All wound up and winding down

Dateline:  Pittsburgh, July 7, 2012, 1:30am

The 220th General Assembly is working far into the night to finish the many items still awaiting their action.  Their spirits are amazingly high and the commissioners' chairs still amazingly occupied by these dedicated presbyters and advisory delegates!  News of the Assembly actions is available at pc-biz.org/. 

I want to reflect in closing on something Brian McLaren said earlier in the week.  Brian is an author (A Generous Orthodoxy, A New Kind of Christian and others books and blogs) speaker, and networker among innovative Christian leaders (listed by Time magazine as one of America's 25 most influential evangelical leaders.)  He addressed the whole assembly and later some of us had a chance to speak with him in an informal, small group setting.  We were wrestling with questions of mission and structure. He noted that denominations had real value but warned that they can also create silos that impede the Church's capacity to cooperate creatively with other Christian bodies.  And then he made the comment that the other danger of denominations is that they can draw attention away from the real units of mission - congregations - and keep us busy engaging what "the denomination or the General Assembly" is doing or has done.  

These words kept echoing through my mind and heart this week. The 220th General Assembly took thoughtful, prayerful, considered action on a number of items. Some of you watched the live-streaming or read the news accounts or followed the action on pc-biz.  All the while the work of the church continued - touching broken lives with healing, offering worship and the radical gospel alternative to a world dying and dealing death, teaching faith to our young, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, offering a cup of water to those dying of thirst literally and spiritually.I respect the work of the Assembly. My caution and my prayer is that it not divert our attention nor our energy from the lively congregational work that in concert with one another and the Holy Spirit is touching, blessing and transforming the world God loves in and through us.  

Signing off from the 220th General Assembly - 

Fireworks in Pittsburgh!

Pittsburgh sure does know how to put on a fireworks display!   Stunning light displays accompanied by a cacophony of booming retorts rocked the skies above Pittsburgh Wednesday night.  Meanwhile, fireworks of another kind had been set off earlier that day as the General Assembly met in plenary and heard the prepared statement of resignation from Vice-Moderator Tara Spuhler McCabe.  Rev. McCabe had been witness to a marriage (legal in Washington, DC where it took place) of two women which is contrary to our constitution Even with this knowledge, the assembly had approved her as vice-moderator with a commanding majority.  Rev. McCabe cited as her reasons for resigning a pastoral concern for the unity of the church following a wave of vitriolic blogs, emails and texts aimed at her and threats that the Assembly proceedings for the rest of the week could be derailed by attempts to remove her.  Her resignation stunned the Assembly on "all sides of the aisle."  By that evening, Teaching Elder Tom Trinidad from Pueblo Presbytery agreed to stand for vice-moderator.  A request was made to allow 20 minutes to discuss what had happened prior to the vote on Trinidad and this was defeated by about two votes.  Rev. Trinidad was then elected and installed with great majorities. But the undercurrents of tension continued.  The question I kept hearing was, "What are we becoming as a church?"  "You know who you are," wrote the Apostle Paul, "It is not yet clear what you will become."  Paul was talking about the astonishing work of the transformation of heart and life by the Holy Spirit.  A Spirit I continue to trust to move us through our very real differences - to hold them in creative and generative tension - even while holding us all together in the unity of the Triune God.


The work of the Assembly continues.  In other news the Assembly:

• Commissioned mission co-workers (including the 122 Young Adult Volunteers serving all over the world including nine in the Presbytery de Cristo at the Tucson Borderlands Site)
• Celebrated examples of innovative new worshipping communities springing up all around the country as part of the 1001 New Worshipping Communities initiative of the General Assembly Mission Council.  (Check them out on the PCUSA website!) 
• Disapproved overtures to change the language of the Constitution which holds Presbyterian property in trust of the whole church.
• Disapproved much of the Mid-Council Commission's report including disapproving non-geographic presbyteries and replacing the Commission's time-line for re-organizing the Synod structure with a new plan to study the role of Synods over the next two years.  

More about that later.  For now, a view of the Synod of the Southwest's G.A.M.E in which about 40 young people are experiencing the General Assembly.  (Above)

Signing off, late afternoon, Thursday, July 5, 2012.  

