San Francisco

We stayed for a short vacation after GA Laurie was pretty wore out so we didn't do much Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Today we spent the day in San Francisco it was very cool for us this morning around 60. We visited the waterfront and Pier 39 and saw the sea lions and then went to China Town. They have great public transportation in this part of the world.

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Here are a few pictures; there are more on our flickr page.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/mignonsdad/

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Thoughts

The worship has been inspiring, the fellowship has been wonderful, and the meetings have been at times funny, boring, frustrating, joyful, dry, saddening, and inspiring. I did not agree with all of the decisions made, but there were many that I did agree with. So what am I going to take away from the first General Assembly that I have attended?

1. Jesus the Christ is LORD!
The fact has been brought home to me that Jesus the Christ is LORD of the church. I have believed this but being here has helped to cement that statement as a core belief in my life. We tend to pay lip service to God’s sovereignty and continue live in a state of doubt and fear about what will happen to our church particular, our denomination, and the Christian Church in general. Jesus as LORD means that I should not fear because no matter what decisions are made at a church council God is still in control.

2. The church has a mission!
We have a purpose that grows out of the fact that we belong to God. What is our purpose? The theme of this Assembly is from Micah 6:8,

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? ESV

To me this means in my life I have the responsibility to abide in Christ and let the fruit of the Spirit flow through my being so that all that I do and say is guided by God’s Holy Spirit.

This has been a time of refreshment and renewal for me; it has been much more demanding on Laurie and she will need a few days to recover. As I return to our church families I hope that I can communicate the truth of belonging to God and that through belonging to God we are called by Him to be servants to one another and the world around us.

As we move forward from the 218th General Assembly my prayer for our denomination is that Micah 6:8 is lived out in all that we say and do.

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Pondering

We are not ignoring the controversial items from today (Friday) dealing with the ordination standards of the church; we are just taking a deep breath and thinking about what to write.

Jim

Initial Friday Observations

Well, it is Friday morning…I was only about 10 minutes late to the plenary meeting. At 10PM last night I had to give in and head to bed. I understand they went another 30-45 minutes. Today will be a long day, too. We are behind in the docket and we are already scheduled to not end until 10:30PM – if we can keep on track. If not, who knows? Even better…my committee must meet again after tonight’s last session because we are charged with presenting the final budget implications for all mission ministry items approved by the assembly.

The plenary sessions have been very interesting. As committee reports are given and their recommendations are moved as motions, following Robert’s Rule of Order, the floor is open for discussion and questions. It never fails that most items the committees think are easy become contentious and those feared to be controversial fly through without a question.

There is always one or two commissioners that enjoy hearing themselves speak from the floor and have little substance, but surprisingly many of the most articulate and insightful questions and suggestions have come from our younger advisory delegates – youth ages 15-20 and theological students at our seminaries. Our Mission Presbytery YAD (youth advisory delegate) Cindy Farrar has spoken several times on the floor of plenary and did a very good job. For me, the most promising and hopeful aspect of this experience for me has been seeing the young people of our denomination. They have been engaging and passionate, providing a fresh spirit within our work. They have taken this responsibility very seriously and have worked hard to understand all that we are doing. While they have full voice, but no vote in plenary, before each vote, they are polled to give the commissioners “advise” on the item of business. It has been a tremendous help for me to see what our younger folk think. Sometimes I agree sometimes not, but their ideas and voices need to be heard because they are our future and we need to make sure that what we do as a church takes into consideration their desires and their callings and their hopes or else we will not only be impoverish, but we will be less than what I think we are called to be.

On another note…we elected a new stated clerk this morning. He was not my choice, but did carry himself well during question/answer time and had some good replies that I agreed with.

After a vigorous morning of debate and voting mostly dealing with sexuality and church officers, Jim and I had a quiet lunch and I went back to the room and took a nap. It was hard to get up and get going again, but I made it. What we are discussing this afternoon pertains to the Committee on Peacemaking and International Affairs. This is going to be a tough session for me. Partly because I am exhausted and partly because of my “state” my emotions just keep welling up.

As I await what I pray will be the moment I hold our new child, I hear speaker and speaker and see video clip after video clip of children dying, suffering, starving and in poverty. This is one of the times when the amount of human suffering and need in the world seems so overwhelming, especially in the face of my personal wealth and prosperity, that I cannot even put into words my feelings and emotions. I am simply overwhelmed and at this time can only pray for God to help me hear and to guide me to whatever I can do in my little corner of the world to make the changes I can to further the Kingdom of God.

