The Top 10 Things that Happened at the 222nd General Assembly

Anyone who’s ever been to a General Assembly knows it’s a rich feast. The business agenda of the Assembly alone is massive, and there are a host of auxiliary meetings and social events as well.

Boiling the work of the Assembly down to just a few items is a challenge, but I’m going to try. Here’s my list of the Top 10 Things that Happened at the 222nd General Assembly:

10) The most talked-about business in advance of the Assembly was the "Foothills Overtures," a collection of constitutional amendments and rules changes that would have radically altered the way the Assembly does its business. I’ve written about these overtures — named for the Foothills Presbytery of South Carolina, from which they originated — in an earlier blog post. The effect of these overtures would have been — by restricting how often certain topics could come up and by adding supermajority voting requirements — to eviscerate the Assembly’s ability to do almost anything related to social justice. In the end, the Assembly carefully considered these overtures in a special committee, then resoundingly voted them all down.

9) In the early twentieth century, Presbyterians could be found at the forefront of the Fundamentalist movement, advancing a literalist interpretation of scripture. We are very far from that place a century later, interpreting scripture with the full range of literary and historical tools available. In two separate actions, the Assembly stated definitively that science and faith are not enemies, that evolution — rather than a literal reading of the Genesis creation stories — is a reasonable explanation of how God created the universe, and that Christian disciples should not shrink from using the full range of their God-given intellectual abilities to advance scientific inquiry.

8) Could the “sex wars” really be over? Generally, the atmosphere at this Assembly was far less contentious than some of recent memory. This is largely due to the changes that took place at the last two Assemblies, allowing freedom for GLBTQ believers to assume ordained office, and a similar freedom for pastors and sessions wishing to offer same-sex marriage ceremonies where permitted by civil law. There was an overture to return to the “one man and one woman” language once present in the Directory for Worship’s section on marriage. This was resoundingly defeated by a more than a 4-to-1 margin. Another overture, coming from the opposite end of the theological spectrum, called on the church to formally apologize to GLBTQ Christians who have been marginalized by past church teachings. The Assembly declined to use the emotionally-loaded “a”-word, speaking instead of “regret.” This was in order to provide gracious space for those who continue to be dissent from the church’s tolerant stance on same-sex marriage, honoring their freedom of conscience.

7) After contentious debate, the Assembly rejected a call for aggressive divestment of the church’s stock-market holdings in two hundred corporations that produce fossil fuels. Instead, the Assembly opted for a less-confrontational strategy of engaging these companies in dialogue through stockholder resolutions.

6) The Assembly approved an amended report, “Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace.” This supports the two-state solution to that intractable conflict, taking particular note of the imbalance of suffering between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Assembly refrained from moving beyond phased divestment from Hewlett-Packard (the position of the last Assembly) to an outright boycott, continuing to work with that corporation to encourage them to do less to support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas.

5) The last two Assemblies have pondered the future of synods, opting for consolidation of our existing synods into even larger regional bodies — but not specifying exactly how this was going to take place. By a large majority, the Assembly rescinded that mandate. Commissioners approved the appointment of a high-level “2020 Vision Team” that will explore our governance structures at every level and make recommendations for change.

4) In a surprise move, the Assembly resoundingly approved an overture calling for a return to “minister of the word and sacrament” as the prevailing title for the order of ministry that has been called, since the adoption of our present Form of Government, “teaching elder.” Both terms will still be used, but - if a majority of presbyteries approve the change - “minister” will now be primary, as it has been through every other era of the church’s history. I have written about this issue previously in an article in the Presbyterian Outlook. In a related development, the wordy title, “ruling elder commissioned to limited pastoral service” (commonly called “commissioned ruling elder”) will now be called simply “commissioned pastor.”

3) New faces in leadership: for the first time ever, there is no Anglo male face among the senior leadership of the church. The Assembly elected the Revs. T. Denise Anderson and Jan Edmiston (of National Capital and Chicago presbyteries, respectively) as its first-ever co-moderators. It also elected the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson (formerly director of the church’s Washington Office) as Stated Clerk. Tony De La Rosa continues as interim director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. Look for great things, in particular, from J. Herbert Nelson. He’s a powerful orator in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a change-agent. While he has never been a stated clerk before at any level, he promises to be a quick study.

2) The Assembly approved a draft of a new Directory for Worship that will now go out to the presbyteries for approval. The changes have to do mostly with making the Directory for Worship more concise and usable, although it does offer new flexibility to welcome unbaptized inquirers to the Lord’s Table, as long as the invitation to be baptized is made clear to them.

