Over the last week there has been some local activity for the four candidates standing for Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The series of events began with the attendance of the candidates at the regular meeting of the General Assembly Council in Louisville.  This seems to not so much be a “moderator” event as it is a “reality check.”  It gives the candidates an opportunity to see the state of the denomination one last time before GA, and it lets the “inner circle” of the denomination check out the candidates.  From these two days Bruce Reyes-Chow has posted some of his reflections.

After Louisville, all four traveled to New Jersey for two “meet-and-greet” events, one in the afternoon at Bloomfield College and one that evening at First Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville.  The evening one is well covered, complete with pictures, by lead organizer Mark Smith in his blog Mark Time.  For full details and impressions check it out, but it had a great format with time for candidate’s remarks to the whole group, breaking up into four groups, one with each candidate and then rotate candidates, and finally an informal time to mingle.  In addition to Mark, candidate Carl Mazza has his own comments on his blog.

Finally, Bruce Reyes-Chow and Bill Teng were able to continue the “whistle-stop tour” with an event the next day at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, in Washington, D.C.  You can find reflections on this event by Carol Howard Merritt on her blog Tribal Church.

All the comments are positive about these events and it sounds like a useful exercise to get the candidates together out in the “real world.”  So often we hear about the election at GA, those that did not get elected fade from view, and the Moderator is now someone out traveling the world on our behalf that we may read about, but usually don’t meet and who also has pretty much faded from view when the next GA rolls around.  Now I realize that even with the new two year terms of moderators, for them to visit every presbytery would require visiting an average of close to two presbyteries per week.  So getting face time with each of the two-million-ish members is not realistic.  But we in the particular church need to be attentive to our connectionalism more than the one week every-other year that GA is in session.