The second of the three General Assemblies this week is the 183rd General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church convening tomorrow in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Not one of the higher profile Assemblies it will have no streaming and probably very little social media traffic, but definitely some interesting issues that will be considered that have parallels in other branches. UPDATE: There is some notable Twitter traffic under the hashtag #cpga13. I see no official tweets but @mcBROwn91, Matthew Gore (@cumberlandpres – maybe official?) and Jeff Biggs (@jeff_biggs) are providing helpful, frequent and some entertaining tweets.

Pretty much all of the information for this meeting can be found in the somewhat non-obviously named 2013 Preliminary Minutes of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. For the polity documents, the By-laws of the General Assembly Corporation can be found starting on page 12 of that document while much of the rest of the governance can be found in the Constitution.

The Preliminary Minutes also contain the reports for the meeting (beginning on page 32) and I wanted to walk through those and highlight a couple of business items.

The very first report (pg. 32), the Report of the Moderator, contains a couple of interesting items about synods. The first is this paragraph about the church’s structure:

When the Church realigned presbyteries and synods in 1988, the goal was to have stronger presbyteries with professional staff. For the first few years the synods were to be courts of review, however, I feel strongly that it is time to re-evaluate the role of the synod in our Denomination. Presbyteries are weak and have difficulty developing new congregations due to limited resources. Working co-operatively with presbyteries, the synods were the primary source of developing new congregations.

The second is a note and formal recommendation about unity with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America (CPCA). The outgoing Moderator urges several of the synods to hold general synod meetings this year that are union meetings with their corresponding CPCA synod.

This theme of potential union between the CPC and the CPCA is seen throughout the reports with it being mentioned under ecumenical relationships in the Stated Clerk’s report as well as a request by the Ministry Council (pg. 125) to delay their assigned task of setting Priority Goals until there is a unified body to set goals for. Along the same theme the Report of the Unified Committee on Theology and Social Concerns (pg. 266) encourages congregations to read the study paper Reflections on a Divided Church.

Towards the goal of unification of the CPC and CPCA a joint Unification Task Force (pg. 268) has been set up. Among other things, they present a three-phase program for working towards a union vote at each of the respective GA’s a year from now. They are asking that they can get the word out by visiting presbytery meetings throughout the coming year.

In an interesting recommendation regarding polity the Permanent Judiciary Committee (pg. 258), jointly with the Theology and Social Concerns Committee, had referred to it a memorial concerning ministers of other denominations serving communion in CPC congregations. The joint committees are recommending that the 1987 action permitting this be rescinded as a matter of “strengthening our Cumberland Presbyterian identity and connectionalism.”

In other business, the Ministry Council brings a handbook (begins on pg. 92) with the recommended process for training and certifying Elders as Lay Leaders for Small Congregations. And the Board of Trustees of Memphis Theological Seminary (pg. 224) asks the Assembly to encourage all probationers to consider being trained for ordained ministry at their seminary as well as a request for permission to undertake a capital campaign.

It should be an interesting meeting and I look forward to whatever updates or reviews of the discernment are made available. Prayers for the Holy Spirit’s guidance in your deliberations.