Within the last few hours the Presbyterian Church (USA) web site has posted a news article with the first endorsed candidate for Moderator of the 218th General Assembly.  The candidate is the Rev. Bill Teng from National Capital Presbytery.

Rev. Teng is the pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, VA, and served as the presbytery Moderator in 2004.  Teng was born in Hong Kong and has lived in the United States since he was 18.  He says “I look at myself as a product of Presbyterian mission,” and he is a fourth-generation Presbyterian pastor.  This echoes his vision for the church where he is quoted as saying that the PC(USA) needs to “go back to the basics.”  Later in the article there is a quote where he elaborates on this saying “there needs to be someone who could stand up and remind our church
what its primary calling is, and that is to go back to the basics, to
put our emphasis on mission and evangelism.”

In other business, there are three more overtures now posted on the 218th business web site for a total of 16.  Two of these are social witness actions.  Overture 014 directs the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy to develop a new, comprehensive, AIDS and HIV policy.  The other, 015, endorses a movement know as “Publish what you Pay” which would have corporations in the “extractive industries” (oil, gas, minerals) in developing countries publish a full accounting of their finances so that corrupt practices would be visible on their balance sheets.  The third overture, 016, asks the GA to receive the report of the Form of Government Task Force and then declare a two year (or more) period for the church to study it rather than dealing with it quickly in the single GA.  It is important to remember that the GA can make changes to the rewrite of the Form of Government, but once sent out for presbytery approval, presbyteries can only vote the changes up or down, they can not modify the document.

At this point I expect a bit of a quiet period in announced GA business during the Advent Season, but things will heat up again as we enter Ordinary Time after Christmas since many presbyteries vote on their GA commissioners in January.  And yes, my son will be a candidate for YAD at one of those meetings.