From Laurie's Seat

Greetings to all! I have survived close to the half-way point thus far.

All day Monday and Tuesday I was in committee meetings. It was an interesting experience. I started out trying to take notes like I did in the first plenary sessions, but the situations and business were much more complex and entailed and I decided an over-all recap would be the easiest. If you really want a lot of detail of what I did those two days, go to PC-biz.org, click on the ‘committees’ button and go to committee #8 – Mission Coordination and Budgets.

I thought I knew what my committee was to do, but I really was surprised after I got into it. Obviously mission was the focus, but I guess I didn’t fully understand the complete structuring of the national church until this week. My committee could have as easily been called the General Assembly Council (GAC) committee. This is the branch of the church that is to carry out the work of the church’s mission.

The PCUSA is made up of 6 agencies. The Office of the General Assembly (OGA) and the General Assembly Council (GAC) make up the Presbyterian Church (USA), A Corporation. The other 4 agencies are the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program (PILP), the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation (PPC), the Presbyterian Church (USA) Foundation (FDN), and the Board of Pensions (BOP). While I do not fully understand what being a corporation means and the other ‘legalese’ sections, based upon some of the business we had in committee, the cliff notes version is that the GAC is charged by the over-all General Assembly (which is in essence made up of the congregants and ministers of the all churches, presbyteries and synods, represented by those of us here in this meeting) with the task of providing the organization and structure of the church’s various missions and the Foundation is charged with providing the funds. These were the two main agencies that we dealt with.

I know it gets confusing with all the “General Assembly” language in so many different groups. One of the actions of my committee that will be presented before the assembly is changing the name of the GAC to more fully reflect its duties. If it passes, the new name will be the General Assembly Mission Council. Within the GAC, there are 6 ministry offices: Office of Theology, Worship and Education; Office of Evangelism and Church Development; Office of Compassion, Peace, and Justice; Office of Racial, Ethnic and Women’s Ministry/Presbyterian Women; Office of World Mission; and Office of Vocation.

After getting a briefing of the church’s structure and the GAC structure to help understand what my committee was charged with, we got to work on a lot of items. We dealt with the pattern and recipients of the 4 special offerings taken throughout the year – One Great Hour of Sharing, Christmas Joy Offering, Pentecost Offering and Peacemaking Offering. We approved an overture on reinstating another offering – the Mission Season Offering – that would go primarily to our world missionaries. Evidently, giving to world missions has dropped considerable as people make more and more designated gifts to particular entities within the church that have not included world missions. The other item pertaining to the mission giving that we approved was to create a “season of mission interpretation” through which local churches would be provided information about the many and varied missions that our PCUSA leads and/or supports.

Our biggest item that we spent the most time on (an extra 6 hours so that our “free” night Tuesday was spent back in committee until well after 10:00PM) was to be a mediator in a long-time argument between the GAC and the Foundation. While it was reiterated over and over that the majority of the time there is no problem between the two agencies, there has been issues that they could not come to terms on. The situation boils down to a ‘turf war’ between the two over who has final say in the administration of funds. Each seemed to be rather childish in their stance. We ended up crafting a substitute motion, which took forever when there are 60 people offering their amendments to amendments to ‘better’ the grammar and clarity. Finally we had a document that we all agreed upon. Our substitute motion requires creating a Restricted Funds Resolution Committee to address any disputes, thus not allowing either side to have the final say if they could not agree. The situation is much deeper and more complex that I can get into here, but I have to say that by the time we finished, the two sides were agreeable to what we passed and were acting more collegial toward one another. Several people, including our Synod Exec, Judy Fletcher, said they were embarrassed that the two couldn’t work out their own problems and that we had to intervene.

A big part of the problem came out to be a need for better communications between all the agencies, but especially these two. Another big part of what we did was to rework the manner in which each agency is reviewed. There will be a new review committee made up of people outside of the agencies that is charged to work during the next two years to look at the over-all structure of the church and its agencies and see if there is some stream-lining, reductions and/or changes that can be made to help our national church work more productively, efficiently and with the best stewardship of resources in mind. The feelings of many is that several of our agencies have, over the years, taken on more authority and power than the GA originally gave them. There has been an attitude of mistrust within our church that this assembly is trying hard to address and rectify and if what my committee did is approved on the floor when it is presented, I think this mistrust can begin to be healed. We’ll see…I know that was very lengthy and maybe convoluted, but that is the essence of what we did those two days. I’ll get you caught up with the plenary sessions from Wednesday and Thursday soon, but sleep is more important at this time.

