General Assembly- Day 3

Yesterday, I forgot to mention the bus snafu. Many commissioners are staying at the West End of Richmond, with very few hotels downtown. The Committee on Local Arrangements (COLA) has provided buses running regularly from downtown to the West End. On Sunday, our bus was very late, and so many of us did not get to the worship service until about 10:30. Still, the shuttle bus has been marvellous. And the COLA volunteers have exhibted a great amount of Southern hospitality and charm, always smiling, greeting, holding doors open, asking how we are doing.

Well, the committee work began today. There are GA committees on all sorts of issues, and it is a huge task to sort them all out. Overtures begin in local churches, are sent on to presbyteries, and if passed there, are bubbled up for the GA to deal with. There are so many of these overtures, from the mundane to the profound, that the GA breaks them down by committees. These committees meet for several days, debating and hearing testimony on the overture, and then they vote. Finally, these overtures are brought to the whole GA for a vote on Thursday and Friday.

There are many controversial overtures this year. It is a significant year, given that there will be two years between GA's. Jim Berkley, who works as the issues guy for Presbyterians For Renewal, has a good web site devoted to these issues, called the Berkley Blog. Jim is publishing daily updates. Sunday's summary is here. Monday's summary is here.

I missed the GA breakfast this morning, but missed a stirring talk given by the founder of Habitat for Humanity, here. Serves me right for still being on Pacific Time!

I did make it to the PFR lunch today, and it was more of a strategy session than a fellowship meeting. Two things from that meeting.

First, a woman on the health issues committee (not sure of the real name) shared that this committee is debating our denomination's stance on partial birth abortion. The PC(USA) is the ONLY main line denomination still in favor of the procedure. During the testimony time, a man, who is pro-choice and in favor of the stance, shared that he was one of those babies who was supposed to be deformed, but was not. The next woman got up to share, with her six-year old daughter. Somehow, the microphone went out, and while they tried to fix it, this little, energetic girl was dancing and figeting, just like any other normal six year old girl. After the committee and observers got several minutes of this, the microphone went back on. The woman simply shared that when she was pregnant, the doctors told her that the little girl would be severely deformed, and recommended an abortion. She refused, carrying to term, and the result was what they had witnessed for themselves: a perfectly healthy, happy girl. Wow! Powerful testimony!

Second, I sat next to a woman from the Bay Area named Joan Fong. She was a commissioner on the peacemaking committee, and was struggling with the anti-Israel and anti-Bush testimonies that were shared that morning, along with the condemnation of premillennialism as heresy. At the end of the meeting, she looked at my name tag carefully and asked if I had ever been at San Jose State. I acknowledged that I had been there in the early 1980's with Inter Varsity. I also shared that Beth and I had helped to start, with a guy from JEMS, an Asian American Christian Fellowship. She told me that she had been at our formation meeting, and has been deeply impacted by the ministry of AACF at SJSU. Wow! Small world! She now attends church in Fremont, and works as an insurance agent in San Francisco. What a blessing.

I also ran into an old friend, Kent Winters-Hazelton. Kent and Carolyn and Beth and I were in a prayer meeting together while we were at Hayward State University in 1980-81. They went off to Princeton, we went off to Fuller. Kent is now, or has been, the president of the Witherspoon Society, a more liberal/progressive organization in the PC(USA). While we may not have much agreement on policy or positions, we had a nice time of warm, friendly, Christian fellowship.

Not much happened today, as you can see.