As I continue my exploration and commentary on the overtures being sent up to the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I want to focus today on three that deal with the operations of the Assembly.

But before I get down to the nitty-gritty of the overtures let me make some observations about the business and operations of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

If ask anyone who has been a commissioner to the General Assembly about the experience they will probably tell you that it was generally good and interesting but also an intense and tiring experience.  You begin on Saturday with some preliminaries and the election of the Moderator. You worship Sunday morning, socialize (or network) Sunday afternoon.  There might be a brief plenary business meeting and then the committees begin meeting.  The committee work begins in earnest on Monday morning and goes until whatever hour on Tuesday the committee gets it done — it might be at noon, it might be the wee hours of Wednesday morning.  The first part of Wednesday is devoted to reading committee reports, and then the marathon begins as the full Assembly starts working through the 15 or so committee reports.  On Friday night the Assembly goes until it is done because on Saturday everyone just shows up to formally adopt the budgets that resulted from their work over the last week, gets a pep talk about what a nice place the next Assembly will be held at, and then they are dismissed with a prayer.  They then get on their planes and collapse in exhaustion and it really doesn’t matter where the next Assembly will be held because the commissioners seldom see the light of day for that week.

Well, maybe I exaggerate a little bit because there is sunlight when you walk between the hotel and the convention center in the morning and again out to the restaurants for lunch.  Sunday usually provides an opportunity to see some of the neighborhood. And of course the YADs (now YAADs) need a nice place for their mid-week get-together.

But if you think I am being too sarcastic here I would argue that I am not.  If you have been a commissioner, or have had a long talk with someone who was, you will probably think or hear something like “Is this any way to run a church?”  When it gets to plenary there are just over two days to deal with the business from 15 committees, some of these items having great significance.  “Back in the day” when the material was all printed the business easily filled two three-inch binders.  And the reports you got before the Assembly convened were all in small print.  Any wonder the full Assembly usually trusts the work of the business committees.

Let me finish my commentary, more like a rant, with some hard numbers:  For the 218th GA of the PC(USA) there were 109 overtures from presbyteries and synods, not counting concurring overtures that got folded in, that the Assembly had to deal with.  On top of that there was business from the committees and entities of the national office.  For comparison, last year the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which also meets for one week, had two overtures and one ascending complaint.  The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, again a one week meeting, last year had nine overtures.  The Bible Presbyterian Church had seven overtures and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church last year had four.  The Presbyterian branch with the next closest number of overtures that I am aware of, and please let me know if you know of another with more, is the Presbyterian Church in America with 22 overtures, and eight of those were related to creating new presbyteries and redrawing presbytery borders — the remaining 14 dealt with polity, doctrine and discipline.  This is not to say that other GA’s have no controversy — far from it.  But from what I have seen most GA’s have no more than one or two spirited debates in the course of the whole GA.  The PC(USA) seems to have one or two per day.

All this to say that as I observe other GA’s around the globe and see how they operate it strikes me that something is significantly different about the way the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) operates.  And based on some of the overtures that are being submitted to the 219th General Assembly I am apparently not the only one who thinks so.

Let me begin with Overture 9 from Foothills Presbytery which proposes that the church get together annually in a convocation but only do business at the meeting every sixth year.  (Had to smile at the thought that this is almost a “reversed sabbatical year” – rest for six and work for one.)  With this overture they provide an extensive rational which includes:

1. We believe the following:
   • The vast majority of Presbyterians are happy with their congregations, their presbyteries, their synods, and the ongoing work of General Assembly staff to ensure the smooth day-by-day running of the mission of the denomination.
   • On the other hand, we believe that Presbyterians of all theological perspectives find themselves frustrated with the manner in which discussions occur and decisions are made by the General Assembly, and that General Assembly in its present functioning, presents a significant threat in our beloved church and to its peace, unity, and purity.
2. Further, based on our experience, and reports of General Assembly commissioners, we believe that
   • the volume of information presented to commissioners at the assembly, including, but not limited to annual reports, denominational positions on particular issues, repeated actions to amend the constitution, etc.,
   • the committee structure and process employed to introduce business to the floor of the assembly,
   • the lack of relationships between commissioners,
   • the lack of time to process issues that are often enormously complicated and multifaceted,
   • the consequent pressure to give in to the emotion of the moment,
   • the disparity of knowledge about specific subjects between commissioners, General Assembly staff, special interest groups;
3. all often
   • lead to confrontation without reconciliation, (2 Cor. 5:18–19),
   • contribute to a heightened emphasis on winners and losers, rather than winners and winners (see 1 Cor. 6:7–8),
   • lead to a tendency for our national body to act legislatively rather than pastorally (see Paul’s approach to meat offered to idols in 1 Cor. 10:23–33),
   • promote stagnation rather than growth in our common life together (Eph. 4:15–16),
   • lead to the predominance of single-issue thinking (party-spirit, see Gal. 5:20)
   • reinforce a growing sense of anxiety in a significant number of our congregations every time assembly meets, (see John 14:27)
   • and erode denominational pride, loyalty, and commitment.