Laurie

General Assembly Wednesday June 25, 2008

The big news this morning was that the committee on Church Orders and Ministry recommended to the assembly that they remove G-6.0106b which many call the Fidelity and Chastity amendment. What does this mean? Well, it means that the ordination requirement to live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and woman or chastity in singleness” will be once again debated on the floor of the General Assembly. The GA will have the opportunity to forward this amendment to the Presbyteries for their vote. The GA may choose not to send it to the Presbyteries. It has not reached the floor yet.

This same amendment was sent to the Presbyteries in 1997 and 2000 and defeated by the Presbyteries both times. One friend here made the statement that GA has been hijacked by this amendment. There will be lots of debate time used and we will not cover any new ground that has not been covered in the past. I believe that our time could be spent in other areas. My biggest fear is that this amendment will further divide us (the PCUSA) in a time that we should be looking to what unites us so that we can accomplish what God wants from our church.

On Marriage
In further news the Assembly Committee on Church Polity rejected a proposal that would have changed the PCUSA’s constitutional definition of marriage from being between a man and woman to being between two people.

Sexuality Curriculum
On the floor of GA this afternoon there was lengthy debate about a proposed creation of a Sexual Education Curriculum. The overture to create the curriculum came from our neighbor to the North, Grace Presbytery. Grace Presbytery sent this to GA because they believe that there is a need for Sexual Education based on Presbyterian values. The motion passed so the Presbyterian Publishing house will be directed to develop a resource for churches to use to teach sexual education, based on reformed principles and Presbyterian values.

RECOMMENDATION
The Presbytery of Grace overtures the 218th General Assembly (2008) to direct the General Assembly Council to produce adolescent human development resources based upon Scripture and the Reformed theological tradition. These resources would explore all facets of adolescent development including human sexuality.

ASSEMBLY ACTION
On this Item, the General Assembly, acted as follows:
Approve with Comment
We choose to plant the seed of peace. We set aside our individual desires to “win” and to further our own agendas and put our faith in God, and send this overture on without trying to advocate one position or another, trusting not only God, but our fellow Presbyterians to do what is right not only for our children but for our denomination. We send this overture on in the hope that the next step of the process will cultivate the seed we have planted, faithfully stepping out in mutual trust.
Electronic Vote - Plenary Affirmative: 509
Negative: 188
Abstaining: 5

At the Austin Seminary Luncheon

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday

Laurie has been in committee meetings for the last three days. In the various committees the commissioners debate and decide which resolutions will make it to the floor of the General Assembly. Laurie is on a very demanding (time wise) committee and has put in some long hours. She is working on a summary of her committee work to post.

We attended a lunch for Small Church people and the Synod of the Sun luncheon. Here is a picture of us with our friend Jeff Cranton from Arkansas and Judy Fletcher our favorite Synod Executive.

Laurie's Notes from GA for Friday and Saturday

Friday June 20th

Friday morning after a good night’s sleep, I woke up with ulcers in my throat and a sinus infection. This is a normal reaction of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that sometimes gets me if I have pushed too hard. We had thought we might go visit a technology museum nearby, but instead I stayed in bed most of the day and took several naps since the next day was supposed to be very full.

Jim wandered around and found a Walgreens not too far away and bought snacks. The coke machines on the floors cost $2.50, the downstairs café charges $3.00 and the concession areas in the convention center charge $4.00 for a regular 20 oz drink in a bottle! A 16 oz bottle of water costs $3.50. The Walgreens wasn’t cheap, but it was cheaper… we are going to investigate a grocery store we heard about. If need be, we plan to empty one of our rolling bags and take it with us so we can haul back bottled water, Gatorade and the like. I brought a jar of peanut butter with me and Jim bought crackers and bread. The Assembly gave me a Visa credit card with my name on it that is pre-loaded with $261 that is supposed to cover all of my meals for the week…it will help, we’ll see how far it goes.

Friday evening we ran into a friend from seminary who serves two churches – one in Nebraska and one in Kansas. We went and ate dinner with Roxie and afterward went to check out the exhibit hall. We got quite a few freebies, resources and a few gifts. There are some really neat items in a word market area that we are going to revisit. We went back to the room and I crashed while Jim watched a movie on his computer.

