With the passing of the Christmas quiet period new items, news, and business related to the June General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will begin to get more plentiful.

First, while the Presbyterian News Service has released no news articles about additional moderator candidates, we know from the blogs that the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow was endorsed by his presbytery, San Francisco Presbytery, at their meeting yesterday.  This will be an interesting Moderator campaingn to watch since, in my memory, this appears to be the first Web 2.0 Moderator campaign.  If you need an introduction to Web 2.0, you can look at the November 12, 2007, issue of the Presbyterian Outlook (free registration required) but it is the new technologies of interactive blogs and dynamic web sites.  If you want to see what Bruce is doing with it you can check out his new Moderator campaign web site/blog launched within minutes of the presbytery’s formal endosement.  And you can still find out about the non-moderator side of Bruce at his regular blog.

For us good old “frozen chosen” “we’ve never done it this way before” traditionalists it will be interesting what impact the new technology has not just on the Moderator election but on GA as a whole.  As a point of personal privilage I am delighted to announce that my son has been elected the YAD from our presbytery. (OK, proud Dad moment)  But in the next year I am hoping to use him as a lens to view the PC(USA) through much younger eyes.  And I do recognize that he is not a typical high school student.  After all, he wants to spend a week in San Jose doing Presbyterian Government.  But he is typical enough that he had more pressing issues to worry about until he was elected and only then were GA items worth his time.  And he did jump at Bruce’s web site when I showed it to him last night.  Whether Bruce and other candidates who have a Web 2.0 presence win or lose the Moderator vote, I think they will have an impact through their connection to a younger generation in the PC(USA).

Moving on to business before GA there is not much new here.  No new overtures have been posted to the GA Business web page in a while.  And Overture 3, the transfer of a church from a traditional to a Korean language presbytery has been withdrawn.  The next deadline is February 22 for the 120 day deadline for constitutional business.  And things will be quiet for a while longer in the Stated Clerk search.

I should also note that a couple of weeks ago the old and significantly outdated Office of General Assembly GA page that I commented on in my first GA Preview Post has disappeared and that link is now broken.  In fact, the whole set of pages for the Office of the General Assembly has been redone including a new general General Assembly page with basic information and the dates of the future Assemblies.  The 218th GA page is now easier to find and the COLA (Committee on Local Arrangements) web site is developing nicely.  However, it does take some doing to drill down to the web page for General Assembly Meeting Services with the information on registration and hotel reservations for the meeting.

Finally, a mention that all of the groups associated with the PC(USA) are starting to look ahead to the Assembly, but so far web pages highlighting their issues are just beginning to appear.  A few more and I’ll start mentioning those.

That’s it for now, but stay tuned because a lot will be happening shortly.