1) And now, the number-one thing this Assembly did was to complete the process of adding the Belhar Confession as the twelfth confessional document contained in the Book of Confessions. While this was pretty much a foregone conclusion — since more than three-fourths of the presbyteries have already given their required assent — still, it is of great historic significance. After the positive vote, theologian Allan Boesak of South Africa, one of the authors of the Belhar Confession during the apartheid era, addressed the Assembly. He ended his remarks by saying, “We may not know what tomorrow may bring, but I know this: tonight, we have overcome. I know this: because of Jesus, we shall overcome. I know this: whatever may come in our world, we shall overcome.” In a moving moment, the Assembly responded by spontaneously breaking into song, singing — what else? —“We Shall Overcome.”

A Hymn Following Hurricane Sandy

No time for any detailed posting.... too much to do in coping with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. We're OK, though, and our Manse and church have just had electrical power restored, after five nights without. The roof damage to our church building has already been repaired.

We have many church members whose homes have been severely damaged.  Some of those houses will be uninhabitable for quite some time.  Others have lost their homes completely.

Here's a hymn we're going to use this Sunday in worship, written by the wonderful Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, who always seems able to come up with just the right words on very short notice.

Please attend to the copyright permissions at the bottom.

Grace and peace to you and to the people of your church, at this difficult time.

Carl

*****

When Waters Roar and Foam
LEONI 6.6.8.4 (“The God of Abraham Praise”)

When waters roar and foam and overtake the land,
When homes along the shore are filled with mud or sand,
When mighty storm winds blow and bring us to our knees,
Creator God, renew our faith in times like these.

When neighborhoods we love are lost in just a day,
When homes and lives and livelihoods are swept away,
When all that we have left are precious memories,
O Christ, give healing, strength and hope in times like these.

When help is hard to find, when others need a hand,
When people suffer, tired and cold, throughout the land,
May we your church respond to struggling neighbors’ needs;
O Spirit, teach us how to love in times like these.


Biblical references: Psalm 46, 1 Corinthians 13
Tune: Hebrew melody adaptation by Thomas Olivers and Meyer Lyon, 1770.
Text: Copyright © 2012 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.
Email: bcgillette@comcast.net Web site: www.carolynshymns.com

Permission is given for free use of this hymn to churches that support Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and/or Church World Service.

The Open Door

The 220th General Assembly is unusual in that its Sunday-morning worship was not in the familiar cast-of-thousands, stadium-style format.  Rather, local congregations of Pittsburgh Presbytery invited their ecclesiastical visitors from afar to come worship with them.

This morning, along with two others – my roommate, Paul (stated clerk colleague from Elizabeth Presbytery), and Doug (campus minister at Eckerd College) – I drove to one of the churches not on the official list.  Turns out, the only reason this church hadn’t rolled out the red carpet along with others from Pittsburgh Presbytery is that, at the time the local arrangements committee was putting the list together, this congregation didn’t have a Sunday morning service.  They used to meet only in the evening.

You’ve probably figured out by now that this bunch is “not your father’s Presbyterian Church” (to paraphrase that old car ad).  The Open Door is a self-described “missional church community.” It meets in a churchy-looking building that is, technically, no longer a church.  It’s a former Baptist Church that’s now a community center, from which the Open Door rents space on Sunday mornings.

In many ways, their worship looked and sounded familiar.  It followed the typical Presbyterian order of worship, although in a very informal way.  While there were no hymnbooks, the words projected on the wall came from traditional hymns.  The singing was accompanied by a single guitarist (I understand this isn’t always the case, and that they often sing other songs besides).  Still, this decidedly younger crowd did fine with the traditional hymns, which are obviously part of their repertoire.

The sermon by Pastor B.J. Woodworth – who on this sweltering summer day was clad, like most of his congregants, in baggy shorts and a loose-fitting shirt – was on the Kingdom of God, and was quite good.

The Open Door folks are pretty mission-oriented (true to their motto).  Today’s service included the laying-on of hands – not to ordain officers, but rather to commission several interns who are working in an “urban farming” vegetable-garden project.

The Passing of the Peace was something else altogether.  The actual “Peace-be-with-yous” were over pretty quickly, but the interlude continued for probably 10 minutes, with folks moving around to visit with one another, fetch cups of coffee, etc.  Obviously, fellowship is a big part of what this church is all about, and the boundary between worship and the rest of congregational life is pretty porous.

