Over the last few days I have become refocused on the upcoming General Assemblies and trying to map out my strategy for blogging in advance of each one.  Needless to say, if I am going to blog about every overture submitted to the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) it will take some time.  Or maybe not…

At the present time there are 102 overtures, two committee reports, and 52 recommendations from standing committees of GA entities.  But of those 102 overtures, well over half fall into six predictable categories.  Here is the landscape we are looking at:

Ordination Standards:  It should be no surprise to anyone following the PC(USA) these days that the hottest topic for this GA, as measured by the number of overtures, is ordination standards.  There are seventeen overtures that directly address G-6.0106b or other sections of the Book of Order that deal with ordination standards.  In addition, there are a few more that address the way that the General Assembly does it’s business that could influence the ordination standards status as well.  And there is one, Overture 56, that proposes to change the Book of Order to require future changes to the Book of Order to have the concurrence of two-thirds of the presbyteries making it significantly harder to change the Constitution.  (For reference, there are other Presbyterian branches, such as the PCA, which do require a 2/3 vote.)

Marriage:  Second in the number of related overtures is the topic of Marriage.  Not counting the report of the Special Committee on Civil Unions and Christian Marriage and the minority report, which have not appeared on PC-Biz yet, there are eleven overtures asking for Book of Order changes or Interpretations related to this.

General Assembly operations and procedures:  This is the most “jello” category, a little hard to nail down, but I count about 15 overtures that address how the General Assembly does it’s business.  While a few ask for constitutional changes, like Overture 54 to reduce the number of commissioners that I mentioned yesterday, most are changes to the Standing Rules.  This assortment of overtures deals with who can speak, who can vote, what and when business can be transacted.  There are some interesting and attractive items in here, like Overture 38 to give priority to controversial items or Overture 74 which would have the standing rules require committee reports and votes on business items to all be placed ahead of dinner before commissioners get too tired.

But what is interesting about this category is that there are several additional items in the recommendations category.  One of these is Recommendation 38 from the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly which would add the requirement that when the Moderator is empowered to appoint a task force or special committee the Moderator consults with the Nominating Committee.  (Maybe Bruce was a bit too free wheeling and independent in his appointments and they don’t want that to happen again.  We just want to make sure it is done decently and in order.)

New Form of Government (nFOG): The three remaining categories are all close but this weighs in at number four with seven overtures.  Some try to perfect it while two, Overtures 44 and 95, ask for more time to consider it and one, Overture 98, wants to dismiss the task force and ask the presbyteries to roll back all the resent changes including the undoing of the Chapter 14 change made a couple of years ago.  And then Overture 95 invites more suggested changes from the church on the nFOG.  We could take one step beyond their suggestion, post it on a Wiki, and let the whole church work away at it for two years.  (And no, I am not being sarcastic but am seriously considering if it would be a worthwhile exercise.)  Overture 53 seems to say that the nFOG is only a starting point and after we approve it further revisions are still necessary to make it a manual of operations.

Middle East:  Again, this category is tied to both an ongoing discussion in the church and a just released task force report that is not on PC-Biz yet.  This is the area that seems to be receiving the most outside publicity and criticism from Jewish groups and the mainstream media.  There are six overtures in this area, most of which do not directly address the report since the report was so recently released.  In addition, there are three recommendations from GA permanent committees on this topic.

Middle Governing Bodies: Finally, there are five overtures and one recommendation to study or change the middle governing body structure.  These include two overtures to increase flexibility, one in presbytery membership (45) and one in synod membership (36), and the rest to decide if we need to cut some of them back.

Finally, across all the categories there are two overtures and four recommendations that request a task force, special commission, and even an Administrative Commission to get something done.  I am still trying to decide if the fact that twice as many of these recommendations come from the permanent committees means something significant, positive or negative, about the way the PC(USA) does business.

Those six categories cover 61 of the 102 overtures posted on PC-Biz.  So the landscape is dominated by these controversial issues.  But in between we find some interesting individual items.  There is Overture 12 “On designating May 1 every year as a Day of Prayer for Healing.”  (Interesting idea although I would have liked to hear the rational for that particular date since there are other things on May 1 as well.)  And Overture 48 which would add language about the Covenant Community to the section on membership.

At this point we are well past the 120 day deadline so no more overtures proposing changes to the Book of Order would be expected.  But there is plenty of time for other overtures before the 60 day (those with financial implications) and 45 day (all others) deadlines so the number should continue to grow.  At this point before the 218th GA there were only 75 overtures posted so we are well ahead of that pace this year and we can probably expect more than the 128 overtures there were for that meeting.  We shall see where it finally ends up.