I arrived at work this morning, fired up my computer and sat down to livestream the General Assembly the Church of Scotland in the background as I got ready to read my email. But there was nothing there! Oh no… This GA Junkie is going to go through withdraw having expected a hit of polity this morning.
It turns out that the Assembly finished its docketed work early today and took most of the afternoon off. At least a few of the young adults took the opportunity to toss recreational objects around in the park and I suspect that a few commissioners might have caught a nap.
(And don’t worry about me – The General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland was online and they have an evening session on missions and worship with Psalm singing that I am listening to as I write this.)
Now, I can fully appreciate the frustration of at least one commissioner who wishes the down time was better placed as he tweeted “how annoying when Sat session went on till 9PM so missed Scottish & Champions League Finals.” But this break in the action got me thinking about a couple of things.
The first is the difference in workloads between different Assemblies. In looking through the reports and docket for the Church of Scotland Assembly it did strike me that this year was a bit lighter and had fewer controversial items. Checking over the GA reports page you can see that this year there were 26 councils, committees and other entities reporting to the Assembly and a total of two petitions and one overture from presbyteries.
In comparison, at the present time the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has about 115 overtures, reports from about five special committees and a commission, about 10 reports from General Assembly entities and an as yet unknown number of commissioner resolutions. The Committee to Review Biennial Assemblies has made recommendations to streamline overtures and commissioner resolutions by requiring greater collaboration and support across presbyteries for each of these to be considered by the Assembly. In addition they recommend processes to make greater use of consent agendas. Will this pare down the PC(USA) GA business to the streamlined version of the Church of Scotland Assembly? Probably not, but it will be interesting to see if it does introduce some breathing room.
One of the other interesting things this year is how little contentiousness there is at the Church of Scotland General Assembly. It seems that today’s session wrapped up early because time was allotted for debate on various topics and the debate was short and generally harmonious. It struck me earlier in the week how both the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland considered their respective marriage reports and each was adopted smoothly with no changes. At their last GA the PC(USA) debated their marriage report for some time and through a series of interesting, to say the least, parliamentary actions the minority report was added to the distributed report along with the main report. I was struck by the difference in how the PC(USA) and Kirk reports were handled. (I will have a bit more to say about the Kirk and Free Church marriage reports in a day or two.)
The PC(USA) has a reputation for several late night sessions during it’s GA while every day this week the Church of Scotland has done all its work without an evening session and they are on track to adjourn tomorrow afternoon. While one afternoon recreation time would be nice at the PC(USA) GA I am not holding my breath. In the PC(USA) there is a particular ethos about the Assembly part of which encourages these long debates and tremendous work loads. I don’t know how much the recommendations from the Review Committee will help, but they might help. In a couple cases I am not sure I agree with the recommendation, but that is a topic for another time.
The bottom line is that if your only exposure to a Presbyterian general assembly is the General Assembly of the PC(USA) I want you to know that it is an anomaly in the amount of business and strength and length of debate compared with the wide diversity of other general assemblies and general synods around the world. It is not that these other meetings are just an excuse to get together – most years they all deal with very important issues. And sometimes they do deal with an overwhelming amount of work, like a couple of years ago when the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was working on a new Directory for Worship and had to send it back to the committee to return the next year. But that is the exception and not the rule and usually a GA has a good balance of routine and celebratory work with a limited number of controversial items of business.
Your experience my be different and in spite of all this I am still looking forward to the 220th General Assembly of the PC(USA). But for the moment, my lunch hour is up and I think we are on the last report on international mission at the Free Church GA. And to all the Church of Scotland commissioners and delegates I hope you enjoyed your unexpected sunny afternoon in Edinburgh.
Steve, you need to read the ACC’s advice on Recommendation #3 of the PCUSA Biennial Review Committee’s report. They unmask the SERIOUS threat that Rec #3 of item 04-01 poses. Among the issues: it is not an appropriate amendment to the section of the constitution where the insertion is proposed; it contradicts F-3.0206; it shifts the power to the entities and agencies of the GA away from lower councils; it exacerbates the “party” problem that already exists in the denomination; and it silences minority voices.
The ACC’s suggestion that the change could be accomplished by amending the Manual of the General Assembly instead of amending the Book of Order is also problematic. The GA would in effect be stripping presbyteries of their voice without giving them an opportunity to vote on the change.
