It is General Assembly week in Edinburgh.. well, sort of in Edinburgh.
A few hours from now, on Saturday morning 22 May the 2021 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland will convene in Edinburgh and around the world virtually. The meeting will be “blended” with some activity in the Assembly Hall, primarily with the major players, and most of the commissioners attending online.
That being said, the meeting is no less significant as there are a couple of major items of business before the Assembly this year.
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 Readers. There is also a Dyslexia-friendly version. All of these are also available combined 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 Assembly Papers page.
- 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.
- And typically a Daily Updates page will appear where there will be regular daily updates in print, audio and video.
- There is an official photo gallery of the Assembly.
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. There is also the Kirk’s Instagram feed and YouTube channel.
On Twitter, the starting point is the Kirk’s main feed at @churchscotland and the official hashtag #ga2021. (And be alert – there is an event called Gamers Assembly that is using the same hashtag so don’t be surprised at the first-person shooter video(s)) There is an official account for the Moderator of the General Assembly, @churchmoderator, but during the Assembly, we will have to see how many opportunities there will be to tweet. The church’s official publication, Life and Work, is also a good source for information on the website, on Facebook and on their Twitter feed @cofslifeandwork. In addition, there is the individual account of the editor, Lynne McNeil, at @LifeWorkEditor, who does the most comprehensive live-tweeting of the Assembly.
In suggesting personal accounts to follow, let me start with past Moderators of the General Assembly: To lead off there is the current Moderator who will shortly be the Very Reverend Martin Fair (@wmartinfair). Others include the Very Reverend Susan Brown (@VicarofDornach) as well as 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. Another is the Very Reverend Derek Browning at @DerekBrowning2. I will conclude with two other former Moderators who have Twitter accounts but have not been as active recently: the Very Reverend Albert Bogle at @italker and the Very Reverend Angus Morrison (@angusmorrison6).
As for others following along and Tweeting about the Assembly let me start with two of my regular recommendations, Peter Nimmo (@peternimmo1) and Doug Gay (@douggay). To that, I would add Paul Middleton (@ProfPMiddleton) and Daren Philip (@darphilip). Finally, for the moment, I will add Sue Cord (@sue_cord), Alistair May (@alistairmay), and Susan Pym (@susan_pym).
I should also note that this year the Queen’s representative to the Assembly, the Lord High Commissioner, is a member of the Royal Family and the first grandchild to hold the position – Prince William the Earl of Strathearn (his Scottish title). There is coverage of the appointment from the Church of Scotland and the Royal Family. He will be attending in person and addressing the Assembly from the Assembly Hall. He will also be undertaking the traditional tour of Scotland. No stranger to the area, he is a graduate of St. Andrews University. You can follow his work on the official Twitter account at @KensingtonRoyal and the account has already been covering his activities in Scotland.
Concerning the business before the Assembly there is a nice summary of each report on the Life and Work website. In addition, each of the conveners has recorded their speech for streaming during the Assembly.
And once again, Scott Paget is doing some heavy lifting for us. He has his series of posts on his blog Reading the Blue Book, now the 2021 edition. He breaks down reports from the Blue Book individually with his comments. You can follow him on Twitter at @smpaget.
The challenge of how to reform the church to remain viable for the future has been an ongoing issue for the Kirk, especially over the last three years. One of the pieces of this has been the Special Commission on the Effectiveness of the Presbyterian Form of Church Government. As part of the restructuring of the Church of Scotland, they will be presenting their final report. It has discussion points regarding the local churches, presbyteries, and the national organization and the deliverance asks that the questions be sent out to all of them for discussion and feedback. There are no proposed changes to the form of government at this time, but a couple of interesting sections of the report:
[T]he Special Commission made a conscious decision not to undertake a detailed comparison of other ecclesial governance models. Contact with and experience of other forms of church government has shown that what is true of Presbyterianism is true of other ecclesiologies. All systems have strengths and weaknesses. Depending on the actions, attitudes and competencies of the people who work within them, all can foster innovation and creativity, and all can equally be prey to inertia and caution. Our task is not to reshape the Church of Scotland into the
Section 1.33
likeness of another denomination.
And the conclusion of the introduction:
The Special Commission wonders if a continuing preoccupation with fixing structures will detract from the work of mission and of being the Church in our communities, nation and world. Whether we tinker with our structures or take much more radical action, the ultimate proof of our effectiveness is not in the machinery of our governance (though to ignore that machinery entirely would be a mistake; we need structures that work). The ultimate proof of our effectiveness is the depth of our personal and corporate devotion to God, the provision of regular opportunity for meaningful worship and the promotion and supporting of mission, provided by local congregations, regional bodies, and the national Church. Our focus has to take into account the ‘what’ of our governance; but this must not take away from the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of what it means for us to be people of ‘The Way’ in the twenty-first century.
Section 1.38
The Special Commission report is scheduled for the first half of Monday afternoon.
Another report related to the restructuring is that of the General Trustees who are looking at the future of the church’s land and buildings. In one line it says ‘there can no longer be an assumption that any building can survive without a critical assessment of its contribution to the future mission of the Church’. Similarly, the report of the Assembly Business Committee talks about their work to streamline the General Assembly and they are proposing a change to reduce the number of commissioners to the Assembly, an action which must be approved by the presbyteries under the Barrier Act. The Assembly Business Committee reports on Saturday morning and the General Trustees on Thursday afternoon.
In one of the more closely watched business items the Legal Questions Committee is bringing an action, requiring presbytery concurrence, to permit a Minister of Word and Sacrament or a Deacon to apply to be authorized to officiate a same-sex marriage. (Polity note: for American readers the office of Deacon, while carrying the same description of one of caring and tending the flock, is a professional position like the position of pastor.) On another note, they outline their work on rewriting the polity of the church courts (i.e. governing bodies or judicatories) and give notice they will bring new material next year. The Legal Questions Committee is scheduled to report on Monday afternoon.
Finally, one of the items I have been keeping an eye on is the report of the Theological Forum. Three years ago there was an overture to examine the place of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the possibility of other subsidiary standards. The Forum put together a workshop on the topic and the papers were published in Theology in Scotland. This interim report presents discussion questions about options presented in the report for the church to give feedback to the Forum. They are scheduled to give their report on Tuesday afternoon.
So here we go. It will be an interesting week and among the questions the Assembly Business Committee is bringing is whether the use of videoconference technology should be used regularly for General Assemblies. We will see how this year goes.
So stay tuned…