The biggest eye-opener for me, though, was personal. Two of the worshipers were dead ringers for our son and daughter, both twenty-somethings.  Not only did they look like Ben and Ania, they also dressed like them. (Readers who have met our kids will probably be able to pick these young adults out in these pictures.)

Knowing that, at this stage of their lives, my kids – whose names remain on the roll of the church I serve for the sake of good old dad – don’t make congregational worship a regular part of their week, it was a powerful thing for me to see their döppelgangers so actively involved here at The Open Door.

It made me wish there were an Open Door worshiping community in their neighborhoods, so I could point them in that direction.

Maybe we’ll just have to start one in Point Pleasant.

A statistical presentation at the General Assembly this afternoon reported that the average age of Presbyterians is 60 and climbing. Obviously, we’ve got to rethink some of the things we’ve long been doing in worship.

It’s becoming more and more evident to me that the future of the denomination is in church-planting efforts like The Open Door.  So, what are we waiting for?

Coming: A New Hymnal

A couple of days ago I attended an informational meeting, here at the General Assembly, about the Presbyterian Church's new hymnal project.

To some of us, it's hard to believe the church is putting a new hymnal together already. Some of us remember all too well the skepticism we had to address concerning the last new hymnal project - in 1990. We Presbyterians have been developing new hymnals every 20-25 years on the average, so the timing is about right.

Here are some things I learned about this exciting new project:

About 37% of the hymns in the 1955 hymnal made it into the 1990 hymnal. This is the classic core of our hymnody. Just over 50% of the 1970 Worshipbook hymns made it into the 1990 book.

Based on polling of the committee to date, it's estimated that 90% of the hymns in that classic group that survived the 1955 cut will be in the new book as well, and somewhere around 40% of the hymns that were new in the 1990 book will likewise make it in.

Think of a hymnal, one of the speakers told us, as being like a family album. You'd never say, "We've already got enough wedding photos, we don't need yours." No, you just keep adding the new photos. If you run out of room, you may remove and store some of those older-generation snapshots.

Another analogy is to say it's like moving to a new house. The longer we've lived in a single place, the more accumulated stuff we need to get rid of. Some of the stuff we simply trash, other stuff we put into storage. Some of the stuff in storage will later be reclaimed and cherished later, by the next generation. There will be some hymns like that in the new hymnal. The committee hasn't released any list of hymns yet, but they're sure there will be at least a few rediscovered older hymns in the book.

They anticipate having a small, promotional sampler collection available at the Big Tent Conference next summer, and a larger sampler collection available at the 2012 General Assembly. These samplers will be free.

In the not-so-distant future, we may all be holding something like iPads in worship, although it's too early just now to say what that format will be.

Bells, Whistles and Then Some

Opening worship at the General Assembly. Time for all the bells and whistles – and then some.

Today was the first-ever baptism at a General Assembly. A cute little girl from a Minneapolis church was baptized up there on the platform by her pastor, with the congregation also in attendance to answer the promises. I wonder if she’ll always be known as the General Assembly Baby? And, I wonder what difference it will make in her life to know that her baptism took place in such an unusual way?

There was the Lord’s Supper, as there always is – along with the impressive logistics of serving several thousand people in a matter of minutes (they do it with a whole lot of communion tables scattered throughout the hall).

“People shall come from north and south and east and west...” Presbyterians from round about the Twin Cities and its environs canceled their Sunday services today, and descended on the Convention Center en masse.

Outgoing moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow gave an impressive sermon, all about the need to prepare for the church of the future. One story he told was of sitting at a Presbyterian worship service somewhere, maybe at a presbytery function or in a conference setting, with a teenage girl beside him. A set of bagpipes started to play in the distance, and she leaned over to him and asked, “What’s that instrument?”

There was a time when that sort of question would have been unthinkable in a Presbyterian worship service, among the proud descendants of John Knox and the Covenanters. Those days – if not yet gone – are going fast, Bruce reminded us. And he’s right.

There was a grand procession, with liturgical dancers and giant puppets depicting animals reminiscent of the Native American artistic tradition. Off to one side, an artist spontaneously painted abstract designs on a giant canvas taped to the floor. An overhead camera recorded her work, and broadcast it to us periodically on the giant projection screens.

Music was glorious, and eclectic – from a wide range of cultural traditions. And yes, there were a few great hymns of the church, and a rousing rendition of the famous organ postlude by Widor.

All in all, it was more than any local church could ever hope to have in one of its worship services – at least, not all on the same day (or even year). But, that’s the point. A national gathering like this begs for all the bells and whistles.

One thing about us Presbyterians: when we set our minds to it, we can put together a slam-dunk worship service.