A Brief Look at the 219th General Assembly

Note: the body of this post came from my August Newsletter article for the Boulevard Presbyterian Church Good News.

Last month Presbyterians from all over the nation gathered in Minneapolis, Minnesota for the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), our denomination’s biennial gathering. General Assemblies or GA, for short, can often be ripe with hot-button issues and less than civil behavior, and while the 219th GA was full of controversial issues, it was reported that all was civil and faithful dialog was the norm. By the end the seven day event, some 300 actions were taken, including the following:

• Elder Cindy Bolbach, a lawyer from the National Capital Presbytery (Washington DC area) was elected Moderator after 4 ballots. Her Vice-Moderator is a very good friend of mine, the Rev. Landon Whitsitt, a pastor from Liberty, MO. The photo above is of Landon's installation as Vice Moderator
  

• The assembly voted to approve the report of the Middle East Study Committee entitled “Breaking Down the Walls” which affirms Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation within secure and internationally recognized borders. The assembly also recommended for study “A Moment of Truth”, a statement by Palestinian Christian leaders, and a paper on Christian-Muslim relations that calls for greater dialog, understanding and cooperation was adopted.

• The often debated section in the Ordination Standards of the PCUSA that requires “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and woman or chastity in singleness” was recommended for deletion by a close vote of the assembly. This action will be sent to the individual 173 presbyteries for approval.

• The assembly voted to maintain the PCUSA’s current definition of marriage as “between a man and a woman.”

• By an over 200 vote margin, the massive revision of the Form of Government that has been in the works for four years was approved. The hope of this revision is to make the way we do government more in line with the changing shape of “being church” now and into the future.

• The Belhar Confession, 1980s response to racism and apartheid by South African churches, was approved for inclusion in the PCUSA’s Book of Confessions.

• 15 new Missionaries (known as Mission Co-Workers) were commissioned and sent out to their various appointments.

• A number of actions were taken falling under the heading Social Justice, including a vote to refrain from holding national meetings in states where immigrant Presbyterian or Presbyterians of color might be subject to harassment or racial profiling. Similarly, a number of peacemaking actions were taken including a call for the end of military operations in Afghanistan.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about the actions taken at GA and the ramifications of these actions here are some links to explore:

1. The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA website
2. A post-General Assembly letter from PCUSA Leadership
3. The GA Junkie: The Politics of Presbyterianism (Blog)

Boulevard's eRecycling Day

Saturday, July 17th Boulevard Presbyterian Church held its first ever eRecycling Day in the parking lot. Thanks to the hard work of many members and some great advertising, we collected an entire moving truck worth of old computers, monitors, printers, keyboards, and the like. The photo to the right was taken roughly one hour before we closed up shop and quit for the day.

To read the newspaper article that ran about the event please click the link: Boulevard Church to host eRecycling event Saturday

Like the articles mentions, the idea for this event started in an Adult Sunday School class and was nurtured by people who wanted to find ways to put what they learned and what they believe into action. It was something truly inspiring to be a part of.

This is the new model, the new "norm" for Boulevard. No longer letting faith become something academic, something to learn and remember, but rather to ingest like food and let the energy it produces propel us to new places. It is going to be exciting!

Christmas in July

I wanted to let you know about the book I am now reading. It is called Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present by Hank Stuever. Perhaps a little sadistic to be reading about Christmas when it is in the 90s and 100% Humidity but it was next in the stack.

Tinsel takes place in Frisco, Texas, a suburb in the shadow of Dallas. By all accounts Frisco is built for commerce and the town is growing. Stuever embeds himself in the Christmas preparations of Frisco, a place the dust-jacket refers to as "happy, megachurchy, shoparific", to witness the excesses and beauty of the modern Christmas.

I will keep you updated as to what I find. I will note, that I am reading this with a special eye towards a potential book study here at Boulevard. If the book lives up to my hopes then I would imagine that it would be ripe for discussion during the holiday months.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Church can sometimes feel like a Monty Python sketch. You show up one Sunday and everything looks as you expect it. The Choir is singing, the sacraments are celebrated, the Pastors are in their robes, and preaching and everything seems decent and in order. The next Sunday there is one service instead of two, there are balloons everywhere, and a pot-luck after the service. Come back the next Sunday and everything is just as it was the first time. The Sunday after that they are back to one service but it is at a different time then it was two Sundays ago, there is no choir only a couple of singers leading music, the bulletin is different, the robes are gone and one of the pastors isn't even wearing a tie, communion is every week and the services are a little longer. Just when you get used to it all it changes again. The choir is gone but so are our music leaders. In their place is an amplified band with guitars and a bass. They are playing "contemporary" music - some not even expressly Christian - and it is loud. The pastor isn't preaching, a member is, and when it was all said and done there was cake. Next Sunday, you ask? Oh, we are back to our normal Summer worship.

Some might say that it is too much. Too much change. Too much experimentation. Too much like the normal 11:15 AM service and not enough like the 9 AM service, and visa-versa. Some might say that it puts people on edge - never knowing what service they are going to walk into - and others might say that it keeps folks on their toes. Two sides of the same coin I suppose. Yet it forces us to confront something very important and usually not very popular. It provides a space to ask why. Why do we do it? Why do we invite a band to worship? Why do we change the time? Why do we have members preaching when we have pastors? Why is there different music? Why no choir? Why do any of this at all? Why?

There is this hot new workout routine that I have been hearing a lot about. It's secret to success is apparently something they call muscle confusion. Meaning that their workout is constantly changing exercises and motions so that the muscles do not get into a habit and plateau. By changing motions and exercises, muscles don't know what is going to happen next and thus have to work. What might be good for the body is difficult for the Body of Christ. We have been exercising for so long in one way that the muscles of the church know the motions and what it can bear without much true exercise. Incorporation of different exercises feels funny & it requires our muscles to go in different but still very beneficial directions. In the end, the "new exercises" help make us stronger because they show that we are strong not just in one way but strong throughout. New ways of worship, new ways of church, new ways of community life force us to exercise muscles long dormant so that we may be fit for all expressions of what it means to follow Christ in the current age.