We are almost to the Edinburgh GA’s – and I mean that in a couple of different ways as I will explain below.

[Note: revised slightly on Saturday morning 19 May after some consultation and getting a bit of ground truth in the Assembly Hall]

In about 12 hours, on Saturday morning 19 May the 2018 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland will convene in Edinburgh for their annual week-long meeting. This is the mother church for us Presbyterians tracing their Assemblies back to the original one in 1560. But thanks to the spider web produced by the various splits and reunions there are more Presbyterian branches around it and more GA’s in Edinburgh. But that is a topic for another time.

So if you are interested in keeping track of the business and activities this year, here are the starting points:

• There will be live streaming of the proceedings and you can connect to the stream appropriate for your device from the media page.
• Most of the Documents pertaining to the Assembly are linked from the General Assembly Publications page. This includes the Assembly Reports volumes, known as the Blue Book in several different electronic formats including the traditional PDF as well as MOBI and EPUB formats for your eReaders. For eReaders, the same is available with the Order of Proceedings included. There is also a separate Order of Proceedings. The Daily Papers will contain late-breaking changes and are available on the Papers, minutes, worship, and speeches page. There is an option to subscribe to notifications of new documents being posted. (It appears the GA app has been discontinued this year, but I will update here if I find it.)
• If you only want the action items, there is a Proposed Deliverances Page which breaks it down by the individual reports as well as a link to a PDF with them all together.
• If you need to refer to the documents about how they do this decently and in order most of those are linked from the Church Law page. This web page also used to have the useful “An Introduction to Practice and Procedure of the Church of Scotland” but it was being revised and seems to have disappeared. While dated, I have a copy of the 2009 Third Edition available from my Resources Site.
• A brief order of the docketed events and reports can be found on the General Assembly 2018 page. And new this year is a very well done detailed Programme page which is tabbed by day for easy look up.
• And from the Daily Updates page there will be regular daily updates in print, audio and video. There will be a new host this year, Laurence Wareing, and we look forward to his work.  For those who are not aware, the long-time host,the Rev. Douglas Aitken, a pioneer in British religious broadcasting, died earlier this year. I will have more to say later.
• There is usually an official photo gallery of the Assembly. Will add that here when it goes live.

What we all want to know of course is how to follow along on social media and there will be no lack of that. You can begin with the Church of Scotland’s official Facebook page as well as the Facebook page for the National Youth Assembly.

On Twitter the starting point is the Kirk’s main feed at @churchscotland and the official hashtag #ga2018. There is an official account for the Moderator of the General Assembly, @churchmoderator, but during the Assembly we will have to see how much opportunity there will be to tweet. And the incoming Moderator, the Rev. Susan Brown, can be followed at her personal account, @VicarofDornoch. Similarly, the Church of Scotland Youth may be tweeting at @cosy_nya, although the account has been much less active. The official account for the NYA Moderator, currently Robin Downie, is at @NYAModerator. I would add that the NYA Clerk, Catriona Munro, has been regularly tweeting GA related items from her personal account @atrionacmunro. The church’s official publication, Life and Work, is also a good source for information on the web, on Facebook and on their Twitter feed @cofslifeandwork. In addition, while it is a personal account, you can follow the editor, Lynne McNeil, at @LifeWorkEditor, who will probably be doing the most comprehensive live tweeting of the Assembly.

I add to this list a semi-official account with a good potential for close live tweeting of the meeting: The curated account Church Scotland Voices with weekly rotating contributors at @churchscovoices will be hosted by James Bissett, the owner of @mansehound, and he will be covering GA. And worth mentioning the Kirk innovative ministry incubator, Go For It (@GoForItCofS)

In suggesting personal accounts to follow, let me start with three past Moderators of the General Assembly. The first is the Very Reverend Lorna Hood who is always an interesting read at @revlornascot and has been very active the past few years with projects related to Srebrenica justice and remembrance and also serves with YouthLink Scotland. The second is the outgoing Moderator, the soon to be the Very Reverend Derek Browning at @DerekBrowning2. Add to the list the Very Reverend Albert Bogle at @italker who has been getting some recent traction with the Sanctuary First ministry (@sanctuaryfirst) and whose charge is now related to online church. Finally, the Very Reverend Angus Morrison (@angusmorrison6) is an interesting and entertaining read and frequently tweets in Gaelic.

