 GA Council tries improve its image with prime-time report By John H. Adams The Layman Online Saturday, May 24, 2003
On Saturday afternoon, during the opening plenary session of the 215th General Assembly, the council got 30 minutes of prime time to toot its horn. It even gave away door prizes – certificates honoring five presbyteries with the highest per-capita contributions to missions and another five presbyteries for their contributions to mission work. The council, which is the governing body of the PCUSA between sessions of the General Assembly, has been chafing over reaction from the pews since it drew sharp criticism over some of its actions. The council's two major public relations setbacks were producing a curriculum that lost millions of dollars and its response to Presbyterian minister who asked, "What's the big deal about Jesus?" at a national PCUSA peacemaking conference in 2000. The council answered that issue by mostly supporting the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, whose leaders saw nothing wrong with that question or its implication – that Jesus is Lord and Savior of only those who choose to call him Lord and Savior, and not of all of the universe. The council's own statement, and a similar one by the 2001 General Assembly, that suggested that Jesus is not universally sovereign kept the pot boiling until the 2002 General Assembly adopted a statement prepared by the denomination's Office of Worship and Theology. That statement declared, unequivocally, that Jesus is Lord of all, a bedrock tenet of Reformed theology. In 30 minutes Saturday, the council conducted a show-and-tell led by its outgoing chair, Barbara Renton, and featuring council members. She led the commissioners through a series of questions that were designed to help them remember that the council is in the forefront of a number of key issues. For instance, she asked, and they voted electronically in response, did they know that "the GA Council can help your congregations while at the same time support a really good cause?" Well, it's true, she said, noting that the Presbyterian Hunger Program "supports fairly traded coffee." The hunger program, which is under the aegis of the council, is spending some of the money for hunger programs to steer Presbyterians away from coffee brands that pay farmers less for their beans. Another question dealt with curriculum. Renton asked commissioners to vote true or false to the statement: "Because of problems in the past, the Presbyterian Church (USA) is no longer developing Christian education curriculum." The response was 93 percent in the know - yes, they knew that the PCUSA was developing a new curriculum. So, the council slipped in a promo for the new curriculum to a General Assembly market of 274 pastors, 274 elders and more than 100 advisory delegates. Renton's Q&A test was interspersed with PCUSA videos, displayed on giant screens in front of the commissioners, that depicted Presbyterians doing a lot of nice things, including being tolerant, as in Christian-Muslim "dialogues" under the mantle of the General Assembly Council. But the very first question was personal. "The chair receives a salary for his or her one-year term," she said. Only 15 percent of the commissioners agreed. The answer is no. The chair is not paid. The 72 members of the General Assembly Council are not paid. But the General Assembly staff – nearly 600 employees – who advise the council are paid. |
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