218th GA Opening session - Saturday June 21, 2008
10:00 AM
Opened with prayers, several hymns and litanies and a commissioning service for all commissioners and advisory delegates. Welcomed by local Presbyterian leaders and COLA (Committee on Local Arrangements) who related the theme to what we can do while here: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

The moderator of the 217th GA, Joan Gray, gave her report…she told a “you have a tiger God” story from a missionary. A tribesman told the missionary that when monkeys are in danger, they travel through the trees. Their babies must hang on as they swing. If the baby is not strong enough, it will fall and be lost. But the tiger mother when threatened will take her cub and grasp the nape of its neck in her mouth and fight to the death to protect the cub. After the tribal leader explained this, he said in response to hearing the message of God’s love for the first time, “you have a tiger God”.

The Vice-Moderator gave his report. He gave this quote that a YAD (Youth Advisory Delegate – high school aged) had told him and I really liked it: “There will always be churches on the ‘loosy left’ and on the ‘wacky right’, but the majority are in the middle and want to move forward to continue God’s work in the world.”

Report from GAC (General Assembly Committee)
Financial Implications Explained (basically whatever we vote to do in committees, we have to consider what financial implications it will require…there is a committee who’s only job is to work out those financial details to present to the assembly with the committee’s work)
Broke early for lunch – it was a group meal and I ate with 5 from our Presbytery. Really enjoyed visiting with Mary Ellen from Kerrville. She knows John Stanger and thinks a lot about him. Lunch was served in boxes – “Chinese Chicken Salad” – I actually ate a lot of it…it was a chicken breast with greens, dressing. They had cookies and a fruit basket on each table with tea and water. Jim found Jeff Cranton, a seminary classmate and they went out to eat lunch today and partake of a “cool beverage”. I doubt I see him until this evening. Tried to call Mother to check on Mignon, but the line was busy…

Second session – 1:30 PM
Overview of the Office of the General Assembly – video presentations of what the OGA is involved in.
Broke into 3 groups for our commissioner orientation – we were named the “John Knox” group. The orientation was in three parts:
Our common mission – how to work the voting machines, processes of plenary floor discussions and other questions as to the nuts and bolts of how we will work together.
Our common work – tour of the exhibit hall and the agencies of the OGA
Our common life – discussion of our hopes for the week as they relate to the theme of Micah 6:8 – do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.
Came back together after orientations and tried to do some ordinary business items, but PC-Biz (the intranet set up that we are supposed to be able to connect to in plenary and committee that has all the business items) kept going down. When a large number could not access the pieces up for vote, the Stated Clerk asked the Moderator to table the business until after dinner and she agreed.
Went back to the room at break where Jim had ordered Pizza Hut…I was too tired to try to go out to eat and rush back to tonight’s meeting. Slept for about an hour before time to go back.

Third Session – 7:00PM
Opening prayer by minister from New York.
Comments from representatives of the Confederation of Swiss protestant churches and European protestant churches.
Tried to resumed business that was previously tabled, but the system was still not functioning properly, so it was tabled again and we are supposed to return earlier tomorrow.

Nominating speeches for Moderator:
These are the remarks pertaining to each candidate that stood out to me made by the persons who were formally nominating the candidate…

Bruce Reyes-Chow
Extensive experience in diverse groups. Church growth a part of calling. Church of 150 predominately under the age of 40. Leads indirectly, encourages open dialogue…acts as a bridge between differing ideas. Described as “excruciatingly fair”.

Carl Mazza
“I am because we are” proverb from Global village. Brings vision, mission, ministry in a communal form. Relational mission ministry. Not afraid to engage in ministry and be with congregations to work out sense of mission. Feels led by power of Holy Spirit to do this now, here.

Bill Teng
Fair, decent and in order, competent. Deep commitment to PCUSA. Vision of hope. Alexandria Virginia pastor. Moderator of National Capital Presbytery. Committed to unity of church. Deep faith, speaks candidly of faith that unites us to Christ and one another. Chinese American, experience in cross-cultural ministry, experience in global partnerships. Deep roots in Presby heritage.

Roger Shoemaker
Metaphor of a fig tree…servant willing to serve and cultivating the life of the church. Tree-planter state (Nebraska??? I’ve never seen tress in Nebraska!). Trees have to be nurtured on the plains and sees the church as an entity that need to be nurtured and cared for. Lots of diverse cultural experience in many types of churches throughout Nebraska.

