Monthly Archives: May 2010

Congratulations Are In Order

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I wish to add my own congratulations to the many already expressed to Mr. Rocco Palmo on the occasion of his receiving an honorary doctoral degree from Aquinas Institute of Theology of St. Louis where yesterday he served as the commencement speaker for the class of 2010.

If you are familiar with Dr. Palmo’s blog you can probably tell why I admire his work — He writes the influential Roman Catholic blog Whispers in the Loggia.  He is a trained journalist who writes like one while writing a blog tightly focused on one denomination and primarily on news from the U.S.  In a nice background piece on TMCnet.com (originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) it says:

In awarding Palmo an honorary doctorate, the 84-year-old Dominican seminary is making a statement about the changing relationship between journalism and the Catholic church. The award for Palmo’s work on his blog Whispers in the Loggia is also an expression of how American Catholic leaders hope to encourage a younger generation to engage their faith through news.

And a colleague says of him writing:

Ann Rodgers, religion reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, said that when Palmo started attending the annual meetings of the U.S.Conference of Catholic Bishops, an event traditional reporters have covered for years, “he was like a rock star. I had archbishops asking me to introduce them to Rocco.”

So, my congratulations on this honor and the honor it reflects on those that use new media.  And my personal admiration for the effort at running a quality blog focused on one niche in religious reporting.  Best wishes.

Liturgy — One Reason We Have It

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On Friday I was one of many bloggers that linked to a video that, in my opinion, provided a very insightful parody of contemporary worship and demonstrated so clearly the liturgy inherent in the worship style.

Last Sunday I had an experience that very clearly points out one of the reasons and values of a liturgy.

Last Sunday for the first time in quite a while I helped take communion to one of our members who has trouble making it to church on Sunday morning for medical reasons.  A while back I was regularly part of the team that took communion to them and then, with a change in their circumstances, they were able to attend regularly for a period.  Unfortunately, they have again had their mobility restricted.

During the earlier period of visitation I would regularly use the worship/communion liturgy from the Book of Common Worship and my preferred Great Thanksgiving that has as the core of its central portion the Sanctus.  As we were setting up for communion last Sunday our friend specifically referenced the earlier period and how meaningful it was to them to have the section with the “Holy, Holy, Holy” in the communion service.

Liturgy serves many purposes among which is the repetition that works its way into our memory to provide a sense of reverence, remembrance, and familiarity.  It really is a “Do this in Remembrance of Me” sort of thing.

Liturgy — Don’t Deny It, You Probably Have It

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One of the things I regularly hear from people who attend contemporary worship services is that they like the fact that there is no liturgy.  Now, it may not be “high church,” it may not have a printed order of worship, it may not have unison prayers or much congregational participation beyond the singing of the contemporary Christian music.  But at the heart there is an unwritten order of worship that these services follow whether anyone wants to admit it or not.  I have been to enough of these services to know, there is a very specific order to them that in my understanding of worship qualifies as its own particular liturgy.

And now, the folks at North Point Media have NAILED IT!  Have a look at their video parody movie trailer “Sunday’s Coming.”

National Day Of Prayer — And A Tiny Bit Of History From The PC(USA)

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Today is one of those days when civil religion intersects with the church calendar in the National Day of Prayer.  This year the event is embraced in an official way in the PC(USA) by the Mission Yearbook and the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.  Unofficially we have contributions from Presbyterian Devotions, Presbyterian Bloggers, and a word of caution in a commentary from the Aquila Report. Over on beliefnet Mark D. Roberts talks about it being viewed with different opinions. But there is a commentary on Religious Dispatches by Elizabeth Drescher that gave me a good chuckle.  The piece is titled “Forget Right of Wrong: Why the National Day of Prayer is Obsolete” and as you might be able to guess her point is that with the trend in demographics with segments of the population of the United States shifting from “religious” to “spiritual” the National Day of Prayer no longer is relevant.  She sums it up with this:

In this world, a government-sponsored National Day of Prayer may not be
appropriate or Constitutional, but it fails most because, as a civic and
as a spiritual event, it’s about as culturally relevant to the
developing mainstream of American believers and non-believers alike as a
National Day of Butter Churning.

