In addition to those major polity recommendations several committees will be bringing reports with major changes to the PC(USA) structure. Probably chief among these is Committee 8 – Mission Coordination and Budget, where practically their whole agenda dealt with these types of issues.
The really big issue was the disagreement, to put it politely, between the General Assembly Council and one of their divisions, the Presbyterian Foundation. I have already commented on the pro-active campaign that the Foundation has waged to fend off their supervisor the Council, and there are comments by Council Member Michael Kruse as well. And I heard one story from a speaker at the open hearing who was chased down by a Foundation executive concerning their comments.
Maybe the best account of this is the one by Michael since he was there and had a horse in the race. I just had a YAD at the table but I’ve not had a chance to debrief him on this one but in the midst of it at a break he was pumping me for a quick refresher on some of what I know.
Anyway, the committee basically told the GAC and Foundation to work it out before the committee finished work or they would come up with a solution which might not be favorable to either of them. Everyone finally worked out a dispute resolution system and this will be in place, pending GA approval, for two years while a formal review of all of GAC’s functions is undertaken.
Committee 8 also will be recommending A Season of Mission Interpretation and a Mission Season Offering. They also recommended reinstating the Office of Environmental Justice and authorized direct appeals for mission funding. In addition a host of documents related to GAC, including a name change to the General Assembly Mission Council, were approved by the committee.
Over at Committee 3 – General Assembly Procedures, they are recommending disapproval of flexible presbytery membership, but recommending in favor of flexibility in non-geographic presbyteries membership so churches in another synod could join across synod boundaries. They disapproved all the requests to change the per-capita system. They approved a commissioner resolution to provide funds to the presbyteries to cover legal expenses related to fighting the departure of churches, specifically to the EPC and New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery.
In a related item, Committee 7 – Ecumenical Relations, refereed the request to investigate the actions of the EPC in recruiting churches to the GA Committee on Ecumenical Relations.
Well, that is some of the stuff. I would also note that Committee 3 will be bringing a recommendation to change the standing rules so that it takes a 2/3 vote of the standing rules to suspend or change the rules. While I understand the intent, that undoes a protection of the minority that is inherent in Roberts Rules of Order and I am not in favor of that one.
Anyway, off to the meeting and the live blog. We’ll try to get everything there.