So the basic intent is to be relational and missional five years and based on that common foundation to address the detailed work of the denomination in the sixth year.  I have to commend them for identifying issues and providing a possible restructuring.  The overture does not give specific recommendations f
or the restructuring — Clearly a system such as they propose would shift a lot more authority and responsibility for operational details like budget and ministry to the GAMC and the OGA.  It would also be interesting to know if the Big Tent event this past summer would be a possible model for the convocations or if they are thinking about a more focused meeting.  This overture will definitely give this year’s commissioners something to think about and discuss.

The other operational overtures to date are not nearly as sweeping and only address specific operational points.

Overture 7 from New Harmony Presbytery asks for a specific change to the Standing Rules of the Assembly, a change that does not need presbytery approval but could be undone or suspended by a subsequent Assembly.  The proposal is to reduce the recurrence of similar Book of Order changes being sent to the presbyteries for vote by adding operational language that says:

b. Should an overture require an amendment to the Constitution that proposes substantially the same action as that which was approved by one of the two previous sessions of the General Assembly and subsequently failed to receive the necessary number of affirmative votes for enactment when transmitted to the presbyteries, it shall not be considered as an item of business unless and until 75 percent of the commissioners present and voting vote to do so,

The parliamentary point on this is that under the standing rules amending or suspending the rules (Section L) requires only a two-thirds vote, so if this is adopted it would be easier to suspend this rule than affirm a constitutional amendment under it.  In terms of how business would be dealt with under this rule, would an overture subject to this rule be automatically sent to the business committee for recommendation and then come back at the end of the week for the full Assembly vote to proceed, or would the rule be taken up at the beginning of the week so if the request is denied the business committee has one less item to deal with?  Probably just put on the consent agenda of the first Bills and Overtures Committee report.

It is worth noting however that this overture does address a comment/complaint that is regularly heard in some presbyteries about the fact that similar amendments keep getting sent down from the Assembly and keep getting defeated by the presbyteries.

(And a very picky polity wonk comment on the wording:  It speaks of the previous “sessions of the General Assembly.”  In Presbyterian polity the General Assembly is both a meeting and a group of people forming a governing body.  A given General Assembly, such as the 218th, has a stated meeting and may have called meetings. (I won’t go near that at this time.) Technically, the 218th General Assembly is still in existence but simply in adjournment and then will dissolve upon convening the 219th GA.  So more appropriate wording would be “one of the two previous General Assemblies.”  As I said, picky, wonkish, and I even catch myself not being strict using these terms.  But this is a difference with Reformed Church polity where their higher governing bodies, such as the class (=presbytery), do not “exist” between meetings.)

Finally, Overture 6 from Mid-South Presbytery sort of falls into this general theme of overtures because it would amend the Book of Order regarding the Assembly’s ability to make Authoritative Interpretations.  The overture asks that the Assembly send to the presbyteries a constitutional amendment that would add to the end of G-13.0103r the line:

No authoritative interpretation shall be issued by a General Assembly which amends or alters a clear mandate contained in any provision of the Book of Order.

While this seems pretty straight-forward, as we have seen in the Southard Decision from the Boston Presbytery PJC even the majority and dissenting members of the PJC differed on what the minority would consider “a clear mandate” in the Directory for Worship.

Well, that takes care of these three overtures.  At the present time there are 13 overtures posted on PC-Biz and I have now commented on eight of them.  It looks like the next batch to talk about are related to peacemaking and social witness polity.  For reference, looking back at my notes from two years ago there were 23 overtures posted by this time so if business processing by the OGA is running at the same pace there appears to be noticeably fewer overtures submitted so far.  (As a technical note, overture processing has gone from a dedicated web page to the PC-Biz system and so I could imagine that the efficiency of processing could be either higher or lower than last time depending on the complexity of the back-end technology involved.)  The number posted could also be lower because of the staff reductions we have seen or because the 120 day deadline is later this year.  We will just wait and see what the total comes to. Stay tuned.