Maybe she is right as this is viewed from the civic perspective, which it must be in part because of the government endorsement and participation.  But while cultural relevance may be a civic consideration it does not make sense as a spiritual one in this case — I could see it being argued that the event is even more important from a religious/spiritual perspective because it is not culturally relevant. And from a religious perspective the organizers would argue that she has the cause and effect reversed – it is not that we are religious there for we pray, it is that we are called to prayer to make the country more religious.  But I digress…

What caught my attention, and which I can speak authoritatively to, is her opening line:

The Constitutional
issues around a National Day of Prayer endorsed by the federal
government are significant, and the political stakes are high (or hyped,
depending on your perspective), but the controversy also reflects the
continuing failure of mainline religions to grasp a dramatic cultural
change in what constitutes religious or spiritual “practice.” (emphasis mine)

Now maybe what she means here by “mainline religions” is better expressed as “traditional western religions” or maybe even “evangelical Christians.”  I have trouble making it mean “mainline churches.”

In my experience, and the examples I cite at the beginning not withstanding, the mainline denominations have not been the driving force behind the National Day of Prayer.  I can’t speak for other denominations, but at least in 1997 it was not listed on the Presbyterian Planning Calendar of the PC(USA).  (And I can not tell you if at any point before that it was listed.)

In 1997 as an Elder Commissioner to the 209th General Assembly I was on the Theological Institutions and Issues Committee.  One of our “routine” tasks was the approval of the church calendar for 1998 and the tentative calendar for 1999.  In my usual way I started asking question about the calendar and why certain things were on there and some were not.  (It turns out that it really helps to have program materials ready to promote your “special Sunday” if you want to get it added to the calendar.)  Anyway, the commissioner a couple of seats down from me asked about the National Day of Prayer and then made the motion to include it in the calendar.  The committee approved the addition as did the full Assembly as part of our Consent Agenda.  Don’t believe me?  Here is  the applicable section of the minutes (p. 73) of our Consent Agenda report:

A.

31.0151


That the recommendation is approved with amendment:



Amend the “Special Days and Seasons 1998 Lectionary Year C”
calendar, in the “MAY 1998” section to read as follows: [Text to be
deleted is shown with a strike-through; text to be added or inserted is
shown as italic.]

“MAY 1998 


3
Fourth Sunday of Easter

7
National Day of Prayer

10
Fifth Sunday of Easter

17
Sixth Sunday of Easter

21
Ascension of the Lord*

24
Seventh Sunday of Easter

31
Day of Pentecost*+”

 So, the National Day of Prayer is now included in the PC(USA) calendar not because it came from the standing committee of the General Assembly on worship, but because some commissioners started asking questions of their report and the committee amended it.

The 55th General Assembly Meeting Of The Presbyterian Church In Taiwan

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The 55th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan convened at Chang Jung Girls High School in Tainan on April 6, 2010. The theme for the event and for the General Assembly for the coming year is “Let cultures flourish; Let God’s justice take root.”

The officers of the General Assembly were elected in the first evening session.  Congratulations and best wishes to the new officers: The Rev. Hsien-Chang Lai – Moderator of the 55th General Assembly; the Rev. Lyian-Syian Chiohh – Vice Moderator; the Rev. Dr. Pusin Tali – Clerk of Assembly; the Rev. Jong-Fong Hsu – Assistant Clerk of Assembly.

Business of the Assembly included the approval of the new Rukai Presbytery which includes a significant component of Rukai Aborigines, discussion and statements on gender equality, presentations and urging dialogue on global religious conflicts.

One high-profile issue that the GA addressed, and one that denominational officers have spoken out about, is the proposed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China (ECFA).  There are multiple stories about this, one talking of “speaking up for marginalized peoples,” another talking about the effects it will have on young people, a third about possible economic and environmental damage.  There was a presentation to GA and the Assembly endorsed a petition that calls for a public referendum on the ECFA.

Another high-profile issue was abolishing the death penalty in Taiwan.  There is an ecumenical coalition against the death penalty and the GA debated how to add their voice to the discussion.  The article says:

When this statement was first read in the recent 55th PCT General Assembly, some pastors were worried that it was adopted too hastily and they would have a hard time convincing their parishioners. They also feared that passing such a statement when the general population still viewed capital punishment as a sensitive issue might fuel controversy within churches. In response to their concerns, former PCT General Assembly Moderator Leonard Lin stressed that there are currently 44 inmates on death row that could be executed starting June – making the abolition of the death penalty a pressing life and death issue that everyone should be concerned about. Lin further noted that PCT had campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty for more than 15 years. With rising suspicions that there have been mishandled cases, wrong sentences, and instances of torture used to extract confessions, the integrity of the judiciary needs to be improved. More importantly, PCT must make a stand when debate on the death penalty keeps deviating from the real issues at stake.

