[Editor’s Note: At the moment I am finishing up an intense writing project (science, not Presbyterianism) and need to devote time to that. Here I provide a “Getting Started” to cover the opening weekend of the GA and plan to provide a more detailed preview in a day or two.]

General Assembly week in Edinburgh begins tomorrow, Saturday, 20 May, with all the ritual and pageantry of the opening of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. As it starts, here are some details and places to find the initial information, and as the GA progresses, I will add to this and fill out the preview.

If you are interested in following along, and keeping track of the business and activities this year, here are the starting points:

• The proceedings will be live streaming, and you can connect to the stream from the livestream page.
• Most of the Documents pertaining to the Assembly are linked from the General Assembly Publications page. This includes the Assembly Reports and Order of Proceedings volumes, known as the Blue Book, in several different electronic formats including the traditional PDF as well as EPUB format for your readers. There is also a Dyslexia-friendly version. The Reports and Order of Proceedings are available separately on the Publications page in all those formats. The Assembly Paper contains late-breaking changes, the summary business agenda, and worship material.
• Individual reports and additional documents are on the Reports and Additional Documents 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. There is also a Guide to the Assembly page that covers some of the basic actions and terminology.

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. And the YouTube channel is now the place to watch the proceedings after they have happened and they have the meeting broken up into individual reports.

On Twitter, the starting point is the Kirk’s main feed at @churchscotland and the official hashtag #ga2023. (And I would note that the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) also appears to be using that hashtag.) 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. (As always – Thank You, Lynne)

Concerning the business before the Assembly, there is a nice summary of the major reports on the Life and Work website.

The Assembly convenes at 10 AM tomorrow, local time, with opening worship and the usual ritual of formally electing the new moderator and hearing the King’s Letter. After a break, the morning session continues with committee reports including the Legal Questions Committee bringing changes to the Standing Orders that include the ability of Presbyteries to name youth representatives to the Assembly. The afternoon reports include that of the Special Committee on the Ethics of Investment Practice which will be recommending the creation of an Ethics Oversight Committee.

So here we go. It will be an interesting Assembly. We will track what happens tomorrow and add more details in a day or two. We watch and pray for the commissioners and all involved in the meeting.