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!