In the end the Assembly agreed and…

…issued a statement… in support of abolishing capital punishment based on its religious convictions. According to this statement, human beings were created in God’s image, given immeasurable dignity and value, and that is why even murderers have human rights. The statement underscored that though offenders should be punished according to their crimes, the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment that is both irreversible and widely abused. It is also fraught with problems because Taiwan’s judicial system’s impartiality and fairness has been compromised. Furthermore, churches and organizations around the world have come to agree that death penalties don’t alleviate social problems or crime. The statement urged Taiwanese society to abide by their religious convictions instead of giving in to their feelings, by taking a step toward forgiveness and reconciliation. It said even murderers should be given the chance to live so that they might accept Christ, repent of their sins, and use the rest of their lives to reconcile with victims’ families and pay restitution.

A bit more on this in just a moment.

Finally, this GA, like its siblings around the world, is an opportunity for other activities and this includes two pastors who biked to the the Assembly and a hospital that offered free blood tests and check-ups to pastors.

Some of the most interesting accounts in English comes from two Canadian couples who attended in various capacities and mentioned it on their blogs.

Ted and Betty live in Taiwan and teach at Tainan Theological College and Seminary.  They each have brief accounts about their participation in the GA, Ted just mentioning his speaking to the Assembly and Betty giving a nice account of singing for the Assembly with the College Choir and traveling with the international representatives to the Assembly on their local tour.

Those international representatives included fellow Canadians Scott and Anne to were the official representatives to the Assembly from the Presbyterian Church in Canada .  They have put together a blog with a very nice account of their trip of which the GA was just a small part.  I will leave you read about their wider travels for yourself if you are interested, but they talk about a few very interesting details of the church and the Assembly.  Regarding the history of the church they mention that the first Protestant missionary arrived in 1865 from England and was soon followed, in 1872, by Rev. Dr. George L. Mackay of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission.  But what is most interesting is their account of the business of the Assembly that I have mentioned above:

This morning was an exposure to the business end of General Assembly of the PCT and I don’t think it differs much from the PCC. From what I could gather from Sidney’s translations the two most contentious issues were the terms of service on the Christian school boards and concern over a letter written to the government calling for a ban on capital punishment. A recent poll showed that 80% of Taiwanese are in favour of capital punishment. In both cases the agony was over procedure more than content.

We heard from an expert speaker concerning the implications of a proposed free trade agreement between Taiwan and China and it sounded so much like the NAFTA headache that I wanted to get up and speak to the issue. Never trust an elephant when you get into bed with it.

Any GA Junkie will appreciate that comment about the “agony was over procedure more than content.”

So that is what I know of the meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan.

The General Assembly Of The Church Of Scotland — What Is Making The Rounds Of The Press (And What Is Not)

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I will admit that I do use the reports that crop up in the media to help track the news from a particular Presbyterian branch.  The news from the Scottish media in advance of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is no exception.  But it also needs to be recognized that the Kirk itself is driving the reporting with their own press releases and associated news conferences about the business of the Assembly.  (Maybe they would consider putting an RSS feed on their press releases and I could track them directly.)

I have already mentioned two reports to the Assembly that have had accounts circulate in the mainstream media.  The first chronologically (second in my posting ) was the Ministries Council report with the Panel on Review and Reform.  What got picked up was the reduction in staffing with coverage by many national and local news outlets including the Scotsman, Herald, Aberdeen Press and Journal, and Inverness Courier among many.

The other one that I have talked about is the second report on the Third Article Declaratory which got some coverage, but usually in association with the Ministries Council report like this article from the Herald.

While my counting of media reports is not scientific, my informal count places the second most covered story as being the third press release about the General Trustees’ report and goal of a strategic plan for buildings in the church.  The coverage of this issue includes a good report from The Herald which goes well beyond the press release, as well as the Aberdeen Press and Journal and the religious news outlet Ekklesia.

