Getting Down to Work

Well, after a day off to celebrate our country's independence with good food, great fireworks and wonderful colleagues and friends, the Assembly got down to work in earnest yesterday.

As I mentioned earlier, more committees have been added this year in order to both make the committee sizes smaller and to reduce their workload, giving them more time to honestly deliberate serious issues. Is there ever enough time? No way. But it does make deeper deliberation more possible.

Yesterday I was able to make it to a couple of committee meetings, inbetween everything else. I attended the Mission Committee, where Assembly business item 09-02 (formerly Overture 34 from Sierra Blanca Presbytery) was being considered. I saw commissioner Gary Dill there, who served as the Overture Advocate from Sierra Blanca, as well as Conrad Rocha from Santa Fe Presbytery, who was there representing the General Assembly Mission Council.

Gary did a great job. There were comments from Conrad as well as from the Presbyterian Foundation discussing the ramifications of the overture. (For those who have not heard the discussion, the overture asked that money currently being sent from the Presbyterian Foundation to the General Assembly Mission Council be instead sent directly to the presbyteries for their own use in mission.) The Foundation rep explained that those funds were generated from bequests left in their trust, designated for specific purposes: missionaries, education, etc. While the presbyteries would have more money to fund mission and education in their own ways, passing the overture would have impacted the funding of chaplains, Young Adult Volunteers, mission personnel, foreign language curriculum, and more.

Commissioner Carolyn Poteet spoke and eloquently expressed the thoughts of the committee: "I understand the spirit of this overture. The local church wants to be the local church. Resources are tight for all of us, and there's this big undesignated pile of money! I would like some of that too for my church. But that money is being used in an incredible way. It's not 'free money' - it is being used well and thoughtfully." Shortly after that the vote was called, and the overture was defeated.

In the afternoon I went over to observe the Polity Committee and saw Guillermo Yela at work. They were discussing several items, and Guillermo was right there in the discussion. (Unfortunately I was there for the discussion about what to call various age groups for the purposes of representation - and I learned that I am only two years away from my denomination considering me to be a "senior adult!" But I will get over it... )

Afterwards I sat in a packed room with folks from middle governing bodies across the country to hear historian Phyllis Tickle - but she was so good (and so verbose) I will devote an entire post just to her remarks.

It seems painstaking, it is tiring - but anyone observing the committee work here at General Assembly gets to see the Holy Spirit at work. God does indeed speak to us to and through each other. I am so grateful for our folks who are giving of their time to be part of the process!