    

Feverish Lull

       The 21 Committees of the 220th General Assembly have been working hard since Sunday evening. Many have now finished up; others are still working feverishly to meet the deadlines. Once each committee is finished the commissioners get a little break before reconvening with their committees Wednesday morning to discuss and become familiar with all the other committee reports.  (This is a new innovation this year to give the commissioners more of an opportunity to prepare for the other business before the assembly)  Tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday, July 4) at 2:00 the Assembly reconvenes in plenary.  Remember you can live stream the action oga.pcusa.org/section/ga/ga220/ 
         Meanwhile, the assembly has been saturated in prayer, music, worship and praise.  To God be the glory!
        

And they're off!

The 220th General Assembly of the PCUSA is off and walking...running....soaring in hope!  The meeting opened, as it always opens, with worship.  Moderator Cynthia Bolbach, donning a green cellophane "wig" in recognition of the chemotherapy she is undergoing brought down the gavel.  Immediately identical green wigs appeared on heads all over the worship arena in a moving display of solidarity.  The worship included lively and spirited music, much of it drawn from a sampler of the new Presbyterian Hymnal, and a commissioning of each of the Commissioners and Advisory Delegates which reminded them of their baptismal calling and called them to renew their ordination vow to serve the church this week with energy, intelligence and imagination and love. Moderator Bolbach, speaking from a wheel chair, delivered a homily based on Mark 2:1-12 - the story of the four people who brought a paralyzed man on a pallet, cut a hole in the roof where Jesus was speaking and lowered the man through the roof so that he could see Jesus.  She noted that two years ago she had used this text while running for moderator.  At that time, she had imagined that the church most resembled the paralytic in the story, a church paralyzed by theological divisions, economic down-sizing, cultural upheaval and an uncertain future.  But after two years of traveling around the church, she told us, she no longer sees the church as the paralytic. Far from it! She told stories of the amazing movement and ministries happening in and through congregations and presbyteries all over the country and, in partnerships, throughout the world. She told of the outpouring of support and prayer she has received in the "paralysis" of her own cancer from around the church - those who know and love her as well as those who know and don't like her, as well as those who don't know her at all.  Yet all of them a place around the pallet on which she finds herself and lifted her up so that she could see Jesus.  As a result, she now views the PCUSA not as the paralytic but as the four unnamed pallet-bearers commended by Jesus in the story and she challenged the Assembly and, indeed, the whole church, to be the ones who will lift up others and stop at nothing so that they might see Jesus and be healed and whole.  In song and prayer, reverence and praise, challenge and comfort, call and response, the 220th General Assembly is underway!  


Nourished by the Word, the worship and the sharing of bread (plus little groups hitting the many wonderful local eateries around the convention center) the Assembly reconvened in plenary.  The significant order of business for the evening plenary was the election of the moderator. After a thoughtful process of speeches, questions and answers (centered around such things as the definition of marriage, how to embody missional communities, how we deal with conflict and develop relationships), and prayer, the Assembly, on fourth ballot (balloting continues until some candidate receives a majority vote) elected Rev, Neal Presa as Moderator.  


After a moving "passing of the mantle" - a beautiful cross forged in the heat of tension during WWII, and the moderator's stole - from Cynthia Bolbach to Neal Press (and after a charge to the new moderator and prayer by his young sons which had the whole assembly in tears)         the  assembly sang and prayed and wept and laughed and dispersed for the night with praise and thanksgiving to God.   


Tomorrow, commissioners will attend worship at congregations throughout the Pittsburgh area and then reconvene at 2:00pm in plenary after which the committees will begin their work.  


Signing off from Pittsburgh.... 

220th General Assembly of the PCUSA

The 220th General Assembly of the PCUSA is meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from June 30 through July 7, 2012.  The theme of this year's assembly is taken from the prophet Isaiah.  "But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint."  (NIV)


Join me on this site for regular updates, news and reflections from the assembly.  In the NRSV the text is translated, "Those who wait for the Lord....."   And so we wait. 


220th General Assembly