As tempting as it is to open this post with the line “In a neat little town they call Belfast…” I will resist that temptation.    But on Monday at 7:00 PM local time the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will convene in that city.

While it does not appear that there will be webcasting, they will be on Twitter and providing tweets from twitter.com/pciassembly.  (I have not yet seen a hash search term yet for twitter.  Maybe we can use #pciga09.) The agenda for the assembly is on line as are the reports.  And the incoming Moderator, the Rev. Stafford Carson, has a personal blog on which he has been providing interesting little vignettes into his days leading up to the Assembly.

Clearly the hot topic on the Assembly agenda (4:00 PM Tuesday to be exact) is the situation with the Presbyterian Mutual Society.  You can check out my earlier post for more details, but this affiliated, but not church controlled, investment society collapsed last fall when requests for withdraws exceeded the cash on hand and the value of the property that had been invested in.  The Society itself got its stakeholders to agree to “wind down” operations in order to eventually get the greatest potential return from the properties it was invested in, but it appears it will still be substantially less than before the global economic collapse and there are now reports of delays.  The church, the Society, and Northern Irish politicians have petitioned the British Government to guarantee the deposits, but without success yet.  In fact, the appeal to the government was noted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland who added the following to their Church and Society Report:

39. Note with concern the impact of the collapse of Presbyterian Mutual and urge the UK Government and devolved executive in Northern Ireland to take urgent action to resolve the situation.

This support was welcomed by the current Moderator, the Rev. Donald Patton, in an official press release.

There is still considerable question about what the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will, or can, do about the situation.  There was even a question whether there would be anything more than a report on the situation as noted in the first agenda:

[Tuesday June 2] 4.00pm MUTUAL SOCIETY COLLAPSE ‘A TREMENDOUS CHALLENGE’ — General Board/Moderators Advisory Committee (p23-32 & p106)

The report describes the PMS going into administration as ‘a tremendous
challenge to many loyal members’ and details how the church has
responded through a chronology of meetings and statements up to the
handing over of a petition to Northern Ireland MPs on 1 April. Attached
resolutions call the Church to continued ‘prayer and concern for all
involved.’

Note that since the main reports go to press in early April the General
Assembly publishes ‘Supplementary Reports’ on the Tuesday morning of
Assembly week with more up to date information. It is expected that
these will contain a more up to date report and additional resolutions.

But Moderator Patton has said in a BBC interview, and published on the web site, that a debate will be held.  He says “There will be a full debate… a speech and questions. It will be an uncomfortable debate because of the anxiety and emotion.”

And many stakeholders in the Society, who feel betrayed by the church, will be protesting outside the opening session Monday evening.  The stakeholders’ concerns are expressed in a Belfast Telegraph article:

Mervyn Redmond, a spokesman for the Shore Street PMS Action Group in
Donaghadee, said: “We feel betrayed — once by the PMS which assured us that
our savings would not be at risk, and even more by the Presbyterian Church
which has failed to provide any meaningful support for us since our savings
were frozen last autumn.”

He added: “We and our families and forebears have always turned to the Church
in times of serious difficulty, but during this desperate situation we are
reduced to confronting the Church leaders and elders because they have
refused to take a compassionate and fruitful initiative.”

A lot of people will be watching to see what the GA figures out to do with this situation.  We will find out at the Order of the Day on Tuesday.  Debate is docketed for 90 minutes.  Keep watching Twitter.

While there are other important pieces of Assembly business involving the voice in state education and a “response to the report of the Eames/Bradley Consultative Group on the Past” so far the Presbyterian Mutual Society situation has dominated the news and blog discussion.  For a bit more on these check out the official Assembly preview.

Stay tuned…  It will be interesting.