We are hitting the peak of the GA Season this coming week having just finished an interesting week with the 218th General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and the 88th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I regret not previewing each of those but life has gotten busy at the moment. I hope to get some review comments posted for each in the next couple of weeks.

But the week ahead is the busiest of the GA Season with four major Assemblies happening at the same time including the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and the largest of the GA’s, the Presbyterian Church in America. But the first one to convene will be the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and so we turn our attention to that now.

The 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is set to convene at 11 AM Eastern Time on Saturday, June 18 with worship. But this will be a most unique Assembly as it will stretch over three weeks in a mixed format. The opening plenaries will be hybrid, for reasons I will explain in a moment, and then there are two weeks of in-person committee meetings. This will be followed by a week of virtual plenary meetings with the Assembly to conclude on the afternoon of Saturday, July 9. The good news for the GA Junkies is that it will all be live-streamed. (But do you want four computers going to track all the committee action?)

The meeting will be held in Louisville at the Presbyterian Center which has undergone a renovation to have the infrastructure to host this meeting. One of the topics for discussion and decision at this meeting is whether to continue with this design or go back to the regular rotation and meet in Salt Lake City in two years as previously planned.

So, here is the schedule breakdown for the next three weeks:

• There are 16 topical commissioner committees plus the Bills and Overtures Committee. The topical committees are divided into four groups which will each meet in person for three days. The committee groups will meet June 20-22, June 23-25, June 27-29, and June 30-July 2.
• The GA will convene on June 18 in hybrid form with the members of the first committee group present in-person so as to constitute a quorum. This will permit the Assembly to change the standing rules to allow for electronic meetings of the Assembly. From there plenary sessions can fully meet in hybrid or virtual meetings. As electronic meetings were not authorized two years ago, the new Assembly will have to ratify all actions of the 224th General Assembly from 2020.
• On Saturday evening the election of the Co-Moderators will be held with the election process scheduled to begin at 8 PM Eastern Time. There are only two Co-Moderator teams standing for election so there should be a result on the first ballot. I hope to post some info on the teams tomorrow.
• As stated above, the next two weeks will be the in-person meetings of the commissioner committees. Besides the initial closed orientation and team-building sessions, all meetings of the committees will be live-streamed. And overture advocates and individuals wishing to speak during open hearings will be doing so virtually.
• Beginning July 5 and going through the adjournment on July 9 the plenary meetings will be held and these will be completely virtual for the commissioners and advisory delegates.
• As always there are a number of additional events including worship and the celebration of Juneteenth on Sunday, June 19. There will also be the Hands and Feet event on the evening of July 7 focusing on cash bail and social justice.

As usual, the source for information on all the business is the online PC-Biz system. For almost everything else there is the GA Home Page. This includes the preliminary general docket, the news feed, and the information on the two teams standing for Co-Moderators. The Home Page is also the starting point for live streaming and the live streaming will also be available on the Spirit of GA Facebook page.

For the doctrine and polity documents, you can get the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order as free downloads from the PC(USA) Store, or you can find them at this handy website. The current Standing Rules of the General Assembly are available, although as noted above there will be an initial amendment to them. In addition, there is a commissioner committee to consider possible changes to them so we can expect some changes in place at the end of the meeting.

The theme for this Assembly is again “From Lament to Hope” originally based upon Lamentations 5:20-21. For this Assembly the core scripture passage is Hebrews
11:1 – “Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don’t see.” (CEB) The theme will be reflected in both the online Bible Studies and the regular worship services.

To follow the action on official Twitter feeds the PC(USA) does have a general Twitter account (@Presbyterian) but during the Assembly, the official General Assembly feed (@presbyGA) provides more play-by-play. There is also the Presbyterian News Service on Twitter (@PresbyNews). The hashtag for the meeting is #ga225.

News items will appear on the GA225 news feed as well as the Presbyterian News Service feed. There are also updates on the Facebook page.

For individuals of note let me start with the accounts for the Co-Moderators (@GAModerators) although it has not been active with this moderator team and for the Stated Clerk (@PCUSAstatedclrk) as well as J. Herbert Nelson’s individual account (@jherbertnelson). Watch the #GA225 hashtag and we will see who else is active for the meeting. (And I will update here.)

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).

I plan to be on all the live-streamed events and tweeting (@ga_junkie) and maybe some live blogging. And as in past years, I will be doing some writing for the Outlook as well and my preview article on the business of the Health, Safety and Benefits Committee is available online. For the polity wonks, there are some proposed Book of Order amendments before that committee that raise interesting basic polity questions. But on a bigger scale, the work of that committee may command more of the spotlight in the aftermath of the release of the Southern Baptist Convention Sexual Abuse Task Force Report.

There is a lot of business coming to this GA, especially since the vast majority of business headed to the last GA was referred to this one. There are overview articles on each committee and the business they will be considering on the GA News Feed and another one by Leslie Scanlon for the Presbyterian Outlook summarizing major issues for many of the committees in one article. In addition, a number of related groups have videos in the Riverside Conversations section about various items of business.

There are a plethora of issues related to social justice and public witness that are being considered by the various committees including committees looking at Environmental Justice, Race and Gender Justice and Addressing Violence in the USA. But regarding issues internal to the PC(USA), both the Moving Forward/Vision 2020 Committee and the General Assembly Entity Policies and Procedures Committee have some significant business regarding the structure of the PC(USA) at the national level. The Theology, Worship and Education Committee will be considering three requests for a new confession, all concerned with topics that are current and social justice-related, but each with a different approach. And finally, one committee is concerned exclusively with the revised Rules of Discipline section of the Book of Order to make final preparations for it to be sent to the presbyteries for approval.

Finally, I expect this summary to be a living document over the couple of weeks and I will update it at various points throughout the Assembly as systems and patterns develop.

So it will be an interesting GA in the hybrid assembly hall. We pray for patience for all involved as technology is navigated, technical glitches confronted, and time will be at a premium at times.

With all that going on we offer our prayers for the commissioners, advisory delegates and the leadership of this meeting. May they be guided by the Holy Spirit, particularly to discern God’s will as a body while not actually gathered in one physical space. It will certainly be an interesting GA meeting. Blessings upon you.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:17