This morning marks the mid-point of the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) both chronologically and structurally. It is the point where commissioners must “recalibrate.” They have been working on their committees and their focused issues for the last couple of days and now will take this morning to be briefed on what the other committees have done in preparation for the resumption of plenary this afternoon.

As usual, the committees had a variety of completion times over the last couple of days with a couple finishing on Monday and Committee 13 on Marriage and Civil Unions getting their work finished just before the shuttle buses stopped running last night.

I have decided not to make many detailed comments about the committee work right now. I need time to digest what I saw and heard regarding what the committees did. I spent most of yesterday with Committee 5 on Mid Councils Review as they worked through the Mid Councils Commission recommendations. I think the opening line of the Outlook article captures it best, “One by one, a General Assembly committee shot down key proposals from
the General Assembly Commission on Mid Councils – including one to allow
provisional non-geographic presbyteries during a “designated season of
experimentation” for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).”

This was a painful thing for me to watch as the committee approved only two of the eight recommendations the Commission brought, and those for review task forces. All the structural recommendations were defeated. I admit to having my own issues with some of their recommendations, but from my seat there really seemed to be a sense for many that “we have never done it that way before.” Or as Commission member John Vest put it in a tweet “I hope no one is surprised that ACC & COGA have raised concerns
about the MCC report. Our system is set up to protect itself.”

The other reason that it was painful is that I have real empathy for them. I have been in their place with a report from a Special Committee that I was on being debated by GA. When our Special Committee completed the report and got ready to adjourn for the final time we were reminded by the OGA folks “this report now belongs to the General Assembly.” We had done the work but we no longer owned the report and now it was up to someone else to do something with it. I will write a more formal thank you letter latter, but for now, I want to thank the members of the Commission on Middle Governing Bodies Mid Councils for their work.

But it was not just this committee. From Twitter messages and conversations I had throughout the day there were stories about issues with other committees as well, many that reflected John’s comment above that “Our system is set up to protect itself.”

The last committee to finish, just as they were trying to turn out the lights in the convention center, was the Committee on Marriage and Civil Unions. No surprise that this committee was in the biggest room and worked the longest. It was also the closest watched and all day yesterday there were tweets about what the committee was doing, sometimes suggesting that it was a parliamentary quagmire or accomplishing a whole lot of nothing. I don’t know what it was like at that time but I attended the meeting after dinner yesterday and I found that during the time I was there it was being run in a slow but deliberate manner by the moderator. Considering the sensitivity and importance of the topic it appeared that the moderator was being sure everything was respectful and clear and that everyone was heard. Yes, it was slow going but the real indicator was that when the business finished the members of the committee rose and gave the moderator a standing ovation. She must have done something right.

Now what is going to plenary? Here are a few major items that were recommended by the committees. I am waiting to hear if any of these will have minority reports as well.

Marriage – The request for an AI was not recommended but the overture asking that the Directory for Worship be changed to read that marriage is between “two people” is recommended

Mid Councils – Recommendations to form a task force to reduce the number of synods, no provisional experimental/non-geographic presbyteries, a task force to review GAMC and OGA and a Racial Ethnic Ministries Task Force (Outlook article)

Middle East – MRTI’s divestment recommendations recommended (Outlook article)

Special Offerings – Recommendation that most are preserved in their current form with the Communion Offering to be restructured (Outlook article)

Church Orders – Most asked-for changes to the Book of Order were not recommended, but on a split decision (28-20) they are recommending adding to G-2.0104a (previously G-6.0106a) the phrase “This includes repentance of sin and diligent use of the means of grace.” (Outlook article)

Confessions – The revised version of the Heidelberg Catechism was recommended as well as a recommendation for a redo of the process to add the Belhar Confession (Outlook article)

Plenary sessions resume at 2 PM this afternoon. Bills and Overtures has posted a proposed docket for the rest of the Assembly. Live streaming will resume and Bills and Overtures has done a pretty good job of spreading out the reports generally giving us one high-profile issue per session:

• Confessions – Wednesday afternoon
• Mid Council Issues – about 10 AM Thursday morning
• Middle East – about 3 PM Thursday afternoon
• Mission Coordination (Special Offerings) – Thursday evening
• Election of Standing Committee Members – Friday Morning
• Review of Biennial Assemblies – Friday Morning
• Immigration Issues – about 10 AM Friday morning (this is the hot-button item of the session)
• Civil Union and Marriage – about 1:50 on Friday afternoon
• Church Orders – about 3:30 on Friday afternoon
• Peacemaking and International Issues – Friday evening

So there is the line-up. I plan to be present and live blogging all these sessions. See you there.

Finally, to all my U.S. readers – a happy Independence Day. I don’t know if I will actually get my traditional July 4th reflection done on time, but I will try.