July 10, 2012
I am most grateful for North Puget Sound Presbytery’s
practice of sending alternate commissioners to General Assembly. It was a fantastic and exhausting experience
that equips me for the fantastic, exhausting experience that the 2014 General
Assembly in Detroit will be.
For one, I know better how to prepare. Besides the obvious (reading and taking notes
on every single item of business that will come before the assembly), I also
now know some terribly important personal details for the week: every pair of shoes must be sturdy walking
shoes; layers and comfort are the key words for clothing choices; and I must
bring peanut butter and crackers and boxed milk to keep in the hotel room.
A perusal of Presbyterian acronyms would also be in
order. An abridged list was given in our
conference handbooks; the full list available from the website was, I believe,
fourteen pages long. It took me a few
days to realize that the “REC” on the screen when some commissioners spoke did
not mean “recording” but “Ruling Elder Commissioner.” And “TEC” had nothing to do with technical
difficulties but stood for “Teaching Elder Commissioner.” The one very important and frequently used
acronym that surprised me every time was “AI”:
“Authoritative Interpretation.”
Having taught at a rural community college for nineteen years, and
having had many students who also were in the horse production program, “AI”
is, to my mind at least, synonymous with “Artificial Insemination.”
I loved attending Assembly as an observer because it gave
me the freedom to do things I won’t have time to do as a commissioner: spend hours in the exhibit hall, go on a
mission tour, leave a business session when my brain checks out (which was long
before the 1:40 a.m. adjournment time on Friday evening’s session). I collected enough reading material from
various exhibits to keep me busy for a long, long time. The mission tour was an inspiring experience I
won’t soon forget. I appreciated the
sleep I had Friday night.
And here is another thing, one of the two main
things: getting a better sense of the
denomination as a whole. The diversity
is exciting, the division not so much. I
loved experiencing a wide variety of styles of music and worship. I enjoyed talking with people from all over
the country. I love the diversity of PC
(USA), yet it is that very diversity that can sow the seeds for division. As the moderator stated after one of the
closely split votes, “We are a divided body.”
The challenge, as I see it, for the body, is learning to love past our
divisions. I have no idea how that works
as far as policy and polity go. It’s
fair to predict that more congregations will leave the denomination in years to
come. It’s sad to see the lobbying—coming
from both and all sides—that resulted in use of parliamentary procedures to stall
or divert debate.
The only way I know to live in the tension caused by
differing theologies in the same denomination sounds terribly simplistic: to love our fellow Presbyterians as
ourselves. If we cannot show charity to
each other in the midst of disagreement and division, we are not the church
Christ calls us to be. I’m not a
big-picture person; I have no idea how or if the denomination can survive its
inner splits or if it should. But I do
know that Christ calls us to love; he calls us to live our faith with integrity;
and he asks us to have our eyes trained on him.
And the other main thing?
I learned on a whole new level that Presbyterians are a people of
prayer. I am not so naïve as to believe
that every single Presbyterian practices prayer on a regular basis, but I
believe many do. Individual prayer and
corporate prayer draw us to God’s heart.
So, in order to prepare for the 221st General
Assembly in Detroit, Michigan from June 14-21, 2014, I have an agenda: to get more spiritually fit and more
physically fit so that I will be ready to face the rigors of the immersion
experience that General Assembly is.
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