I’m all for streamlining the business before the PCUSA GA, but this is not the right way to do it. Overtures account for a fairly small portion of the business. The committee handling this item will see no overtures at all. Their entire time will be consumed with the report of a special committee of the GA. So will committee #8 on the review of AI’s. Likewise, committees #5 will be dominated by the report of the Mid Council Commission; committee #9 has only one overture on its docket; take a look at committees 10 and 11 – the gross proponderance of their work comes from GA entities, not overtures. You get the picture.
Where in the Review of Biennal Assembly committee report is the information and analysis the Assembly asked for? Where is the financial assessment of whether or not biennial assemblies are saving the denomination money (which was the primary rationale for moving away from annual meetings)? Where is the analysis of the percentage of busines originating from various sources and the deeper analysis of which of those streams should be filtered or damned?
And while you’re reading, check out their rationale for seeking to have their committee funded for another two years…recommendation #8.
Thanks Carmen –
You have highlighted most of the issues I have with the Review Committee report and that I alluded to above. For this post I was intending to highlight the difference in workloads between most other GA’s and what the PC(USA) goes through in a week. And in my observation it is at the detriment of the discernment process and Peace, Unity and Purity of the denomination.
Now, after your comment maybe I don’t need to write anymore about the Review Committee report.
Steve,
Looking at both the workload, and the quickness of both those Assemblies, I can say there is much to be said when everyone is working from the same baseline understanding of Scripture.
It does help that the number of people at the Assemblies are not overinflated by the inclusion of YAADs (YADs??), lobbying by affiliation groups, and an overabundance of overly helpful (and intrusive) staff.
The general practice of The PCC has been to fill empty spaces with business from future sederunts – though that isn’t always possible. You may have noted the the 138th Assembly will be shorter by one day, and the 139th will be shorter again – and over a weekend.
These changes, combined with the introduction of a “consent agenda” last year, will drastically change the way business is conducted at GA because there won’t necessarily be the luxury of deferring to a future sederunt. Hopefully, rather than prematurely cutting off debate, these changes will prevent the hours of “violent agreement” that often occurs.
Steve,
Although I retreated to a coffee shop for some of the afternoon, I certainly did appreciate the time off.
A few thoughts – I’m not convinced (if I understand Reformed Catholic correctly) that the Church of Scotland *does* all work from the same baseline understanding of scripture (in fact clearly we don’t!) – though whether this is a good or bad thing is a debate for another time. I don’t know what YA(A)Ds might be but if they are delegates from the Youth Assembly or Youth Reps from Presbyteries let me reassure you that we have a good number of both and they make frequent (and often helpful) contributions – generally they are better prepared for debate (due to their meeting together each evening to discuss the following days’ reports) than many commissioners, I would hazard… although probably somewhat shorter on sleep!
My main reason for responding is my own perception of the reason that our assembly seems ‘streamlined’. In general it looks like the power and decision-making rests with the main Councils and some of the other Committees and this year (my first as a Commissioner) there was not much appetite from the ‘top table’ to see much more than limited amendments/changes allowed.
In particular, the day before our ‘half-day’, it felt like both under our new Moderator and even more so under the immediate past one who took the ‘afternoon tea break’ slot, we were hurried and even hustled through business without being given a full chance to discuss and debate things. A generous observer might conclude there was an expectation that things could get messy with some of the business that was due later on that day, while others might note (especially after the ‘open mic’ incident when the assembly heard the details of the Mod’s evening plans) that it was more convenient for the ‘high heid yins’ to finish at half four than half six because of some reception or official function.
So, much as I agreed with the commissioner who objected to the ‘limited comfort’ our seats provide (or don’t provide) over a long session or day, I would probably rather debate went on a bit longer to allow more voices to be heard (too often it seemed to be the same few voices contributing) than to tend towards a feel of ‘rubber-stamping’ or in Colin’s phrase ‘prematurely cutting off debate’ – frankly, if that is or becomes the case, my time that week could have been far better spent with family and in my parishes.
Thanks for your insights and info – it’s good to get a broad perspective on what else is going on in the Presbyterian world!
Blessings
Dave
Dave,