It is interesting to note how the coverage spun on the fourth press release .  The church gave it the headline “Women make up half of Kirk’s eldership” but the media picked up on the “sexism” (a word that does not appear in the press release but comes from a verbal response at the associated press conference) related to some congregations having no female elders and only 20% of the ministers of word and sacrament being women.  Outlets that picked this up include the Aberdeen Press and Journal – “Minister Hits Out At ‘Sexism'” – and the Scotsman – “Kirk admits it is still sexist towards women ministers.”  It would be interesting to know if the headlines and stories are more sensational than the press conference made this point out to be.

It is interesting that press release five on HIV/AIDS and press release seven on solidarity with persecuted Christians have gotten almost no press coverage that I can find but they have only been released yesterday and today respectively.  (I will update here if a flurry of articles appear in the next day or two.)

However, yesterday’s press release on new models of church has been quickly reported on by a number of outlets including the Press and Journal, Ekklesia, and Christian Today.  The new models of church part is actually not new, but is part of an on-going Ministries Council program named the Emerging Ministries Fund.  What is new is the plan expressed in the Joint Report of the Mission and Discipleship and Ministries Councils on the Emerging Church to leverage this funding and study the projects underway to identify the most important features in these new models.  This report to the GA is a progress report and a final report from this Joint group is not due until next year’s Assembly.

That is what the church has identified so far but two other items have been making the news.  The biggest story related to the Church of Scotland right now is the British elections later this week in which it is looking likely that “son of the manse” Prime Minister Gordon Brown, will likely lose that position with seats in parliament for his party.  But throughout the campaign he has appealed to his religious and humble roots with frequent references to his father, the late Rev. John Ebenezer Brown, maybe to a fault as one columnist views it.

The other item appears to have started with a story in the Aberdeen Press and Journal and has been picked up in some specialized media is regarding the work of the Special Commission on Same-sex Relationships and the Ministry.  The news story appears to be trying to discern the possible outcome of the consultation with the church based on the Consultation Paper.  In particular, they are looking at the section on the “Context of the Civil Law” (p. 4-5) and seeing how that could force the church in a particular direction.  The section says, in part:

The regulations allow discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in relation to an occupation for the purposes of an organised religion in two circumstances.  They are where the employer applies a requirement related to sexual orientation (i) so as to comply with the doctrines of the religion or (ii) because of the nature of the employment and the context in which it is carried out, so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers.

The legal advisers suggest that the courts will interpret the exceptions to the prohibition against discrimination narrowly and that it will not be easy to satisfy the tests…  The legal advisers disagree on whether it would be easier for the Church to defend a ban on all sexual relations outside marriage. If the Church were of one mind on the issue of homosexual practice, it might be possible to argue that the ban was a proportionate means of complying with the doctrines of our religion.  But having regard to the divided views of the Church, which the 2007 Report recorded, it may be that an employing organisation within the Church would have to rely on the second circumstance (ie. circumstance (ii) above).

Our legal advisers are agreed that, if the Equality Bill is enacted, there is a problem in that the civil law requires any occupational requirement which involves discrimination to be proportionate. In that context there may be greater scope for compliance with the civil law if the Church were to leave the decision whether to require celibacy of a homosexual candidate to each Presbytery and Kirk Session rather than to impose a Church-wide rule, which might be held to be disproportionate and therefore illegal. But this is not clear and it may be possible for the Church to defend a prohibition on any sexual relations outside marriage in the civil courts.

(On a side note the suggestion in there on local option would return the ordination decision to the presbytery and session as the ordaining bodies.  The irony is that the civil context may end up mirroring our polity understanding.)

The newspaper may have properly assessed this situation and the way it fits within UK civil statutes and the very last line I quote from the report is the solution they predict will at least be presented to the church for their consideration as a possible resolution.  But, that is not for this GA and rather it will be waiting in the wings for the 2011 meeting.

PC(USA) Ecumenical Statment Not Approved By the USCCB

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Continuing with the theme of the previous post on Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Roman Catholic connections, I discovered recently that one of the Ecumenical Statements approved by the 218th General Assembly and having the concurrence of a large number of the presbyteries, did not receive the approval of one of the ecumenical partners, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ( USCCB ).

