Dear Grace Community,
Last Friday evening I logged into Zoom as one of over 450 commissioners to the 224th PCUSA General Assembly. We were joined by over 100 advisory delegates (young adults, theological students, and missionaries) and over 100 corresponding members (former moderators, assembly committee members, and more). There were more than 700 of us in the meeting.
The first forty-five minutes were surprisingly moving and holy. The pre-taped worship was inspiring, and I felt the Spirit move as I stood in my home and answered the commissioning questions. While my answers bounced around empty walls, I knew that I was not alone in this process.
Then we began to set the agenda, and things were not so smooth and lovely. General Assembly normally begins on a Saturday night and goes through the following Friday night. The first part of the week is filled with committee work, and then the entire assembly takes up the work of the committees.
Those tasked with figuring out how to adapt to an online assembly made the choice to do three days of virtual assembly and not address much of the slated business. With this they set a proposed agenda that includes essential business and moves most of the other business (still important) to the 2022 assembly.
However, the 2020 assembly had to approve this agenda. In a training session, I had learned of some issues that might be pulled by commissioners for consideration this year, but before we could get to that, San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS) rose up for recognition.
Recently SFTS joined with the University of the Redlands Graduate School of Theology, and there is a lot of controversy about how it was handled by them and the PCUSA. (I’m still learning.) Because of the way our polity works, a commissioner was able to redirect the assembly’s energy (and an hour of time) around whether or not to seat the PCUSA dean of the Redlands. Given all that is happening in the world, this felt a little irrelevant to me.
When we finally got to the approval of the docket, commissioners virtually lined up to pull various things from 2022 and put them back on our schedule. The body voted not to do this, and by then it was 10 pm, and we still hadn’t elected our new co-moderators. It was moved to reconvene Saturday evening, which was not originally scheduled.
Saturday night we came back together, and before we could get started, someone moved to again re-open the docket. We vote on that this coming Friday. The co-moderator election lasted about two hours with statements from the candidates and pre-recorded questions for them to answer. We elected co-moderators on the first ballot, Elona Street-Stewart and Gregory Bentley. They both seem faithful and capable, and they have their work cut out for them in preparing to moderate the rest of the meeting.
I log back into Zoom on Friday at 10 am and Saturday at 10 am. I have no idea what to expect, other than that we’ll go for a long time. I pray that even through Zoom God can use us, and that our church can witness to Jesus Christ in this world. Pray for our new co-moderators and for all of us involved.
In Christ,
Catherine