Next the candidate each gave a short speech followed by an hour of questions and answers with the candidates. Finally we voted. There are two different groups that vote – advisory delegates and then commissioners. The advisory delegates vote first. They are made up of one youth from each presbytery (YADs), theological students who are from our different seminaries and higher education institutions (TSADs), missionary representatives who are serving in various countries (MADs) and ecumenical representatives from other denominations or faiths (EADs). As their names suggest, their votes are shown to the commissioners and serve in an advisory capacity only. Only the commissioner votes are counted toward the final action.

It took two votes to elect the moderator – with the first vote one candidate did not have a clear majority, which is required. The second one did, but it was the same candidate had the lead in both – Bruce Reyes-Chow.

This is who I voted for. He may be the youngest GA Moderator ever at 39 years old. He serves a church of about 200 in San Francisco. I thought he was very articulate, knowledgeable and passionate. One other candidate impressed me. He was a Chinese American named Bill Teng whose great-grandfather had received Christ through Presbyterian missionaries in China over 100 years ago.

After the election there was a very moving instillation service for Bruce. A lot of members of his family, friends and church stood with him on the stage. The most moving part was the Instillation prayer that was given jointly by his mother and his oldest daughter who was about 12 I guessed. It choked me up and Jim said it did the same for him as the girl asked God to guide her father and the mother asked God to guide her son.

By the time this last session was over it was after 10PM here, which is midnight for you all. I was exhausted and really feeling badly. Luckily, the commissioner sitting next to me is a retired MD from San Antonio and he is keeping in a close watch on me! It took almost 20 minutes to get an elevator. If we were on the 3rd or 5th floor, I might have considered the stairs, but we are on the 25th floor…so we waited.

I don’t know if I will make it to the opening worship service in the morning. It starts at 10AM and is in two different locations at the same time. It is going to be rebroadcast on the internet tomorrow afternoon, so I may just sleep in and rest instead. Tomorrow is fairly relaxed. The first plenary session isn’t until 4:45 in the afternoon and my first committee session is to start at 7:30PM. I think it will mostly be team building and orientation. Then Monday we will hit it hard with all day work.

I don’t know if I will be this detailed each day, but I will try to take notes when I can throughout the sessions, otherwise I doubt I will remember much. If you have questions or comments about something we write, please list them and we will try to respond.

Grace and Peace,
Laurie

Weather and Earth Quakes

Notes from Saturday June 21 at GA

Here are a few pictures from our hotel in San Jose and from GA.

218GA Saturday June 21, 2008

This morning I ran into one of my good friends from seminary who is a pastor in Hot Springs AK. Jeff was a very good friend and a groomsman when Laurie and I were married. We were able to spend most of the day together. I was able to reconnect with several friends from Seminary and the Young Life director from when I was in High School. Threre are lots of good Presbyterians here from all over and I am enjoying getting to know many of them.

The Assembly opened this morning with prayer, song and the commissioning of the delegates. Prayers were made for God to lead the body and for us to all seek His will. The theme of the assembly is Micah 6:8.

Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? ESV

The outgoing Moderator, Rev. Susan Andrews, presented a report from her two years in office. She encouraged us to remember that no matter what happens God will not let us go. The Vice Moderator reminded us that we are better together than we are apart.

The big elephant in the room is the fact that we have churches leaving and that the property trust clause and pension money are what is holding us together. There seems to be a spirit in the air of cooperation and a real desire for all of us to be united in Jesus the Christ who is the head of the church. I was inspired by many of the things that I heard during the morning meetings.

Later today we will post Laurie's thoughts on the days events.

GA Travel June 19, 2008

We got off to a good start, as usual when we travel TSA workers viewed Laurie as a threat and gave her the full treatment. The plane got off about an hour late but it was a smooth flight. In the air port Laurie ran into one of her former pastors who is the Stated Clerk of Grace Presbytery, we amused ourselves by trying to guess who else might be Presbyterian on our Plane.

San Jose is a beautiful town and we found a good place to eat supper. We will register for GA this morning and Laurie will have training today. The time change is different, I woke up wide awake at 4:30am.

In all the mailings that we received from the different affinity groups it seems that the two big issues for this assembly are going to be matters of sexuality and Jewish Presbyterian relations. Mailings about the FOG report were noticably missing. I would have thought that the FOG report would be more lobbyed against.

Big Announcement

We are expecting another child in January '09 keep an eye out for news and udates from us.

Leaving for General Assembly

Wednesday June 18th we will be heading to San Jose, CA for the biannual General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA. Keep coming back for our experiences.