Now this is not recent news, but in reviewing the report of the General Assembly Committee on Ecumenical Relations (GACER) to the 219th General Assembly as I was researching another issue, I found that just about a year ago the USCCB declined to approve the “Mutual Recognition of Baptism with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops” that came out of the Catholic-Reformed Bilateral Dialogue.  On the PC(USA) side this document was overwhelmingly approved by both the GA (voice vote) and the presbyteries (169-2).  On the USCCB side, they announced in May 2009 that it was not acceptable as it stood.  No specifics were given in any of the information I could find but the web site of the Ecumenical and Interfaith News Network – PCUSA [sic] says:

In May 2009 the chair of the Catholic bishops’ committee on ecumenical
and interreligious affairs reported that the
bishops had examined a Common
Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism growing out of the
Catholic-Reformed dialogue and had “voted not to approve it in the form
in which it had been adopted.”…  In order for the document to have become
acceptable to the bishops, changes would have been necessary that were
not acceptable to the Reformed dialogue partners.

The Reformed partners issued a Statement in Response to the refusal.  Having failed to be mutually agreed upon this statement gets no second chance and it is “archived,” as the terminology goes, as a historical note in this dialogue.

What I find interesting is that for most of the PC(USA), dare I speculate 99% or more, this document is voted upon and then shelved since, as the FAQ indicates , it has no substantive effect on our practice, only on how we understand the practice.  Reinforcing this non-concern for the ecumenical statement is how “under the radar” the non-approval was.  Yes, it was there if you were looking for it on the EIF-PC(USA) web site, or until recently on the GACER page, but both using search engines as well as checking over the press release pages for the PC(USA) and the USCCB from that time period I found nothing that “average” Presbyterians or Catholics would see in the normal course of events.  (It might be hiding behind some cleaver headline that did not catch my attention.) I think this is relevant because the report has a section on “Pastoral Recommendations: Tangible Expressions of Mutual Recognition of Baptism.”  Without the “mutual recognition” part do any of these “tangible expressions” change?  In reading through the recommendations they appear pretty generic so I’m not sure anything changes there, but it would be nice to know.

Anyway, the Ecumenical Dialogue is off to bigger and better things… The Eucharist.  If there are still differences on Baptism I’m not sure what the next round will produce, but that is for a future GA.

You Never Know Where A Story Will Take You — Finding The Presbyterian Connections

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you find the PC(USA) in the most interesting places…

So, during my morning coffee break I am skimming through one of my regular blog reads, Clerical Whispers , an Irish Roman Catholic blog at heart but one that does a good job of also covering Irish and Scottish Presbyterian news as well as Anglican developments.  And as I’m scanning through I find an article with not one, but two links to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The story is about a group derived from the Roman church that is ordaining women as priests in the RC tradition.  Of course, as the article notes this is not the teaching of the wider church:

Noting that church law and teachings prohibit the ordination of women, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that ordinations of women are invalid.

“You don’t wake up and say, ‘I’m going to be a priest today,'” Walsh said.

This is not news to the group who clearly post on their web site

Yes, we have challenged and broken the Church’s Canon Law 1024, an unjust law that discriminates against women. Despite what some bishop may lead the faithful to believe, our ordinations are valid because we are ordained in the line of unbroken apostolic succession within the Roman Catholic Church.

OK, I’ll leave that for them to sort out.  We Presbyterians have enough questions of our own.

Anyway, over the weekend the group ordained (or is that “ordained”?) two women as priests and three more as deacons at Spiritus Christi Church in Rochester, New York, a church that “was established in 1999 in a split with the Rochester Diocese ” according to the article.  One each of the priests and the deacons are from Rochester with the other priest from New Hampshire and the other deacons from Pennsylvania and Maryland.

PC(USA) Connection #1:  In listing the work of the Rochester woman ordained as a priest it includes her work as a Peacemaker for the Presbytery of Genesee Valley.

PC(USA) Connection #2: It is also interesting to note that the church that hosted the ordination service, Spiritus Christi, is a church that now shares facilities with the Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester.

So we Presbyterians are finding connections into all sorts of doctrinal debates and places the boundaries in other denominations are being stretched.

An Interesting Section In The Strategic Plan

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At the present time I am in over my head in a whole bunch of report reading so I am not quite prepared to present my analysis of the Strategic Plan from the Presbyterian Church in America .  For a great list of many of the bloggers that have weighed in so far I would suggest a post by Wes on the blog Johannes Weslianus.

Having said that, I will comment that it seems to me the Strategic Plan does a good job of assessing where the PCA is at the present time.  As for what it should do to get where it wants to go, and even maybe even figure out where it wants to go, I have to agree with many of the other reviewers that I am not as positive about those sections.

