So the General Assembly is over… and all I can say is PRAISE GOD!!! I was getting a bit tired of living out of a suitcase, particularly when I had failed to bring anything other than business suits with me. I let professionalism go to the winds today and wore flip-flops to the office when I showed up at 1 pm this afternoon—yes, 1 pm. As hard as I tried at 6:30, 7, 8:30, and 9:30 am, my body refused to budge from the bed until 10:30 this morning. Since most of my colleagues aren’t coming to work today at all, I don’t feel too bad about it.

It is hard for me to tell you about GA as a staff person, because I really can’t state my personal opinions about actions taken by the Assembly. Generally, my job as staff is to tell you what the church says, not necessarily what I personally believe. That doesn’t make for quite as interesting a blog, and it certainly doesn’t always make for quite as happy a Kelsey when the Assembly is doing something I personally think is stupid but can’t articulate as such. Not that anyone wants to hear my opinion about it anyway.

Unless you’re a total Presbyterian polity junkie, you probably don’t know what the General Assembly is anyway, much less the hot topics being debated. And you know what? I didn’t even tell you what GA is, after talking about it for all this time! Well, the General Assembly is the highest decision-making body in the Presbyterian Church.

The General Assembly is kind of like the US Congress, actually, except that there is only one house making decisions. Regional governing bodies from across the country, called presbyteries, send at least two commissioners (representatives) to the Assembly every two years. One of these commissioners is a minister, and the other is an elder of the church.

Presbyteries also send one Youth Advisory Delegate each year. A YAD is a young woman or man, ages 17-24, nominated by her or his presbytery to attend the Assembly. YADs, along with Theological Student Advisory Delegates, Ecumenical Advisory Delegates, and Missionary Advisory Delegates, give advice to the commissioners about particular actions of the Assembly before the final votes are taken. If you are Presbyterian and will be under age 24 in 2008, I would highly recommend that you try to be a YAD.

The Assembly makes decisions about recommendations sent to them by the presbyteries themselves, called overtures (kind of like bills in Congress, but sent directly from the regional bodies). They also work on reports created in PresbyLand, and consider resolutions sent by commissioners themselves. The items of business get divided up between committees (14 committees this year), and then after being worked on there, get sent to the full Assembly for final vote. Just to give you an idea, here are some of the issues that came up at this Assembly:

--Ordination of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons to church office,
--A report on the Trinity written by PresbyLand’s Office of Theology and Worship that affirms using expansive language to refer to God,
--Whether to get rid of church stock in companies whose products or practices contribute to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories,
--A controversial task force report meant to bring about some sort of compromise on the LGBT ordination debate,
--A resolution calling for the PC(USA) to get more involved in advocacy on human rights abuses in Colombia

Better than me telling you what I think about these issues (and what the church did with them) is for you to go and form an opinion for yourself. You can find news on all these topics by visiting the website of the 217th General Assembly. And don’t forget that you can always go to The Network Café to discuss actions of the Assembly amongst yourselves. I’d love to read about what you think!

“One who spares words is knowledgeable; one who is cool in spirit has understanding.” --Proverbs 17:27

Kelsey