here is the live blog app
The Assembly is in recess until 7 PM this evening.
It was an interesting day at the 222nd General Assembly on a number of levels. Like one of my previous wrap-ups I am going to take this in reverse chronological order.
I write this from the convention center as the hour grows later and Committee 4 – The Way Forward continues their work. In my wrap up from Sunday I was partly right and partly wrong in my assessment. What I got right is that they are working late on Tuesday night – to my knowledge the only committee still working. What I got wrong is that I suggested they might be working through it in a cursory way to get it done. Watching the committee working this evening it is clear that they are taking their job very seriously. They are using parliamentary procedure fairly well, the members of the committee are listening and respecting each other, and they are being very thoughtful and deliberate in what they write. It is a pleasure to watch them work on this, with the exception that the hour grows late. (For the record, they did get to the point where they got the heavy lifting done and could have done some more detailed work but instead did lump a few overtures together to be answered by an earlier action.)
And if you asked about my using the word “writing,” yes they are writing a lot. Part of their deliberative process was to be generative and come up with new ideas to move the church forward. They have discussed some interesting ideas, wrestled with the polity constraints, and will be bringing something interesting to the plenary. I am not going to expand on that at this time since it is not finished yet, but it will be interesting to see what the whole Assembly does with it.
I spent most of the rest of the day observing the Committee on Mid Councils. Today they were dealing with the question of synods. They were instructed early on that the actions of previous Assemblies were not binding on this Assembly. Therefore, if the 221st had asked synods to find a way to restructure themselves, this Assembly did not have to follow through with that. In brief, they did not. After hearing from a lot of people for and against, after discussion in the committee about options, after advice from the ACC they chose to recommend rescinding the actions of the 221st and leave synods alone. There were whispers of “minority report” and we will see what comes to the floor. Both this and their decision on non-geographic presbyteries rub some people the wrong way so it will be interesting to see how the different dynamics of the plenary play out.
On the one hand, a lot of time, effort and money have gone into two Mid Council Commissions over the last five years. I have heard some reaction that after all that work it is being undone. On the other hand, the process of the last two years with the synod consultations has happened, they came back with a recommendation and this committee basically took that recommendation.
The Mid Councils Committee closed their work considering a request for an Authoritative Interpretation (AI) about the inclusive nature of the church and its leadership and whether non-ordained leadership from church plants could be given a seat at the table in presbytery with voice and vote. The original motion from a member of the committee was to do that but when it was explained that if they wanted to have an AI they would have to provide it. No one felt like they had the necessary words, or maybe the time, and without much additional discussion the request for the AI was denied. I bet if that had not been the very last item on the docket a writing team would have put something together for consideration at the end. But so goes business at the GA.
Finally, please allow me to tell my best story of the day – maybe of the whole GA.
Before the Mid Councils Committee began today Jana Blazek from the Outlook and I were setting up at the press table. Todd Freeman, the Moderator of the committee came over and was chatting with us. When I introduced myself he recognized my name but not from this blog. It took him a moment but remembered that I was the author of the Outlook article looking at the overtures related to synods. He explained that he wanted to read from it but left that copy of the Outlook in his hotel room. “We can fix that” we told him and helped him call it up on his tablet. Thanks to Jana for the picture of me and Todd with his table showing the Outlook article.
He then proceeded to open today’s meeting by reading to the committee the first paragraph of my Outlook article on synods. I am humbled to say the least. My thanks to the Outlook for the opportunity to write it and for them publishing it.
And with that, I am going to crash. No writing time tomorrow morning as I will be meeting with people but will be back to live blogging as the afternoon plenary begins at 2 PM PDT.
See you then.
It was a very interesting day on a number of levels. As I wind down my day let me reflect on three of them.
First breakfast was great. Thanks to the night clerk at my hotel when I asked for a local suggestion for breakfast and he recommended Pine State Biscuits. The nearest location a few blocks from the convention center is a storefront in a commercial area. Pretty unassuming.
Now the important thing to know is if you are not into biscuits, this is not the place for you. Go back later in the day when it becomes a pizza place. Now, the biscuits with mushroom gravy were great and the coffee was just fine as well. But I was most energized by being able to sit at the counter next to the open roll-up window looking out on the street and the old church across the street and decompress (yes, even first thing in the morning). Great food, great coffee and great quite time to center for the day.
In fact, while I pushed myself hard today I tried to exhibit a bit of self-care and not push constantly. The opportunity to finish a piece, hit save or publish, and then walk away made all the difference in how today went. Yes, I missed a bit of GA and I did make an embarrassing online mistake this morning, but all in all it was a good day.
