This letter is a late submission for your requests for reflections upon the 219th General Assembly this past July. I served as a theological student advisory delegate (TSAD) from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, MA. I understand that the mention of advisory delegate may cause no small amount of consternation in many who hold to orthodox Biblical theology, and I understand that frustration. Oftentimes I found myself frustrated by being in an ever-slim minority of the TSADs when voting statistics were displayed throughout the course of the plenary. However, I found that through the roller coaster ride that was the General Assembly, there is much to be thankful, even hopeful, for.

When I left for General Assembly, I left my wife and 10-day-old son thinking that I could be attending a meeting that would potentially break the denomination. My assignment was Committee 12—Marriage and Civil Union Issues. After hearing much talk from those who had either participated in or followed the 218th General Assembly, I fully prepared to be a lone or nearly-lone voice trying to uphold the Word of God in my committee. To be sure, the actions in our committee were not what I wanted to see happen. But along the way I found some interesting things. I found those individuals who did not hold to Biblical theology as I did, yet they were willing to engage in discussion and appreciated that I could articulate a robust theology that was coherent, condemning the sin yet sincerely loving the person. Unfortunately, I also found those who did not hold to Biblical theology and seemed so jaded that engagement was not even a possibility—my heart breaks for them. Yet possibly the most encouraging in my committee was finding a good number of young adult advisory delegates (YAADs – another dreaded term) who clung to the Word of God, even when it was not politically correct to do so.

Even though I am still young myself, these young adults represented those who may not be as old or experienced, but who still “hunger and thirst for righteousness for [His] name’s sake.” They reminded me why I am called to serve—those who crave the spiritual fulfillment that only comes through Jesus Christ. They reminded me that there will always be souls that need to be cared for, shepherded, and nourished, and that as an Inquirer, now a Candidate for Minister of Word and Sacrament, I have been called to do just that.

Recently a newly-retired minister reminded me that I was not just called to be a Minister of Word and Sacrament, but also I was to be a faithful presbyter of the church, serving in all her functions faithfully as she needs it. As if it were not already an awesome (that which strikes awe—not our more colloquial understanding) task to minister directly, it is even more daunting to reflect that ministry includes being a faithful presbyter of the church as a whole—understanding that the spiritual welfare of many who I may

never meet may depend upon it. Seeing faithful people of all ages—youth, middle age, elder—reminded me how we are inextricably linked to one another and minister to one another in so many ways. Perhaps it gave me a little perspective that even the tasks and routine votes that can make being Presbyterian sometimes mundane something more, for they are shrouded in the divine because they aim at glorifying God and caring for His people. Thus I can see finally the structure of our church as a good—a penultimate good that points towards the reconciling work of Jesus Christ and the love of God.

All of this, combined with the many ways that my presbytery—quite evangelical—and I were surprised in a positive way, not least of which was the vote to answer all of the pending actions of Committee 12 by our action on the “married” reports, makes me think about those who are in preparation for ministry, since that is the stage of life where I find myself. It is sad to think that based on the votes of the TSADs in plenary that it does not seem like our seminarians (seminaries?) are in service to the church, but it highlights the need to encourage potential seminarians who hold to strong Biblical theology to continue the labor within our denomination. It seems that evangelically-minded seminarians not in the PC(USA) that I encounter at Gordon-Conwell are somewhat puzzled by why I stay involved with a mainline denomination with a seeming penchant for postmodernism pluralism. But again, it becomes too easy to demonize the institution to the neglect of the souls within it. I am trying to use every opportunity I can to encourage our PC(USA) students on the Gordon-Conwell campus to view our calling as a wonderful opportunity to be a faithful minister of the Gospel and presbyter of the church and the people within it. Sometimes there seems to be an embarrassment of the denomination, especially when in conversation with PCA, EPC, and OPC students on campus—even an unstated question of how long we will stay with the PC(USA). But there is a need for more evangelical seminarians to stand up, embrace the calling to serve with enthusiasm, and be built up and encouraged that we serve a God who deigned to save a far more wayward people at a far higher cost. In some ways, I would think that we have churches that need to be reminded of this fact as well.

Perhaps I am so encouraged despite the mixed results of the General Assembly because I met so many faithful people, and because of these people I can envision a church guided by faithful ministers and faithful presbyters guided by the Holy Spirit – not the questionable spirit or spirits that seem to whisper to itching ears. I know that I am encouraged because the God who is the same from the beginning to the end of the Bible, the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, He is Lord of His church.

Grace and peace to you.

James A. Benson served as TSAD for Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary to the 219th General Assembly.

