Lots going on this week for GA Junkies.  Let’s add one more to the mix…

In a few hours the 39th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will finish up their pre-Assembly committee meetings and activities and get down to business.  The formal meeting convenes at 7:30 pm local time today, June 7, in Virginia Beach, VA, with worship, the Lord’s Supper, and following worship the election of the Moderator.  The meeting is scheduled to adjourn at noon on Friday.

If you want to follow along these resources may be helpful:

• Official Docket
• Commissioner Handbook and Supplement are available to registered commissioners only 
• Ascending Overtures
• Full Assembly Schedule
• News from byFaith Online
• Book of Church Order

The PCA is providing live streaming and has a Flickr stream as well.

The Twitter community is buzzing (is that a mixed metaphor?) already with the perennial hashtag #PCAGA. I am not aware of an official PCA GA Twitter account to follow but there is the official publication’s account for byFaith Online (@PCAbyFaith) which has been pretty quiet so far.  I am a bit hesitant to single out any of the many fine TE’s and RE’s tweeting the meeting so just follow the hashtag.  As things get going the tag may not trend but it will keep your reader busy.

I have to admit that in the past year the goings on in the PCA have been pretty weighty with the Administrative Committee funding plan push and continuing issues related to the Federal Vision theology.  I have been focused on some other issues and have not kept up with my updates here.  Maybe I’ll get caught up some day.

But looking at the Overtures to this Assembly it is worth noting that neither the Federal Vision issues nor the deacon/deaconess discussion is reflected there.  (There are other paths by which they could come before the GA this year.)  However, the AC funding plan is there in full view.

Three presbyteries have submitted alternate plans following the defeat of the Book of Church Order changes from last year that were necessary to implement that plan.

Overture 3 from Northwest Georgia Presbytery would create an Essential Budget for the AC of $1.5M which would have annual cost-of-living-adjustments and be reviewed every five years.  It would also set up an emergency relief fund that all permanent committees and agencies would be asked to contribute to. It would fund the capped budget with a $7 per capita assessment and churches that pay their per capita would receive discounted registration for their commissioners to GA. I would add that this is one of the most heavily footnoted overtures that I have ever seen.

Pittsburgh Presbytery has their recommendation in Overture 11 where they propose an amendment to BCO 25-13 that begins

Communicant membership in the church is voluntary, never to be founded on human coercion (John 3:3-7), and giving by members is always voluntary and never to be founded on coercion or compulsion (2 Cor. 9:7).  From this it follows that the church by its courts has no power to tax, nor to exclude from participation in the courts of the church, those officers who by ordination and/or election as a delegate are lawful delegates to any court of the church. The courts of the church through their committees, agencies and commissions may offer services, however, that are not of the essence of the office of elder, which may be denied to those who do not pay fees.

In line with this principle the BCO amendment calls for an assessment on a particular church of not more than 0.4% of their total budget to be used for specific committees and functions that are administratively related to the functioning of the denomination.  Failure to pay could result in the inability to access non-essential services but, as the language above suggests, the ability of commissioners to vote at GA would never be compromised.

Finally, Overture 15 from South Coast Presbytery takes a more detailed approach.  They present an extensive table that shows what each church would be expected to give to support the basic or essential administrative functions of the denomination based on their “tithes and offerings,” not the total budget as the previous overture did.  For making that payment in full a church could send its full contingent of TE’s and RE’s to GA for no additional registration fee.  For churches that only partially pay the asked amount there is no prorated registration fee and they would be expected to pay a $2000/person fee the same as a church that did not pay anything. Commissioners not affiliated with a particular congregation would register for $200.

Now, I suspect that the polity wonk’s will have something so say about this Overture:  At the beginning of the Therefore section the overture says “South Coast Presbytery overtures the 39th GA, other presbyteries, and the AC to join with us in embracing and approving the following numbered actions… or to improve them… Accordingly, we ask this Assembly to act as follows, without needing any BCO or RAO changes:” It sounds like this is intended as a voluntary consensus agreement.  However, point 5 of the Overture is “5. Any changes to the above table fee structure are to be approved by GA and 2/3 of the presbyteries in the PCA.”  So while the initial implementation is intended to be approved by only the GA, changes would require the same concurrence of the presbyteries as a BCO change. I await the debate on that polity point.

Finally this Overture asks for an item that three other Overtures ( 7, 13, and 14) ask for, and that is to discontinue funding the official publication byFaith magazine and byFaithonline.com and to make it self-supporting.  The contention is that this move alone would bring the Administrative Committee’s bud
get into balance.  (Overtures 7, 13 and 14 are essentially identical and probably written from the same template, as evidenced by the fact that in one instance the writers of 13 overlooked a point where they needed to change the name of the presbytery from that in Overture 7.)

The other category in which there are multiple Overtures are those where the presbyteries have been growing and now the number of congregations has reached a point that a new presbytery should be created to further the cause of the Gospel.  There is a request from Central Carolina Presbytery with a concurrence from Western Carolina and their agreement that an edge of their presbytery be moved to the new presbytery. There is also an Overture from Korean Eastern Presbytery to form Korean Northeastern Presbytery from it’s northern portion in New England and New York. 

The remaining six overtures contain some interesting business as well, such as a request to withdraw from the NAE and promoting a “faithful witness” in Bible translations and presentation of the Gospel among resistant peoples. I look forward to the Assembly’s discussion of these topics as well. [And in late-breaking news, I see that the Committee of Commissioners has recommended the approval of the “faithful witness” overture with some changes.]

So there is what stands out to me about this Assembly and I suspect there are a few more highlights that will emerge from the reports.  Keep on praying and stay tuned…