Monthly Archives: May 2008

Cartooning at Lambeth

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In the midst of my present chaos, taking care of all my regular stuff and still trying to write and research three “in works” blog posts, I came across this on The Lead.  It turns out that at the major Anglican “A-list” Bishop’s conference this summer at Lambeth Palace, there will be a cartoonist to “capture” the event.  Have a look at featured cartoonist Dave Walker’s web site/blog cartoonchurch.com.

While his subject may originally be the Anglican church, there is so much universal humor at church-related topics in these cartoons that even the “frozen chosen” can find a lot in there to laugh at about themselves.  These are not so much side-splitting ROTFL cartoons as they are a humorous look at the way the church runs.  For example, in his cartoon of the “Parochial Church Council” I can put names of some of the members of my church’s session on those people, including finding my wife in the bunch.  The group does lack a “polity wonk” or “polity fundamentalist” like me, unless that is the “inspirer of tangents and pointless discussions.”  There are a bunch of other great ones on the site, but check out the one on “What the clergy do all week.”

This blog has now been added to my reader.

I can’t remember a General Assembly being cartooned as a regular practice.  Sure, some political cartoons have come out of it, but not as a regular daily, focused, product like this is.  But we did have that great whimsical commentary by Houston Hodges during GA, including “Some Assembly Required.”

PC(USA) General Assembly Moderator Candidate Events

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Over the last week there has been some local activity for the four candidates standing for Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The series of events began with the attendance of the candidates at the regular meeting of the General Assembly Council in Louisville.  This seems to not so much be a “moderator” event as it is a “reality check.”  It gives the candidates an opportunity to see the state of the denomination one last time before GA, and it lets the “inner circle” of the denomination check out the candidates.  From these two days Bruce Reyes-Chow has posted some of his reflections.

After Louisville, all four traveled to New Jersey for two “meet-and-greet” events, one in the afternoon at Bloomfield College and one that evening at First Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville.  The evening one is well covered, complete with pictures, by lead organizer Mark Smith in his blog Mark Time.  For full details and impressions check it out, but it had a great format with time for candidate’s remarks to the whole group, breaking up into four groups, one with each candidate and then rotate candidates, and finally an informal time to mingle.  In addition to Mark, candidate Carl Mazza has his own comments on his blog.

Finally, Bruce Reyes-Chow and Bill Teng were able to continue the “whistle-stop tour” with an event the next day at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, in Washington, D.C.  You can find reflections on this event by Carol Howard Merritt on her blog Tribal Church.

All the comments are positive about these events and it sounds like a useful exercise to get the candidates together out in the “real world.”  So often we hear about the election at GA, those that did not get elected fade from view, and the Moderator is now someone out traveling the world on our behalf that we may read about, but usually don’t meet and who also has pretty much faded from view when the next GA rolls around.  Now I realize that even with the new two year terms of moderators, for them to visit every presbytery would require visiting an average of close to two presbyteries per week.  So getting face time with each of the two-million-ish members is not realistic.  But we in the particular church need to be attentive to our connectionalism more than the one week every-other year that GA is in session.