By Toby L. Brown

Everywhere around me the multicolored stoles are being worn by commissioners, observers and attendees of the General Assembly. They are hand woven and they display the rainbow colors that have been chosen by the homosexual community to symbolize their agenda. I would estimate that one in six people wear them. Passed out free of charge at the More Light booth and That All May Freely Serve, they are also especially popular with the Youth Advisory Delegates. Almost half of the youth are wearing them.

But here is what is even more surprising: In committee, the commissioners are also wearing them! As the committees deliberate, pray, debate, discuss and amend the overtures and items of action proposed for the GA, a substantial portion of the commissioners have already publicly declared by their stoles how they will vote and where they stand on the major issues that confront the GA.

In short, the wearers of these stoles are making a public declaration that they are immobile to the Holy Spirit on the issue of sexual ethics in the PCUSA. They are fully persuaded and completely decided on the issues that relate to sexuality in our denomination.

Here is where this situation strikes at the very heart of this General Assembly: The people who wear the stoles are making a mockery of everything that this national gathering of the denomination’s governing body is supposed to stand for. Do you think this sounds harsh? Then consider: This assembly was told from the very beginning, in literature, music and spoken presentation, that we were here to "sense the Spirit" and to "follow the Spirit's lead." We were told that we would be led by the Spirit to make decisions that might just surprise us. We were informed that Spirit-led decisions were often sudden and unexpected. This is what "spiritual discernment" in the assembly was presented to be.

So, these commissioners who choose to wear the stole of homosexual acceptance are nullifying everything that was said about the work of the Holy Spirit in this assembly. I hesitate to call it hypocritical, but it is hard to see how you can avoid the charge. As this GA is led by many “progressives” who favor such postmodern ideas about being led by the Holy Spirit and the stoles are passed out to those who are also in agreement on this issue, then showing a sign of absolute pre-judgment displays a startling level of disdain for a sincere commitment to be led by the Spirit.

I shudder to think what would be said if evangelicals would have chosen an outward sign that showed that we also refused to abide by what we said we held most dear. We would never hear the end of it.

I guess I should have known that this would happen. Clearly all of the elaborate phraseology about allowing the Spirit to take us "wherever the Spirit wanted to go" was really just a code phrase. Clearly, spiritual discernment at this GA only applies to those who hold to such outdated and outmoded ideas as Biblical truthfulness, confessional integrity and historic orthodoxy. My mistake. I thought it applied to us all.

By James D. Berkley

MINNEAPOLIS – How ironic that on the day after Independence Day, freedom of speech gets abridged by church authorities! The opportunity and even the right for all viewpoints to be equally presented and heard took a big hit Monday morning at General Assembly.

One approaching the convention center by the hotel skyway on Monday morning would encounter two glaringly opposite scenarios. First one would run across a pleasant man politely handing out fliers for One by One. However, he is being detained by security and a local arrangement committee volunteer, being told he cannot hand out information. No free speech on these premises!

Just a few steps farther toward the day’s meetings , one would run across pleasant volunteers politely handing out copies of General Assembly News, a publication of the Presbyterian News Service. They are doing this with the full support and blessing of General Assembly authorities. No one is stopping their leafleting. No security has been brought in to halt their distribution of information. Their right to free speech is accommodated, not abridged.

The big difference

So why the major disconnect, where one leafleter gets detained, while other leafleters continue unimpeded? Some power has decided that information must be carefully controlled.

Big Brother apparently thinks it needs to “protect” commissioners and delegates from points of view that are not controlled by some overarching authority—the authority that welcomes its own news service and silences the effective distribution of other information.

Put into stark simplicity, the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) is beginning to resemble a totalitarian regime. It now vigorously thwarts the free dissemination of information. It is greatly privileging its communication, its ideas, its plans over those coming from the grassroots. It is monopolizing the commissioners’ ears, eyes, and time, so that its message gets out—and no other.

Many ways to control

The leafleting issue is but the tip of the totalitarian iceberg. For instance, institutional reports take increasing precedence over grassroots overtures and commissioners’ resolutions as General Assembly business.  In addition, participants got indoctrinated by only one side of hot topics in the OGA-orchestrated Riverside Conversations.

Commissioner mailboxes were largely made useless this year, removing the one best way for various voices to reach all commissioners democratically—especially since leafleting was outlawed inside the convention center or even up to many blocks into the city in the well-utilized skyways.

Security officer tells

non-approved to leave building

OGA materials got mailed to commissioners and placed in registration packets. OGA papers get distributed to commissioners’ desks in committee rooms and the plenary hall. This is done on everyone’s dime.

Anyone not part of the OGA establishment obviously has no such distribution rights, allowed only the opportunity to set out literature on an obscure table, a passive and largely ineffective distribution channel. Of course, they must do this on their own dime.

Information on candidates for moderator was greatly restricted. A few OGA-determined questions got answered and published, but Big Brother would not abide any further information distribution, which it considered unseemly campaigning.

