With nine months before the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) the pace of work is picking up and reports, preliminary and final, are being issued.
In particular, the PC(USA) has several special committees and task forces working on various tasks from the 218th GA or the General Assembly Mission Council.
Recent press releases about the various groups and their progress include:
- The review of the Washington Office and the input solicited for their mission study. The new Mission Statement is being presented to the GAMC this week. (And if you want to see a star-studded committee check out the list of members on page 8.)
- The Youth Ministries Task Force was busy at Big Tent conducting interviews and collecting information.
- The Committee to Prepare a Compreshenive Study Focused on Israel Palestine just completed a 15-day study tour to the region.
- The Special Committee to Consider Adding the Belhar Confession to the Book of Confessions reported this week to the GAMC that they recommend in favor of the addition. (Outlook article)
At this time one committee, the New Revised Form of Government Task Force, has reported out in final form for the input of the denomination. Their full report is posted and commended to the church for study ahead of the Assembly. I have begun studying the 2009 version relative to the 2008 version and will have comments on the revisions in the near future.
But I have not gotten very far into that yet since I have been otherwise occupied, because…
The Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Union and Christian Marriage met last week and has released their preliminary report for review and input by the church. Input can be sent to civilunion.marriage@pcusa.org. It should be 1000 words or less and received by Nov. 15.
The report begins:
As members of Christ’s church, we differ profoundly; but can we also see that those who disagree with us are seeking to love one another with God’s grace, advance the radical inclusiveness of the gospel, and promote biblical faithfulness? Though we reach very different conclusions, can we rejoice that our church is willing to wrestle together prayerfully with the question: How do we extend the grace of God to all, calling all persons—regardless of sexual orientation—to repentance and conversion, so that all will experience God’s gracious intention for humanity?
And the concluding section says:
What is the place of covenanted same-gender partnerships in the Christian community? The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) cannot agree. But the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is not ours. It is Christ’s. We did not choose Christ; Christ has chosen us, and appointed us—each and every one—to go and bear fruit that will last in this part of Christ’s vineyard. We have no right to destroy what is not ours. Knowing this, we believe that it is our Christ-given duty to stay at the table, especially when we disagree.
At the present time the report contains no recommendations to the Assembly — The committee will decide on those at their final meeting in January.
Now, I am going to take a step back and make some personal comments: As many of you are aware I am a member of that Special Committee. I have no comments about the content of the report — the committee worked very hard on it, was unanimous in support of the draft version, and that is our word to the PC(USA) at this time. We have made our comment as a committee, we now welcome your comments back.
What I do want to say is that it was a privilege to work with the other 12 members of the committee. I had to laugh yesterday when Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal referred to us as a “blue-ribbon” committee. It has always felt more like I was a lowly sinner in need of God’s grace, mercy and salvation in the midst of a group of fellow sinners. Yet, though we are all sinners, the members of the committee are a wonderful bunch of passionate, gifted, intelligent, thoughtful brothers and sisters in the faith. And I would emphasize that Bruce Reyes-Chow did a great job of making the committee theologically diverse. But despite our different viewpoints, when we speak in the report of “seeking to love one another with God’s grace,” we really do mean that.
I also want to commend the report to you because a lot of very hard work went into it. Writing teams worked all summer, we read more than a thousand items of input that individuals sent in, and the four day meeting was a marathon. (Sometimes revisions were posted to our collaborative software at 3 AM.) In one of her good summaries of the meeting Leslie Scanlon of the Presbyterian Outlook picked up my comment about “the month of the last two days”. (Leslie has a second article about the meeting as well.) We did not sleep much, and when I did sleep it was not very soundly. (Although I understand I was not alone in that regard.) I can honestly say it was the most intense four days I can remember, even more intense than being a commissioner to GA. And based on my notes, I would point out that in those four days every sentence in that report was reviewed by the full committee, page-by-page, and most of the sentences in there were modified in some way in the course of that review. As I said, the full committee owns the full document.
I also want to thank the church for their input over the summer. More than a thousand comments came in and we read them all. Several of them were very moving – thank you for sharing your passions and hurts with us and I will carry those comments with me for a long time to come.
So read the report, let us know what you think. And when you do there are a few things to keep in mind:
- The landscape we are trying to describe was constantly changing as this report was written.
- The content of the report reflects the
mandate the 218th GA gave us. Don’t expect stuff that isn’t there. - That mandate includes the provision that we can not recommend modifying W-4.9001, the definition of Christian marriage.
- And we have to do it in 10,000 words or less.
(It is like the standing joke in academics about reviewers of journal articles asking that you discuss this, that, and the other thing in more detail, and by the way, make the paper 10% shorter.
Thanks.