Today’s session included the report of the Committee on Chaplains to Her Majesty’s Forces, the Church of Scotland Guild, the Parish Appraisal Committee, and the HIV/AIDS Project.  However, the longest report was the Ministries Council stretching across both the morning and afternoon sessions and covering a wide range of topics.  This Council does much the same work on a national level that PC(USA) Committees on Ministry do on a Presbytery level.

Of particular concern in the report was the suitability of International Christian College (ICC) in Glasgow for training Kirk ministers.  The problem is that staff at the college are required to sign a statement of faith that some Church of Scotland ministers would not agree with.  In addition, the Church of Scotland has traditionally trained ministers in a university setting rather than in seminaries and that was a matter of concern about ICC as well.  When that section of the report was debated the council convener, the Assembly Moderator, as well as the Principal Clerk all seemed to reach a point where they were as confused as the rest of the commissioners and at the Clerks suggestion the proceedings were “rewound” to a point  where most people were no longer confused.  In the end there was no final action on ICC since the council wanted another year to consider the situation.  There was a statement by a commissioner the Kirk should be careful adding a sixth school for training at a time when the Church of England was closing some of their schools, and Dr. Barbara Wheeler, the president of Auburn Theological Seminary and the PC(USA) representative to the GA, gave a similar caution pointing out that the PC(USA) now has a surplus of seminaries relative to the number of students and the Church of Scotland should be careful where it uses precious resources.

Another item of concern was a report contained within the council report titled “Vision for Ministries in the 21st Century.”  While the report was generally acceptable as far as it went, there was concern that more work was needed on some issues in the report.  The Assembly passed, by a vote of 299-201, an amendment to the Council report which acknowledged rather than affirmed the “Vision” report.