In suggesting other personal accounts let me begin with the Rev. Peter Nimmo of Inverness who is a member of the Church and Society Council (@ChurchSociety01) and always a good source of information at @peternimmo1. He will only be present on one day, but still a good observer. Others I regularly follow from the Kirk include Darren Philip (@darphilip), Alistair May (@AlistairMay), Susan Cord (@sue_cord), Neil Glover (@NeilMGlover), Kristina Hine (@revgal_khine), Liz Crumlish (@eacbug), and Andrew Harris (@aharris2729) . As reform and renewal will be a major topic again this year, following Douglas Gay (@DougGay) should be helpful. He has helped drive this discussion with his three-part Chalmers Lectures, last year and his book, Reforming the Kirk, released last August.

UPDATE: Let me begin building the list of other’s to watch. Add to the above list RevShuna (@shunad) and Angus Mathieson (@angusmathieson).

As I write this section, I am sitting just outside Inverness watching the ocean and getting ready to jump in the car and drive to Edinburgh. (Another level of meaning in that “almost to Edinburgh” in the opening line.) I will also be covering the GA here on this blog as well as on my twitter account, @ga_junkie.  A quick note on my plan for the week is in order: Since there are three GAs in Edinburgh at the same time I will cover part of each but no complete coverage of any one of them. The Church of Scotland has the advantage that it is almost twice as long as the other two so there will be the most of it. I will be live tweeting whichever GA I am at and will be doing daily wrap-ups and reflections based on what I experienced that day. So stay tuned for more from me.

Once again the Assembly will have its annual Heart and Soul festival on the Sunday afternoon of the Assembly week that will again be happening in Princes Street Gardens near the Assembly Hall. The theme of both the Assembly and the Heart and Soul event this year is “Peace be with you,” a theme that has extended to the Assembly as a whole. It is reflected on the cover of the Blue Book. The event will be organized a bit differently this year with more distinct areas that group similar organizations and causes together. In addition, a Saturday night electronic dance music style worship event has been added to provide an event of interest to a younger crowd. It is also noted that due to planned renovation of the Princes Street Garden next year changes to the Heart and Soul event will be necessary, at least as far as venue is concerned.

In addition to the “Peace be with you” theme, another theme will be present in Heart and Soul and the full Assembly. The Scottish Parliament has declared 2018 the Year of Young People and this will be woven into the programme.

Concerning the business before the Assembly there is a nice summary of each report on the Life and Work site. A third of the big themes throughout the Assembly will be the 50th anniversary of the Church of Scotland approving the ordination of women for the ministry. While there will be mentions throughout the week, there will be a special celebration on Tuesday afternoon beginning with a procession beginning below the Mound and moving up to, and into, the Assembly Hall for an Order of the Day to recognize the anniversary.

One of the challenges facing the Kirk is how to reform the church to remain viable for the future. Many possible changes are presented in the Council of Assembly report. The Council is also presenting their Strategic Plan for the next decade. The Assembly Arrangements Committee is proposing changes to improve the flow and efficiently of the Assembly. This would include the reduction in time for the various speeches in debate. The Ministries Council will be presenting its new plan for recruiting ministers. The Theological Forum will be presenting a report that discusses the need for children to be baptized before taking communion. This will be of interest to some PC(USA) folks as one of the more debated changes in the new Directory for Worship was the removal of the requirement for baptism for anyone before they could receive the Lord’s Supper.

A significant debate is expected on the Theological Forum report on Thursday afternoon. That same section also includes debate on a presbytery overture regarding the Westminster Confession Confession and its continued suitability as a subordinate standard. It asks the Theological Forum to take a look at that and the possibility of revision, guidance, and possibly going with multiple standards in a book of confessions. (Can be found starting on page 28 of the Order of Proceedings.) In addition, on the opening day, on Saturday afternoon, the Legal Questions Committee will be presenting a report with some anticipated lively discussion. The item of prime interest is their report on details that must be addressed in a proposal on ministers preforming same-sex marriages. It will also call for forming a committee to draft such an act. In addition, they are proposing a new act on church discipline.

So here we go as we kick off a packed week for GA. I will have more on some other GAs in the next couple days.

But that is a topic for later – for now, the opening of the Kirk GA will be shortly in both space and time for me. Tweets tomorrow during the day and a reflection about 24 hours from now.

Stay tuned…