With the largest American General Assembly (about 1300 commissioners) having just concluded it is time to turn to a few more. The big one this coming week is also the highest numbered, and therefore, I guess, oldest or longest running.

Starting today we have the 223rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in St. Louis which begins on Saturday 16 June and finishes a week later on Saturday 23 June. There is a lot to look forward to in this meeting as the denomination works to connect with the host city, connect with itself, and decide how to position itself for the future.

The source for information on all this business is, as usual, the on-line PC-Biz system. And the PC(USA) event guide for the Guidebook App  is back as well. There are Android and iOS apps and it can be viewed in a web browser. The full program guide with schedules and worship resources is available from the GA web site home page.

A proposed docket is posted is posted as well as a full schedule including the non-business events, and you can also find the schedule, reports overtures/business items on PC-Biz as well as all the Constitutional documents, the Manual of the General Assembly, and other useful items on the PC-Biz Resources tab.

The Assembly will begin with opening worship with celebration of the Lord’s Supper scheduled for 11 AM local time and will be live streamed in the window embedded in the GA home page or directly from ustream.tv. Formal business will begin at 2 PM in the afternoon followed by the election of the Moderator Saturday evening. Sunday is worship in churches throughout the St. Louis area and a plenary session with reports of special committees and commissions in the afternoon. Committee work begins in that evening and it will run into Tuesday afternoon, maybe into the evening for some. During that time PC-Biz is the place to find out what the committees are doing with the pieces of business near and dear to you.

The meeting moves back to plenary on Wednesday morning and then it is a mad push to get all the business done by Friday night or in the wee hours of Saturday morning. But one of the realities is that there is no real schedule of when particular committees report until later in the week when committees have finished their business and they are assembled on the docket like a jigsaw puzzle. The final Saturday morning session is highlighted by worship and the closing business formalities.

One new feature of this Assembly is the Hands and Feet initiative to connect with the local community. This effort is under way and has been part of preliminary meetings in St. Louis, and it is planned to continue in the cities that will be hosting future General Assemblies. At this Assembly many of the Mission Tours are opportunities to get out into the community and help with various forms of service. On Tuesday there will be two different opportunities to participate in rallies/protests. In in the early afternoon there will be an immigration rally and later in the afternoon the “Hands and Feet Community Action.” The offering from today’s opening worship will be used for the local bail relief fund project to help out people in jail for minor offenses because they do not have the money to pay the fine. (And you can donate online if you won’t be there in person.) The community action is an un-permitted public action march to the City Justice Center that will deliver the offering and hopefully bail out some individuals on the spot. Finally, Hands and Feet will be offering a special concert on Thursday evening – Hands and Feet Celebration featuring Kirk Whalum sponsored by Northern Trust Securities. This is the first such concert I can remember since the Dave Brubeck concert in 1997.

Another similar point is the theme of the Assembly. The original theme of the Assembly was from Matthew 6:33 – “But strive first for the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” That has been tweaked slightly to change kingdom to kin-dom and incorporated as the preaching theme – “Kindom building for the 21st century.”

Opening worship and plenary sessions should be live streamed and the viewer can be found embedded in the GA 223 Home Page.

The tracking utility on PC-Biz is the best place to follow business. While the PC(USA) does have a general Twitter account (@Presbyterian), the General Assembly feed (@presbyGA) usually provides more play-by-play. There is also the Presbyterian News Service on Twitter (@PresbyNews). The hashtag for the meeting is #ga223.

News items will also appear on the GA223 web page as well as the Presbyterian News Service feed. There is also a Facebook page, and the daily GA news is now by email – you can register on the main GA web page. The daily news roundup is also available from pcusa.org/ganews.

There are numerous entities of the PC(USA) that have Twitter accounts and you might want to watch the hashtag or check the list I compiled in a post a while back. One not on that list is the Committee on Local Arrangements (COLA) at @StLouisGA.

For individuals of note let me start with the candidates for Co-Moderator and Moderator/Vice Moderator that I know of Twitter accounts for: Eliana Maxim (@elianamaxim), Cindy Kohlmann (@cindykohlmann), Chantal Atnip (@atnipchantal), and Ken Hockenberry (@clerkkennyh). To this let’s add the outgoing Co-Moderators: Jan Edmiston (@jledmiston) and Denise Anderson (@thesoulstepford). There is also a twitter account for the Stated Clerk (@PCUSAstatedclrk) as well as J. Herbert Nelson’s individual account (@jherbertnelson). Moving on to Moderators of previous assemblies we can begin with Bruce Reyes-Chow who tweets at @breyeschow and @brc_live. Neal Presa, can be followed at @NealPresa, and as the incoming vice-chair of the Presbyterian Foundation Board of Trustees his insights could be interesting. And we will see if Heath Rada (@heathrada), is there as well. For previous Vice-Moderators watch for Larissa Kwong Abazia at @LarissaLKA, and Landon Whitsitt (@LandonWhitsitt). In this list of individuals let me throw in the Director of Operations, Thomas Hay (@DirOfOp) and also a true GA Junkie in his own right, Andy James (@andyjames). Finally, for color with a degree of snark (yes, some of us need this during the meeting) you can follow Jodi Craiglow.

Out in the press corps, keep an eye on the Presbyterian Outlook on their website (pres-outlook.org) and Twitter (@presoutlook) as well as their special correspondent Leslie Scanlon (@lscanlon) who will be covering the hot-topic Way Forward Commission.

I will be at the meeting for the opening weekend. I plan to live blog the plenary sessions here, but maybe not as closely as in the past. The rest of the week I will try to be glued to the live stream as much as possible and will post as appropriate and able. (I still have my day job) The Outlook has posted two articles I wrote for them on business coming to the Assembly related to Constitutional Overtures, and a backgrounder on Per Capita. I do plan to tweet extensively but not completely during the Assembly at my regular Twitter handle – @ga_junkie. And if someone is planning to live tweet the Assembly let me know and I will point people in your direction.

Finally, I will once again be passing out my “I’m A GA Junkie” buttons. Find me if you want one. Also, the Bingo Card is available for the meeting.

A few notes on the business of the meeting are in order. First, both the PC(USA) and the Presbyterian Outlook have produced summary articles for the different committees and business categories. There will be lots of the usual with fossil fuel divestment appearing to headline the social justice issues and Middle East issues coming to that committee.

The Assembly will have to deal with some important and controversial internal issues as well. The Way Forward Commission is already hard at work and they are bringing a proposal to unify a lot of the high-level workings of the national structure, something the Presbyterian Mission Board opposes. And as I discuss in my Per Capita article, the Office of the General Assembly originally proposed a 38% increase in per capita, which they scaled back to 10% annual increase each year for the next two years, after some significant negative feedback.

And so I am looking forward to an exciting week in St. Louis, some in person and some on the live stream.

But the decisions facing the commissioners are significant and our prayers are with them as the prayerfully, and critically, discern God’s will this coming week. Best wishes and get your sleep when you can.