Just a few news headlines that have come up recently regarding the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  No analysis now but maybe later:

• The leadership for the 19 committees has been named .  I have gone through the list and recognize a few of the names and think I see some interesting trends.  If I get around to doing the analysis statistically then I’ll report on what I find.
• Speaking of committees the 19 committees are posted on PC-Biz and business is being assigned to each of them.  In what I consider a good move there are two “Social Justice Issues” committees, one for “Promotion of Social Righteousness” and one for “the Exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the World.”  In the past the Social Justice committee always had a heavy and controversial work load.  Good move to split it up.  However, these committees are not to be confused with the separate committees on Peacemaking Issues and the Middle East.  In addition there are a bunch more on all the usual suspects including Church Orders, Marriage, Form of Government Revision, Church Polity.  I think you can tell a lot about a Presbyterian branch by the committees it keeps.
• Business keeps getting added to PC-Biz.  We are at 108 Overtures and 77 recommendations.
• Twitter is starting to come alive.  Moderator of the 218th GA, the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, has put together a list of twerps twitter users who will be tweeting from the 219th GA.  It appears that the hashtag will be #ga219.  (Note that the hashtag #ga2010 will be used at least for the Church of  Scotland GA next month and maybe others.)  The official tweeps include Bruce (@breyeschow ), Randy Hobson (@randyhobson ), Thomas Hay the Director of Operations (@DirofOp ), and twitter handles for @PresbyGA and @ga219tracker. And there is a great article by Robert Austell on “What is Twitter and what could it mean at the Presbyterian General Assembly .”
• Speaking of Twitter, there is a report I have found only there via @DirofOp that there is a third candidate for Moderator.  I will write more once I have been able to confirm this. (Looking at the timing I suspect that the individual has session but not presbytery endorsement.)  UPDATE: As I was writing this the Layman published an article about the Rev.
  Maggie Lauterer from the Presbytery of Western North Carolina who will become the third moderator candidate if elected as a substitute commissioner and endorsed for moderator at their meeting on Tuesday April 27. Anticipating the fourth candidate will be endorsed the following week by Northern Waters I will comment on both following the second endorsement.
• Finally, at the present time I am pretty sure that I will not be attending GA in person this year, only in the virtual world.  I have been given the opportunity to teach Summer Session and have accepted that offer because if there is anything I like more than a General Assembly it is Earthquakes.  I still plan on posting as much as possible here on the blog and will be commenting on Twitter as well @ga_junkie .

More shortly…