Just down the street and around the corner from where one General Assembly has begun meeting you will find a second one convening tomorrow – the 2012 General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. The Assembly will begin at 6 PM on Monday 21 May at St. Columba’s Free Church and conclude its business on Friday 25 May. (Note, unless there is a time warp somewhere in there and the 25th of May is missing like the Order of Business says.   ) [Update: The time warp has been resolved.]

Now, you may have to chose, or be good at multi-tasking to do this, but to follow along with the Free Church GA here is what you need to know…

• The General Assembly 2012 page has most of what you need
• The Programme for the meeting gives the order of proceedings
• Reports are available individually from the General Assembly 2012 page
• The Assembly will be webcast through the facilities of the host church
• This GA is not big on Twitter but if I spot consistent activity I will update here [Update: Yes, there is Twitter activity! The Free Church is now in the twitterverse at @FreeChurchScot and the meeting is using the hashtag FCGA2012.]

If you want to have the polity documents at the ready you can begin with the Acts of Assembly page.  Some more detail, a bit like a Book of (Church) Order, is found in the online Free Church Practice. In addition, for reasons I will discuss in a moment, it might be useful to have the Worship Papers – 2009 available.

Having just gotten back on the grid from a weekend in the desert I am still scanning the Free Church reports for items of interest.  For now, let me highlight the two special reports.

The first is the report of the Special Committee on Praise.  This Special Committee was formed by the Plenary Assembly of November 2010. After they decided to make the church’s requirements for worship music broader than just exclusive psalmnody, they formed this group to help them find additional music that would be appropriate. To to this the report says:

The Committee decided to draw up a list of hymns which, in its judgement, are “consistent with the Word of God and the whole doctrine of the Confession of Faith”. After examining a wide variety of praise material, including hymnals and web-based resources, the Committee has produced, in the first instance, a list of hymns from the hymnbook Praise!, published by Praise Trust in 2000.

This list is not attached to the report but I am hoping it might be published elsewhere during the Assembly. The Committee does emphasize in their report the need for following copyright law noting that only 11 congregations have so far obtained a CCLI license. The Committee has also been selecting and editing Scripture passages for singing and a booklet will be circulated to commissioners.

The second report contains the final report on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage produced by a Study Panel on the subject. The report is 39 pages long and I will not review the document here. It is an interesting read and reflects the input received from the church following the release of the review version at the last GA.  The committee also notes: “In view of the Scottish Government’s current consultation about proposed legislation for “same-sex marriage”, the Panel thought it wise to include a section on this subject to explain the Biblical basis for the Church’s opposition to this proposed legislation.”

Both of these reports are docketed for Tuesday evening.

As always, our prayers for the deliberations and discernment of this General Assembly and for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.