As the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gets closer the overture process is winding down, but lots of other things are winding up.

On the official web pages, my observation in my last post was correct and the GA Business page has been generalized, the overtures removed, and all information shifted over to PC-biz.  Also, the two previously unlisted overtures, 62 and 68 have appeared in the list now.

One can understand why overture 68 was being worked on for so long.  Foothills Presbytery has put together an extensive overture, both in recommendation and rational, that does some major word-smithing of the Form of Government Task Force (FOG) proposed text for the new Foundations of Presbyterian Polity and Form of Government sections of the Book of Order.  I should note right up front that the task force might have rearranged the first four chapters into three new chapters of Foundations, but this overture rewrites a lot of text in both sections to change the theological focus.  The overture runs almost 16,000 words in length and if pasted into a word processor comes to 38 pages.  Just some more light reading for the commissioners.

To quote the overture the intent of this theological redirection is:

1. Ensure that any revised Form of Government (and Foundations) approved by the General Assembly shall give pre-eminence to the Reformation marks of the true Church, with due consideration of their inner dynamics.

2. Ensure that any revised Form of Government (and Foundations) approved by the General Assembly shall give preference to the church participating in the mission of the triune God in contrast to the church as the delegated/ instrumental bearer (or provisional
demonstration) of God’s mission to the world.

To put it another way, from the Rational, “the marks of the true Church are participatory—where Christ is, there is the Church (ubi christus, ibi ecclesia). The marks are not instrumentalist—where the church is, there is Christ (ubi ecclesia, ibi christus).”  So this is about making the constitutional language reflect the initiative of God and that the church participates in the mission of God.  Much of the language in the General Rational section of this overture closely parallels the Missional Polity document the task force worked with and this overture appears to be proposing changes to the FOG that would more closely align the two in theological perspective.

As I read through the proposed language I find no changes in church operations, although the argument can be made that the FOG Task Force has removed operations from the new Form of Government anyway.  In some cases the word-smithing does not really change any language but places things into more readable forms, like creating bulleted lists, or splitting items in a list into more exclusive bullet points.  But there are a lot of changes in language placing new emphasis on the Triune God and the mission of God (missio Dei).  Some of the changes are linguistically subtle.  Some of these strike me as just some “clean-up” editing.  For example (added text in italics)

G-1.02 A congregation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) can be organized and dissolved only by the authority of a presbytery and shall function under the provisions of this Constitution.

Some, while subtle word-wise, are theologically more important.  An example of this:  A line in G-1.0301 would change from

One becomes a member of the church through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and acceptance of Christ’s Lordship in all of life.

to

Believing that Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord over all of life makes one a member of the church.

This is a good example of one consistent change in the overture where the language of “faith” in Jesus Christ seems to be uniformly replaced with “believing.”  Change like this are intended to place a greater emphasis on participating, as opposed to call and response.

As I read through this overture it strikes me that this seems to be somebody or some group’s idea of what the task force report should be if it is to be truly missional.  Looking at the members of the task force there is no one from Foothills so it did not come directly from a member who wanted to see more.  The overture is so complete and so extensive there has to be a “rest of the story” on this one.  It would be interesting to know how long the presbytery commissioners wrestled with this overture since it is so extensive.  And being this extensive, it will give the commissioners on the GA Form of Government Revision Committee even more to do.  I look forward to listening to, and maybe talking with, the GA overture advocate for this one.

Well, what else is new?  Maybe the most high-profile of the remaining overtures is 80 from Peace River Presbytery which complains about the Evangelical Presbyterian Church “actively pursuing a strategy to persuade Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) churches to disaffiliate.”  One interesting twist on this overture is that it asks for an investigation by the Executive Office of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) into the EPC’s actions.   Remember that the current president of WARC and presumably the head of the Executive Committee is the Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick.  (Have I heard that name before?)  If it were to go to WARC he would obviously recuse himself from any investigation.  A similar overture that complained about the EPC was proposed, but not approved, by Mississippi Presbytery.

The remaining overtures are directed at social witness policy, or closely related topics.  Some that impact PC(USA) entities: 76 on Directing GAC to produce Adolescent Human Development Resources since the 217th General Assembly discontinued the human sexuality resources; 78 on Directing PDA (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance) to continue nurturing relationships with presbyteries affected by the storms of 2005; 79 is another request to reinstate the Office for Environmental Justice, similar to overture 24; and finally 77 is a request that this GA celebrate “Living Waters for the World.”  The remaining new overtures are 73 – “On the use of non-disposable food service items,” 74 – On addressing the violence and suffering inflicted on Iraqi women…, and 75 – On temporary suspension of military aid to the State of Israel.

That does it for the major new business that I have seen published.  I would note that there will be a meet and greet with all four Moderator candidates at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville, NJ, on April 25.  And the Witherspoon Society has gotten their GA web site started.