However, one section in particular struck me for its relevance across multiple Presbyterian branches.  Here is that section with only minor editing to make it generic and I’ll leave it to the reader to filter out a couple of other lines if your branch doesn’t fit that category.  So now, anything in here sound familiar to your situation?

III. IDENTIFYING OUR CHALLENGES

Because the animating values of those in the PCX are so much more diverse than its formal values, the PCX has struggled to maximize its organizational strengths. For example, despite our formal values of connectional polity and cooperative ministry, less than half of the churches of the PCX support any denominational agency or committee (less than 20 percent give at the Partnership Share level). Presbyteries are increasingly perceived as mere credentialing bureaus or discipline courts with little ability to unite members in ministry. The cooperative efforts that do exist are often directed toward affinity gatherings or the ministries of large churches that have become missional expressions of the animating values of specific groups.

This is not to suggest that overall there has been a great deal of cooperative effort. We remain an anti-denominational denomination – excusing individualistic ministry by re-telling the narratives of past abuses in former denominations, demonizing denominational leadership or movements to justify non-support of the larger church, or simply making self-survival or self-fulfillment the consuming goal of local church ministry. In these respects we simply reflect the surrounding secular and religious culture where institutional and organizational commitments have been eroded by the demise of family systems and loss of community identity. These losses are exacerbated by economic and technological changes that simultaneously shrink our world and allow each of us to live in personal isolation or in shrinking, special-interest enclaves. However unique we may feel is our struggling to maintain historical distinctions, ministry continuity and generational cohesion, we actually echo struggles occurring in every major Evangelical denomination. The response of most has been to focus increasingly on their own security, not recognizing that (for denominations as well as local churches) allowing people to focus on themselves inevitably destroys the selflessness that is the church’s lifeblood.

In order for those of us in the PCX to see beyond self-interests and to be willing to work cooperatively despite differences in our animating values, we must have a renewed sense of collective mission. The catalytic power of our founding was fueled by a shared zeal to wrest a Biblical church from mainline corruptions. Differing understandings of what it meant to hold to Reformed distinctions in ministry and mission were either unrecognized or suppressed to support the primary mission of combating liberalism. That mission was compelling enough to unite us in ministry despite our differences. Willingness now to honor our differences while harnessing our shared blessings will again require a sense of being united in a cause that is of similar Biblical consequence.

Such a cause cannot be concocted from marketing schemes or designed to reflect the ministry preferences of a particular branch of our denomination. The cause that is our present calling must be forged from a comprehensive and realistic understanding of the challenges this generation must face in order to live faithfully before God and for his Kingdom. Some of these challenges are external, thrust upon us by dynamics of our history and culture. Other challenges are of our own making and will have to be honestly faced and fairly handled in order for our church to participate meaningfully in God’s purposes.

General Assembly Season 2010 Is Almost Upon Us

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It is the First of May and among other things that means we have entered the month when the intense General Assembly activity begins.  Here is what I know of and am trying to follow:

55th General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in Taiwan
6 April 2010

General Assembly of the
Free Church of Scotland
17-21 May 2010
Edinburgh

General Assembly of the
Free Church of Scotland (Continuing)
May 2010

General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland
20-26 May 2010
Edinburgh

136th General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in Canada
6-11 June 2010
Sydney, Cape Breton

206th Stated Meeting of General Synod
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church
8-10 June 2010
Bonclarken, Flat Rock, NC

General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in Ireland
10-13 June 2010
Belfast

180th General Assembly of the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church
13-18 June 2010
Dickson, Tenn.

Uniting General Council of the
World Communion
of Reformed Churches
18-27 June 2010
Grand Rapids, Mich.

179th General Synod of the
Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America
21-25 June 2010
Beaver Falls, Pa.

30th General Assembly of the
Evangelical Presbyterian Church
23-26 June 2010
Englewood, Co.

38th General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in America
29 June – 2 July 2010
Nashville, Tenn.

219th General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
3 – 10 July 2010
Minneapolis, Minn.

77th General Assembly of the
Orthodox Presbyterian Church
7-14 July 2010
Palos Heights, Ill.

74th General Synod of the
Bible Presbyterian Church
5-10 August 2010
Sharonville, Oh.

General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church of Australia
13-? September 2010
Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW

General Assembly 2010 of the
Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand
30 September – 3 October 2010
Christchurch

I will update as appropriate.