A Look Behind the Curtain

Thank you all so much for your patience and enthusiasm as I have returned to work! Again, it is so good to be back and I am really enjoying catching up with all of you. I wanted to share that next week and the week following I will be participating as a commissioner in the Presbyterian Church (USA) (of which Commonwealth is a part) 227th General Assembly.

What is GA, you ask? General Assembly or GA is a huge meeting of Presbyterian Churches from across the country where we work towards becoming the best possible expression of God’s Church through democratic decision making. Presbyterians and their churches submit what are called overtures to GA that suggest how we might achieve this, whether it be through tweaking our ordination standards for pastors, strengthening our support for sexual assault survivors, or even calling for embargo on Israel. From there, specialized committees vet and debate the overtures to discern together what a faithful response should be. Some overtures die in committee if the body doesn’t feel they are a good representation of Presbyterian faith and theology. If the overtures survive committee they go before what is called the plenary, which is a meeting of representatives (commissioners) from all the regions in the US, who together will again vet and debate the overtures to discern if they should be adopted. Commissioners hear from those who debated the overtures in committee, overture advocates, advisory delegates (such as young people and seminary students) and others to help them make their decisions, and finally vote of what should be adopted into PC(USA) governance and practice.

It’s like….a whole thing. It’s huge. It happens every two years and meets in different cities across the country. And I’m a commissioner this time! I have been to GA several times before in different capacities and I have to tell you, I love it. I really think it’s Church done well. Folks get to voice how they feel in a way that tries to be orderly but is always messy, real, and superbly human. People from a bazillion different backgrounds and experiences, but who all call themselves Presbyterian, try their best to understand one another and at the same time hear God speaking into their midst. What is a faithful response to ______________? Literally fill in that blank space with ANYTHING. Well, a lot of different people have a lot of different ideas about that particular thing! So we talk and talk and talk and pray and struggle and DANCE for a break sometimes, and embroider while we listen to somebody talk, and then pray again and then vote…. Until all our business is concluded, sometimes late into the night. It’s pretty beautiful. Some people think GA is tremendously boring and a waste of time. As you can see, I do not agree with those people.

Does this at all sound interesting to you…? If so, check out this website: https://myga.pc-biz.org/ You can make a log in if you want but you don’t have to— if you just want to poke around, you can literally search through all the overtures before GA this year and read everything we’ll be debating! And then let me know what you think because it’s a lot of reading and impossible to cover every single overture before actually getting to GA. Your reflections will definitely help my decision making! You can also livestream the plenary! I’ll make sure to get a link out for that too. If this is VERY interesting to you and you feel yourself lighting up a little inside, talk to me. We can discuss how to get you to the next GA.

Committee work for GA starts the week of July 22nd. The committee to which I’ve been assigned is called “Reformed Identity Around the World.” Which, I know sounds broad and, like, what even is that?? But it’s where I’ll be spending my daytime hours (in a Zoom room) all next week. More on that later. The week after, Sarah, Elio, and I will drive to Milwaukee, WI of all places to meet up with other commissioners from our area and everywhere else, where we will do the whole plenary thing in a massive convention center. My hope and intention is to write to you all through this experience, and post it to this blog. However, there are lots of people who will be doing the same thing from different perspectives! Presbyterian Outlook https://pres-outlook.org/ is going to be all over it, for example, and have already been writing tons about the overtures heading our way.

If you’re the praying kind, please hold all of us heading into this process in prayer. It’s tough work, but together we can do it!

-Pastor Erin