In most committees, establishment persons and entities get automatic and ample access to the hearts and minds of commissioners, while everyday Presbyterians have their vital rights more restricted each assembly. Overture advocates have their time and access cut. Rules for committee testimony arbitrarily limit testimony access and time, both eliminating many voices and handicapping those who do gain access to speak.

It sure looks like totalitarianism

All of this adds up to the constricted rights more characteristic of totalitarian regimes than democratic Presbyterian polity. Control information. Limit dissent. Propagandize. Cripple opposition. Gain the advantage and vigorously keep it.

Presbyterians, however, believe in an informed membership. We supposedly value openness and good thinking, the gift of all voices being heard, tolerance and inclusiveness. But those who engineer General Assemblies have determinedly clamped down on such openness and spontaneity that they do not control.

Thus, the very ways that General Assemblies are presently engineered simply have to change. A lack of freedom to speak, to communicate, to sit at the table and have one’s voice heard unless one is in a position of established denominational control—this simply cannot continue. Fundamental unfairness will surely delegitimize anything a General Assembly decides.

Both our faith and simple human fairness demand a major reversal of OGA General Assembly practices. Presbyterians desire no Big Brother “protecting” them from a vast smorgasbord of useful information.

By Carolyn Poteet

    Monday morning, I broke away from my own committee meeting to testify before the opening hearing for the Committee on Theology and Worship.  Hoping to just slide in and out, I was discouraged to find out that I would be one of the last to testify on a long list.  One of the issues ahead of mine was an overture that sought to add a line from Calvin saying that "God pronounces that he adopts our infants as his children, before they are born." 

A line-up of pro-choice speakers got up, and I braced myself for what I knew was coming.  The most grating testimony was from one woman who reminded the committee that since the PCUSA had declared that this is just fetal tissue, not a child, then how could it be adopted?  The words felt so empty and tragic to me, my heart broke.  Then finally, a speaker for the overture rose, and began to quote scripture.

For a brief moment, there was quiet, and those words hung in the air and shimmered.  Sola Scriptura.  Those words are like not other words.  I felt like Simon Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!" 

     Did those words change hearts?  Did those words change the committee's vote?  We don't know yet.  The committee vote will be on Tuesday. The plenary vote will be later in the week.  But moments just like this are happening in 19 committees across General Assembly. 

We can and are speaking God's Word as often as we can -- as lovingly and as compassionately as we can.  But it is God's job to change hearts.  Please, prayer warriors, join us in prayer, that hearts of stone would be turned to hearts of flesh and that God will be glorified.

GA-Cam has documented the hopes of participants of random participants in the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s 219th General Assembly in Minneapolis, Minn.

What are your hopes?

To read previous posts by Carmen Fowler about the upcoming General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), check out Carmen's Blog

There you'll find the following commentaries, and several others:

Mind your P’s and Q’s

Giving away your M&N’s?

The Presbyterian Church (USA) refers to itself as a “big tent,” an apparent reference to its policies of “inclusiveness and diversity.” Biannually, the denomination’s General Assembly, as all circuses do, offers a dizzying array of sideshow spectaculars. The Minneapolis playbill has been readied for a July extravaganza.
 
In the main ring, promoters of a restructure called “FOG” will showcase their plan to end local church officers’ autonomy in disbursing their people’s contributions and to recast voluntary donations to the national church as a tax.
 
Meanwhile, a sideshow will display marriage redefined. No longer a sacred covenant between a man and a woman, “instituted by God and blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ,” the revised, gender-free definition will partner any two “persons.”
 
The trapeze will play host to a multi-media act, delivered by a traveling troupe of peacemaking Presbyterians with a proclivity for Palestinian politics.
 
Budget jugglers will appear on stage left, lofting dwindling receipts from one hand to another in an amazing display of dexterity. Magically, those who manage Presbyterian Disaster Assistance will showcase their decision to include lobbying, consciousness raising, and community organizing under the banner of “disaster relief.”
 
There will be clowns – men dressed like women, women dressed like men, and the undefined dressed like both – gyrating over and around a plethora of sexual standard proposals whose sum total will result in no standard at all.
 
A hall of mirrors will thin the corpulent and expand the strait-laced in a myriad of images that make truth appear false and false appear true, while the moderator blesses all viewpoints with “whatever.”
Beyond the flap, there will be people with standards who seek a place of refuge, a tent of their own erected inside the big tent, where inhabitants can satisfy their consciences that although they are in, they are not of the mélange.
 
But here’s the thing about a circus: surprise is always possible. Aslan might – He just might – be loosed from His cage. With one mighty, big tent leap, He could turn our tables upside down, clear the ring of pretenders, and call the faithful to gather before His throne.
 
The Lion of Judah has roared before. He can do it again. Might Minneapolis be the place of His appearing?