As for the GA itself, as the day wore on into the evening Twitter comments began to show significant frustration by commissioners on some committees. There is a group dynamics model that has the group go through the stages of forming, norming, storming and preforming. It was clear that some of the committees had reached storming and may have gotten a bit stuck there. This was not storming as in the committee lost its sense of decorum, although there was enough frustration that a tweet said someone was ready to walk out. This was a sense of frustration, lack of communication, and confusion that lead to a sense of helplessness and questioning “why am I here?”
There were signs late in the day that at least one committee has successfully moved on to preforming and business was moving along nicely. We can hope that a good night’s sleep will help the others move on. And it was good to see committees finishing up on time this evening as it could certainly be a late night for some tomorrow to finish their work.
Having said that, it is important to remember that plenary is a second chance for some items of business. The dynamics are different and there can be more time for an in-depth discussion of a business item. We will see how many get minority reports and how many have opposition organized between now and then. There are a couple of pieces of business that some outside the committee expressed strong surprise that they passed. We will see if any of that plays out differently in plenary.
And sometimes as you are sitting in committees you wonder to yourself, or the person sitting next to you, “tell me again why we do it this way?”
This moves me into the third thought for the night…
It has been a pleasure to have the Rev. Derek Browning with us at this GA. He is the Business Convener for the Church of Scotland General Assembly and I have studied their GA and systems well enough to know that while our two branches share a basic Presbyterian philosophy and framework, there are a lot of differences between our systems. If you had to identify one core point to that difference it is that the Church of Scotland developed as a national church and the source of authority is at the top. American Presbyterianism developed from presbyteries and we still recognize that they are the ultimate unit of authority in our system. This leads to a bunch of differences and approaches to doing the work. One consequence of that is the Church of Scotland does not have committees of commissioners but is in plenary the whole week it meets. Committee reports come from national standing committees that prepare their work during the year and have it ready for presentation. This in contrast to the American system where the committees that present are made up of commissioners who meet for a couple days and are expected to do careful, discerning work on a ton of business items in that time.
All that to say, It has been a wonderful opportunity to discuss the fine points in each of our systems and critique the 222nd with a knowledgeable outside observer of our organized, or maybe not so organized, chaos.
And with that I wish you a wonderful evening and I will try to catch up on my sleep. Tomorrow’s business could go late.
The deadline for new business passed about 24 hours ago and the Bills and Overtures Committee has looked them over and referred those that are in order.
Thanks to the Office of the General Assembly for letting me know that in total 12 Commissioner Resolutions were submitted. I hope that later in the meeting that the full list will appear on PC-Biz.
UPDATE: The full list is now in the Bills and Overtures report. One of the declined items was related to a two state solution in the Middle East and was declined without explanation. The other declined report asked for the release of the investigation report into using New Worshiping Communities money to set up a California non-profit corporation. Declined because civil action is ongoing and because a predecessor denomination said the GA would not be an ecclesial court.
Ten of these Resolutions were found to be in order and were assigned to committees in whole or in part. Here is a quick rundown of those ten:
There you go. We will see how these fare.
There is a lot going on this week across American Presbyterianism and up for today is the start of one of the more unique General Assemblies this year. Today in Nashville the first meetings begin for the 141st General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America and the 186th General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. This is a concurrent general assembly which has among its business the report of the Unification Task Force and the reception and referral to the presbyteries for study a Plan of Union to reunite the denominations.
At the present time I am not finding documents specific to the CPCA meeting but much is reflected in the CPC documents. In preparation for the meeting, a few things you might be interested in:
UPDATE: There is no live stream for this event but there is a live blog.
Twitter traffic is low. Probably the primary Twitter feed to follow is the Ministry Council (@ministrycouncil) and the hashtag #cpga16. A couple other official Twitter feeds to keep an eye on include CPC Youth (@cpyouthministry) and CPC Young Adults (@cpyamc). One extra reason is because there is a CPC/CPCA young adult gathering happening along with the Assembly meeting. UPDATE: As the Assembly gets underway I see that M. Derek Jacks (@mderekjacks) is tweeting from the meeting and would be a good source to follow. And another addition: Joy Warren (@joyseyes) also has a nice Twitter commentary going.
As a concurrent General Assembly a significant emphasis will be placed on the Report of the Unification Task Force. Their report begins on page 110 of the Preliminary Minutes. The report is fairly straight forward if not short. The longest part is a proposed Plan of Union presented for study by the churches. There is also a recommendation that for the foreseeable future the two churches hold concurrent General Assemblies. Finally, they ask the GA to declare the third Sunday in February as Unification Sunday to promote and pray for the reunion of the churches.
I will also note, as this is an issues at many assembly and synod meetings this year, that right before the Unification Task Force report in the Preliminary Minutes (page 107) is a study paper titled “A Confessional Response to Discrimination.” The recommendation is for the denominations accept them as study papers and they be made available to the churches through the presbyteries.
So our best wishes for the meeting and we look forward to the stories and pictures that will come out of this important meeting.