In the last few hours in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) there have been indications of a couple of interesting changes which I think are telling of the direction of the denomination.

Yes, the first one is the unofficial passage of Amendment 10-A — as of this evening the gahelp web site lists the vote as 88-68.  The official vote tally will require a bit of additional time for the current voting to be reported and recorded. From the buzz on the internet, especially Twitter, we know that today the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area became the 87th presbytery to approve the Amendment giving it the majority for approval, followed by Pacific Presbytery. The vote is not over, because this is about the discussion as much as the outcome, but unofficially it appears that its passage is assured.  It will be effective on July 10, 2011.

While that is a change, we must remind ourselves exactly what the change is.  What amendment 10-A does is remove a specific categorical restriction to the ordination standards by replacing the “fidelity and chastity” standards section with new language that calls on officers to “to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life” and for ordaining bodies to examine them on the Scriptural and confessional requirements.  But we must also remember that 10-A does not require a new inclusive standard when it comes to self-affirming practicing homosexuals.  The patch-work of interpretation I have heard over the last few days does regularly affirm the renewed importance of the ordaining body in the examination and the expected issues that will arise as different ordaining bodies reach differing conclusions from their examinations.  In short, the PC(USA) has allowed, but not mandated, the ordination of same-sex partnered individuals and passed the control to the lower governing bodies.

The second happening this evening I think is equally telling and that happening is the power of social media and the open source church.  Consider this – the Office of the General Assembly issued a news item, letter and Advisory Opinion, and some video messages within minutes of the announcement of the results of the vote in the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area.  In my experience, for the denomination to act this quickly or before official confirmation is unheard of.  Got to give them credit for 1) being prepared and 2) taking the social media crowd seriously.

Speaking of social media, at the height of the presbytery meetings this evening I was getting tweets with the #pcusa hashtag at the rate of about one per second.  While we were not trending, several people reported the “fail whale” (The Twitter screen for heavy system use) and so we may have been contributing to the server overload.

It was also interesting to note that the OGA was not the only ones ready.  Within an hour or two several groups had statements up including the Covenant Network, Presbyterian Outlook, Presbyterians for Renewal and More Light Presbyterians.

The point here is that the rapid response to this news shows how the denomination’s landscape has changed regarding social media and instantaneous communication.  Organizations were on-line watching and responded very quickly to the news with either new material or were ready with prepared remarks.

Finally, several mainstream news organizations were ready with stories but I think the first one out was from the Associated Press and writer Rachel Zoll is to be commended for a good article that gets our Presbyterian polity correct.  I’m sure we will see some good examples of the opposite tomorrow.

Well, I have lots more to say but it is late so no more tonight.  Over the next few days I’ll try to find time to crunch numbers and consider some more of how we got here.  But the heavy use and response on social media was to me just as interesting as the voting result itself and just as telling about what is happening in certain corners of the PC(USA).