This year I have had an inside view to the pre-GA ramp-up through my son the YAD.  (YAD= Youth Advisory Delegate – one youth from each presbytery who has an advisory vote. Except in committee where it is a full vote.)  I can tell you that GA has not gone completely “paperless.”  Yes, the paper for official functions and business might have been minimized, but for the last two months he has been the dominant recipient of mail in our household. 

The official mailings are not like they were “back in the day” when a three-inch binder was required to hold all the pre-meeting paper, but there is still some paper even here.  This includes some official paperwork that just can’t be done electronically.  There are also some pieces of business that get mailed out, notably a nice published copy of the Revised Form of Government (rFOG).  This came out in the same dimensions as the current Book of Order so you can see how it would look and how much less space it would take on your book shelf.  He has also gotten communication about arrangements and committee work via snail mail.

The first mailings by affinity groups were two books related to the current ordination standards debate that he received from progressive groups.  I will give them credit getting the information out early so the commissioners have plenty of time to look them over in advance.  However, for the YAD’s, or at least this one, it was not the best since it was the final stretch of the school year and preparing for the GA was not on the radar screen.  They got shelved but he has gotten back to skimming them in the last couple of weeks.

Probably the next piece of material to arrive was the item that interested him the most — the Presbyterian Outlook.  For those of you at the Outlook, good move and thank you.  He found it succinct, topical, interesting, and relevant.  The sort of thing a student can pick up and cover one article in a short sitting between other things in a busy life.  In my opinion, getting the Outlook for a few weeks did more to prepare him for GA than any other information he received in the mail this spring.

And then there have been the letters.  Many groups have sent him letters explaining their positions on issues.  Most have been from affinity groups advocating their positions on issues before GA.  A good portion of these, including the letter from six U.S. congressmen who happen to be Presbyterian, have been about the church’s stance on Israel/Palestine.  One day when I got home from work and asked him about that day’s mail he joked that one position letter that day began by saying it was “brief” but turned out to be almost as long as all the other position letters of the day combined.  In addition he also got a couple of letters from church sessions advocating for overtures that they had initiated and their presbyteries had sent on to GA.

As you can see, he has been reading his mail, especially since school got out.  But in talking with him the other day he seems most impressed and touched by the hand written cards and notes that say nothing more than “Thank you for serving at GA.  I/We/Our church will be praying for you.”  I think these have helped him capture the image of the church not as our individual congregation, or the local groups of churches that Dad keeps running off to work on committees with, but as a much, much larger group of churches and people across the country that will be working together next week to see where God is leading them.  To all of you, and especially Community Pres. in Pittsburg, California, thanks to you, and please keep praying.