Coming so close to my previous update I won’t update the business coming before GA, except to say that more items are being assigned to committees on PC-biz and to note that Kay Moore, the Manager of General Assembly Business at General Assembly Meeting Services, has been added as the sole committee member to all the committees.

The news today is the announcement that GA Moderator candidate Elder Roger Shoemaker has chosen the Rev. Peter C. deVries as his Vice-moderator nominee.  My hat tip to Bruce Reyes-Chow on this since none of my other feeds or alerts have picked this up yet, and in fact Roger Shoemaker’s web site, which I watch closely, does not have it there either.  But Rev. deVries does have his blog up and going so this is more of announcement by the selectee than by the selector.  I suspect that Bruce just got the word out faster than anticipated and that Roger’s site will be updated with the official news shortly and they just wanted all their ducks in a row first. 

Peter has put up a nice blog with four posts last Thursday on his background, mission, the Bible, and conflict.  There is a general overseas mission theme going here because Rev. deVries is the convener of the Ghana Mission Network; remember that Elder Shoemaker has been  in leadership in the Czech Mission Network.  Peter is the pastor of Old Union Presbyterian Church in Mars, Pennsylvania, in Beaver-Butler Presbytery.  He is working on a Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Religious Studies (note not Pittsburgh Seminary).  He describes his research as “His dissertation uses the hermeneutic theory of Paul Ricoeur to advance
an understanding of Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse of Mark 13.”  I did find it interesting, as you can tell from that quote, that his about post is written in the third person.  The other posts nicely outline his view of the other three areas.  In particular, he writes in the conflict post that:

The PC(USA) is not in a crisis. Christianity has experienced discord and conflict from its very inception. While
the intensity of our disagreements and the things we disagree about may
distress us, God calls us to persevere in our struggle together to
discern his way forward.

These posts also reflect his mission emphasis and academic perspective.  And the motorcycle picture is a nice touch.  Now wonder it got Bruce’s attention.

So, we await the remaining two Vice-moderator nominees.