Coming up this Saturday the first large General Assembly of the 2013 season begins as the 2013 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is convened in the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh. The Assembly will begin at 10 AM local time on Saturday 18 May and adjourn a bit after 3 PM on Friday 24 May. The afternoon of Pentecost Sunday, 19 May, the Kirk will once again have their large public Heart and Soul festival in Prince Street Gardens (Event Guide). This year it is titled A Celebration of Celtic Christianity.

To follow along with the GA here is what you need to know

• The Starting Point for almost everything is the General Assembly 2013 page
• The Order of Proceedings is available as a PDF and the Daily Papers are starting to be posted. You can also find minutes and the text of speeches on that page.
• Reports are available individually on the General Assembly 2013 page or all together in the Blue Book and Supplement
• The Assembly will be webcast, as usual, linked to the media page
• In addition, the media page will have the Daily Updates podcast and Assembly News Items
• There is an official Facebook page for the Church of Scotland
• On Twitter the official feed is @churchscotland and the Assembly hashtag is #ga2013 although I am also seeing some use of #ga13
• Keep an eye on two other Church of Scotland Twitter accounts – the official magazine Life and Work (@cofslifeandwork), the Church of Scotland Youth (@cosy_nya) and maybe CofS World Mission (@cosworldmission)
• A couple of other folks that I follow who will be there include Peter Nimmo (@peternimmo1) of Old High St. Stephens Inverness and Neal Pressa (@nealpresa) the Moderator of the 220th General Assembly of the PC(USA) who will be that church’s official representative to the Assembly.
• I will add additional tweeps when the Assembly gets under way

If you want to have the polity documents at the ready you start at the Church Law web page and from there can get the Acts, Regulations, Standing Orders. Unfortunately, their publication An introduction to Practice and Procedure in the Church of Scotland is being revised so no version is available at this time.

This is already a high-profile year for the Assembly and it has not even convened yet. Two years in the making, the report of the Theological Commission on same-sex relationships and the Ministry has been widely anticipated and is docketed as the only business for Monday after the opening worship with communion.
While the Assembly in 2011 chose the trajectory towards, as this year’s report is calling it, the revisionist option, the Commission’s deliverance does include the opportunity for the Assembly to once again chose to reaffirm their earlier vote or consider taking the traditionalist option. For the polity wonks, or those interested in what process is next, the Supplementary Reports contains a section on how the selected trajectory would be implemented. There are three notices of intent to move amendments to the deliverance published in the first set of Daily Papers.

The second item of business which has gotten intense coverage in some quarters is the Church and Society Council’s special report The Inheritance of Abraham? A report on the ‘promised land.’ I wrote about this yesterday — how the first report had stirred up a bit of controversy in Jewish media and the report was pulled for revision after a meeting between representatives of both sides. This morning the revised version has been posted. The Council is docketed to report on Thursday, part way through the day.

On Tuesday, 21 May, there will be a special commemoration of David Livingstone for this the bicentennial year of his birth. Some of his great-grandchildren will be special guests of the Assembly that day.

I will update this info as necessary and comment in other posts as the week progresses. Prayers for the guidance of the Holy Spirit as the General Assembly meets.