Greetings,

   The 73rd GA of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church met at Trinity Christian College in Illinois from June 21-28, 2006.  The denominations reports can be found on their web site’s GA page.

   One of the big items was the acceptance of a report on Justification.  The report is also available on the web site.  They report that a list of topics was included for examination of candidates.  There was also not much debate on the content, but how to distribute the report.

   I found it interesting that Book of Discipline amendments sent to the presbyteries by last year’s GA while approved will not go into affect until 2010!  Got to find out the story and history behind that one.

   The statistician’s report noted that their total membership has remained fairly constant at about 28,000 over the last few years but they lost three congregations to the PCA.

   Based on an overture from the Presbytery of Souther California a three member committee was formed “to study the issue regarding the propriety of the reception of illegal aliens into membership in the OPC…”

   There was also debate on two overtures requesting a new Psalter hymnal and the assembly finally adopted a substantially similar motion:

That the 73rd General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian
Church authorize its Committee on Christian Education to seek to
develop a Psalter-Hymnal by 2011 (our 75th anniversary)—which includes
musical settings of all 150 Psalms, in their entirety, with as much
accuracy and as little archaic language and confusing syntax as
possible—for use in our congregations; that it authorize the Committee
on Christian Education to appoint a special Psalter-Hymnal committee;
and that it grant this special committee a budget of up to $5,000 [per
year for committee expenses].

   There is a revision to the Directory for Public Worship underway.  The amount of input from around the church was great enough that the process was extended a year to deal with all the comments.

   The ecumenical greetings included one from the Bible Presbyterian Church, a notable event since it is really the first official contact between the denominations since their split in 1937.