So with one live stream going in the background as I write, we turn to get ready for the next one of this busy week and month.

Shortly before I post this, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will convene their 2019 General Assembly in Belfast with a worship service and the installation of the new Moderator, the Right Rev William Henry. The Assembly runs through Friday 7 June. Here is some info to help follow along:

• The live stream is embedded in the 2019 Assembly Overview page along with links to other resources.
• The 2019 General Assembly Page has a summary docket of report dates and times. And one of these two pages will probably have video clips of highlights of the Assembly.
• The special Wednesday evening program is themed “Enjoying God” – the new Moderator’s theme for the year – and will be live streamed. The special speaker for the evening is the Rev Glen Scrivener, the Director of the charity Speak Life.
• Wednesday evening before the worship service, the PCI Youth Assembly will be holding a Fringe Event around the theme of “Developing and building unity, within congregations and beyond.” In addition, following the Assembly’s adjournment there will be the traditional Youth Night on Saturday evening, which will probably be live streamed. The theme is “CALLED – Hearing God’s Voice. Bearing God’s Name.”
• Most of the resources for the Assembly be found on, or linked from, the Assembly Overview page. The Blue Book reports and Supplementary reports will be posted there on Tuesday morning. The Daily Minutes will also be posted there along with daily previews. There is a detailed list of business that is posted on its own page.
• The polity documents include the main document, The Code, as well as the helpful A Guide to Assembly Procedure.
• The News page will carry official press releases and news items including the pre-Assembly press release which contains a rundown of the major moments and business at the Assembly this year.

There are plenty of social media contact points for the Assembly, beginning with the official Twitter account @PCIAssembly which always provides a detailed and comprehensive report of the Assembly. Please note the comprehensive part, because the level of detail can make the feed very busy. This is generally a good thing but you have been warned that the number of tweets will be very high. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) The official moderator’s feed at @PCIModerator has become a great source as well, but don’t count on a lot during the Assembly itself. We will see if Mr. Henry tweets during GA and how much he shares in his moderatorial year. The official hashtag for the Assembly is #pciga19. And it is worth keeping an eye on the PCI Facebook page as well. I would add at this point the church’s divinity school, Union Theological College (@UnionTCollege).

Other ministries of the church that have Twitter accounts are Presbyterian Women (@PWinIreland), Mission Ireland (@MissionIreland) and PCI Global Missions (@PCIOverseas). I include these for the sake of completeness, but they all have been pretty quiet for a while.

The other set of social media contacts to keep an eye on are those related to the Youth Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Following them on their Facebook page is probably the best, although they do have the Youth and Children’s Ministry account @PCIYAC. on Twitter, but that has not been active for a while.

My list of others to watch for interesting and useful updates always starts with outside reporter and insightful commentator Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast). He has already published on his blog an interesting piece on his blog “Browsing a Bygone Blue Book – a look back at the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in 1927” which is a great snapshot of where the church was then, and how some things don’t seem to change. For following some of the active leadership of the church, I would point to former Moderator Rob Craig (@RobCraig54) and Cheryl Meban (@cherylmeban) who is a university chaplain and has been active on church committees. Others have been a bit quiet up to this point and will be updating over the next day as things get rolling.

The business of the Assembly this year is extensive and for a better review, I would point you to the GA preview news article and the comments there by Clerk of the General Assembly, the Rev Trevor Gribben. I will highlight a few items that I have been following in the past year and the lead-up to the Assembly.

The first of these is the doctrinal stand that the Assembly has been reaffirming the past few years and which was stated very strongly last year: A divided Assembly affirmed the traditional view of marriage between a man and a woman and carried that over not just to the standards for ordination but to some rights of membership as well. This led to breaking ties with other churches who were moving away from this position, notably the Church of Scotland. The relationship with the Church of Scotland will be reviewed this year and it will be interesting to hear how the body’s thought has aged in the past year. This stand was also widely publicized in the public media and led to some significant protest so this Assembly is being widely watched for that. This position has also resulted in the dismissal of the Rev. Prof. Laurence Kirkpatrick from the faculty of Union Theological College, another action which hit the mainstream media. (BBC, Belfast Telegraph, Irish Times).

Speaking of Union Theological College, over the last year Queens University, Belfast, the institution that hosted Union and three other smaller religious schools in its Institute of Theology, decided to close the Institute and break the ties with the churches. The estimate of the shortfall for the PCI from lost fees is £250,000 by 2022. As Mr. Gribben says in the preview article, “The Assembly will be taking time to reflect on that change, but will also be looking forward to hearing of the emerging plans for a new and potentially exciting future for the College.”

One of the major moments in the Assembly will be an Alternative Presentation on Thursday titled Life Always Matters. As the preview article says:

[I]t seeks to speak into the professional world and public square on the dignity of human life. Through specially commissioned video, a presentation and an informal panel discussion involving three Presbyterian elected representatives, the General Assembly will be looking at dementia care, end of life care and child and adolescent mental health services.

And one more item of the many – The report by the Dealing with the Past Task Group. This group, which has been working for three years, is looking at how Presbyterians responded to the Troubles. From the preview article:

The aim of this significant undertaking is to tell a wider story than has been available to date. The stories of ordinary Presbyterians that have emerged from the 100-plus interviews will be published in a book towards the end of the year, and the Church will be seeking to learn from this significant project.

In the article, Mr. Gribben says of this report, “There are, however, occasions when substantial pieces of work, like that of the Dealing with the Past Task Group, can have positive impact beyond the doors of the denomination itself.” One reason it caught my attention is that in conversations I have had about the PCI and its actions, I have been advised that the Troubles are one of the lenses that must be considered when analyzing even current actions.

So much I could mention, but time is limited. I am looking forward to the significant discussions ahead of the PCI in this Assembly. As always, our prayers are with the Assembly and the Moderator for the work ahead and their discernment and guidance by the Holy Spirit. We look forward to following their work.