GA Daily Dispatch

July 7, 2010

Wednesday is the great hinge of General Assembly, as GA moves from committee meetings to plenary sessions. Looking back on the committee meeting portion of GA, our young adult advisory delegate, Rachel Rothenberg, reflects, “I really saw in my committee meetings a vision of what the church could be; a place of mutual respect and love and understanding, where we all work together to do the business of the church in a Spirit-filled way.” (Click here to read her full blog entry.)

It is vitally important that we, like Rachel, be attentive to the movement of the Spirit of God amid the rather prosaic proceedings of the church’s business meetings. To help us toward that end, especially as GA prepares to vote on a matter on which there has been substantial debate, the Moderator frequently asks everyone to stop for a season of prayer. We count likewise on the prayers of people across the church to keep the Assembly attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Two of the recommendations being most closely watched at this Assembly were acted upon today. In the first, the Assembly voted to send the Belhar Confession to the presbyteries to consider for addition to our Book of Confessions. While it takes a yes-vote by a simple majority of presbyteries to amend our Book of Order, a two-thirds super-majority is needed to change the Book of Confessions. Belhar is a three-page document adopted by Reformed churches in South Africa in 1986 as a theological rationale for ending apartheid.

Second, the Assembly voted to send the new “Form of Government” (Part One of the Book of Order) to the presbyteries for consideration as a replacement of the current edition. If a majority of presbyteries concurs, the “Form of Government” section of our Book of Order will be vastly reduced in size. This revision has been prepared by a team, including our own Carol Hunley, that has been working hard on this project for over four years. The intention of the “nFOG” (as they dub it here) is to strip away a lot of the minutiae of rules in our current FOG, in order to allow local bodies more freedom in their governance. For instance, the current FOG strictly prohibits a congregation’s interim pastor from being called as its permanent pastor, but the nFOG allows presbyteries to decide for themselves whether or not a particular interim pastor might be a good permanent pastor for a congregation. Presbyteries will vote on nFOG “as is” – it is not subject to revision by presbyteries.

Our church’s 173 presbyteries will vote in the coming year on whether to affirm these recommendations. The work of church governance is not a unilateral responsibility of GA, but ultimately something in which all of us share. Just as we expect those who vote at GA to do their homework, so all of us must prepare well as we consider whether to ratify the proposals sent to us by GA. Let us pray that in all this the entire church will be attentive to the leadership of God’s Spirit, that together we will bear clear and faithful witness to the good news of God’s transforming love revealed in Jesus Christ.

Come, Holy Spirit!


The Rev. Dr. Sheldon W. Sorge, Pastor to Presbytery

P.S. Please note that ongoing updates of GA News from the General Assembly’s Office of Communications are posted at http://ga219.pcusa.org/.

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