We can now turn our attention to the first of the North American meetings for this year. Beginning tomorrow, Friday 31 May, the 139th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada will convene at the Newnham Campus of Seneca College in Toronto. The meeting will conclude on Monday 3 June. It has the theme “That all may be one” and is being jointly hosted by the Eastern Han-Ca and Oak Ridge Presbyteries. The former is a Korean language presbytery.

If you are interested in following along with this meeting here is information you might find useful. (And be aware that most of the official links are programmed to automatically download to your computer.)

• First, if you want all the official info I mention below together, along with a whole lot more, there are the consolidated Reports (331 pages in length) and General Information documents (92 pages in length)
• There is both an agenda for the meeting and a daily schedule available
• The reports can be accessed from the reports section of the Assembly web page. There is also a nice 16 page document, the 2013 Report Summaries
  
• UPDATE: YES! There is live streaming.  At one time the Assembly meeting was live streamed but that did not happen last year and not yet finding mention of it I fear it will not be streamed this year. I will update here if I find out otherwise.
• News about the Assembly will probably appear one the News and Events page
• For the polity documents go to the Acts and Proceedings archive and the Book of Forms. There are some addition Resources available from the GAO web page. There is also the Practice and Procedure document for the General Assembly meeting.
• If you are interested in the Assembly’s carbon footprint there is a special report on that
• The PCC traditionally a great job of tweeting the Assembly at @PCConnect. For the meeting the hashtag is #ga139
• I am not sure which of the Canadian Presbyterians I follow on Twitter will be at GA so I will update here when I find attendees that are helpful to follow.
• Finally, the PCC also runs a Flickr photostream during GA

Looking at the business I found an overture (No. 1) that any polity wonk would love. There is a request to change the terminology “minister and session” to “minister and ruling elders on the session.” I don’t have to tell you that this is a great suggestion that fixes a two-fold problem: 1) the minister is a person and the session is a governing body (or whatever terminology you prefer for your courts of the church). 2) The minister is a member of the session with the ruling elders. Good catch.

For those who follow the form and function of the governing bodies, there is also an overture (No. 3) that asks that a special task force be established to restructure the duties of a synod so that those who chose to may go out of business.

And so, our best wishes and prayers to the whole Presbyterian Church in Canada and prayers for your 139th General Assembly this week.