A couple weeks ago there was a second General Assembly underway with its own business and exciting developments while I was preoccupied with another one.  Well, afterwards I got a really nice “what about us” message.  So here we go…

The 181st General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was held in Springfield, Missouri, from June 20-24.  There was a highlights piece and the preliminary minutes (a large file) containing all the reports coming to the Assembly.

There was no live streaming but an effort was made to introduce the commissioners to Twitter with a Twitter screen running during Assembly business one day and an introduction to Twitter given by @tifmcclung.  If you want to go back and see the traffic the hashtag was #cpassembly.

It was noted by more than one person on Twitter that the Assembly ran very smoothly, especially as far as the business was concerned. As @mtndew05 put it “it has been a real smooth GA this year, way to go!!”

There were however several items of note that, while passed in a gracious and unifying spirit, are none-the-less important and newsworthy.

Chief among these is the action by this Assembly, as well as a concurring action earlier in the month by the 137th General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America, to begin the process of uniting. This was the one item that got a brief news update from the official publication The Cumberland Presbyterian where they said

The 181st General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church has
just adopted a resolution supporting pursuit of unification with the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.  It is an historic move, and
was approved unanimously by all present.

My thanks to Dr. Daniel J. Earheart-Brown, President of Memphis
Theological Seminary, for a helpful communication highlighting some of the more significant actions of the Assembly:

There were several significant actions taken, including a commitment to
seek unity with the CPCA, approval of a plan for certifying youth
ministers, a resolution on welcoming churches from other Presbyterian
and Reformed denominations, a 10 year plan for evangelism and new church
development, a new covenant relationship with the CP Children’s Home,
and a decision for the GA to meet in Cali, Colombia, South America in
2015.

Let me develop a couple of these further from the Preliminary Minutes:

The CPC maintains their focus on evangelism and new church development through successive ten-year plans.  The Assembly adopted the next one and it can be found as Appendix C  of the Ministry report beginning on page 71 of the Preliminary Minutes. Here are some of the specific goals listed:

Local Church Goals
Each local church will:

• Hold training events for members on faith-sharing (Coordinated by Evangelism)
• Do evangelism through service outside their congregation, such as NCD and mission projects, in addition to local community evangelism efforts (MMT)
• Participate in a program to develop lay leaders which will help with NCD (PDMT & NCD Staff Person)
• Identify those with the gift of evangelism (Evangelism)
• Develop a prayer network for the evangelism emphasis (Evangelism)
• Establish an accountability group to maintain an emphasis on evangelism (Evangelism)
• Establish evangelism growth of 10% per year based on present active church membership. (Ambitious goals will reinforce evangelism as a priority.)
• Support a denominationally-endorsed missionary. (The modern model of missions requires CP missionaries to raise their own support.) (GMLT)

Presbytery Goals
Each presbytery will:

• Hold local churches accountable for evangelism to the Presbytery Board of Missions. (Evangelism)
• Promote among CP youth a vocational call to NCD, missions, evangelism and pastoral ministry through youth events and other means. (DMT/ PDMT)
• Consider planting churches where there are no CP churches. Presbytery boundaries should not be considered s a limiting factor to church planting. (NCD/ Cross-Cultural Ministries)
• Hold a fund drive for their NCD projects (NCD/BOS)
• Plant 10% of the present number of churches over the 10 year period. NCD Staff will conduct workshops for presbyteries to learn about different methods and styles of NCD. (NCD/ Cross-Cultural Ministries)
• Name one NCD task force that will work with all NCD projects in the presbytery, with task force members rotating. (NCD)
• Host Miniversities on Evangelism and NCD (DMT/ NCD)

The Ministry Council report contains a lot of interesting information including the new edition of Understanding the Process for Ordination beginning on page 76.  While it contains the usual information on education, examination and process, there are a couple of interesting companion pieces on Government and Theological Background including “Ministry in a Litigious Society” on page 101 and “‘The Call’ In Historical and Theological Perspective” on page 102. This nice piece by Dr. Earheart-Brown is widely applicable to the Reformed Church and in the historical development does reflect upon the idea of vocation as seen by Luther and Calvin that affect us all.

It is important to remember that the CPC is no longer a strictly “American” Presbyterian branch but has spread out in its global missions and presbyteries.  The Assembly accepted the invitation to hold the 2015 meeting in Cali, Columbia, but looking at the list of Assemblies (p. 9) you will see a previous international meeting in 2008 when the Assembly was held in Japan. And the evangelism plan that was just adopted calls for prayer and study as to where to open a new front for world outreach.

Finally, there was a commissioner resolution regarding the possible transfer of churches from the PC(USA) to the CPC.  Again, let me quote the message from Dr. Earheart-Brown for the proper context:

One item of business that is not in the preliminary minutes was a
commissioner-presented resolution on receiving congregations from other
Presbyterian and Reformed denominations. The original resolution was not
approved, but a substitute replicating much of the original content
written by the select committee on judiciary was. I have attached a copy
of the GA approved resolution to this e-mail. We in the CPC have been
very careful not to contribute to the conflicts in the PC(USA), but we
wanted to communicate in some way to churches that have made the
decision to leave that they may want to consider the CPC. I also believe
that some who have gone to the EPC may reconsider that decision at some
point, and if they are a fit for the CPC, we want them to know that we
are open to discussion.

As he said, he sent along a copy of the resolution. I find it interesting that this resolution provides for an internal review of the CPC polity regarding property.  And to emphasize the last point the final Resolved in the resolution says:

RESOLVED that this action is not to be construed as calling into question the theological, ethical, or polity decisions of any other body of Christians, nor as a license for any Cumberland Presbyterian to engage in any action that would promote division within the body of Christ, but is a simple invitation for other Presbyterian and Reformed churches who may be called by God to share with us the work of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to have time and space to seek God’s will in this matter.

Lots going on here and I look forward to seeing what God is doing in this Presbyterian branch. Next year in Florence, Alabama.

[Editorial note: I’m about to begin my annual time away in the wilderness off and on for the next few weeks.  Expect blogging and tweeting to be minimal for a while. Thanks and happy summer to you.]