Mississippi presbytery to consider examining commissioner candidates By John H. Adams The Layman Online Monday, November 15, 2004 The Presbytery of St. Andrews will consider at its February meeting an overture that would allow candidates for commissioner to the General Assembly to be examined by the presbytery before they are elected. The session of First Presbyterian Church in Greenwood, Miss., approved the overture in August. Later, the presbytery's Bills and Overtures Committee recommended that the overture be dismissed, but the presbytery voted instead to send it to the presbytery's Evaluation Committee and hold a hearing on the measure. That hearing will be held in February, but no vote will be taken. The Evaluation Committee will present its recommendation at a later meeting of the presbytery. Dr. Rusty Douglas, pastor of the 416-member Greenwood congregation, said the purpose of the overture is to give the ministers and elders who serve as commissioners to the St. Andrews Presbytery an opportunity to assess the candidates' views on different issues before the denomination. It would not, he said, allow the presbytery to dictate to commissioners to the 217th General Assembly in 2006 how they must vote on issues. He noted that one other session in the presbytery has voted to concur with the Greenwood overture even though both of its ministers voted against the overture. "This will be a sensitive issue," he said. The Greenwood overture said the General Assembly often makes decisions that are "out of touch with the majority of Presbyterians in the pews." The overture pointed out that the 216th General Assembly came within "just a handful of General Assembly commissioners" [four votes] of repealing the denomination's Authoritative Interpretation that provides the Biblical underpinning for the constitutional "fidelity/chastity" ordination standard. In 2001, nearly 75 percent of the presbyteries in the denomination affirmed the ordination requirement. "[W]e as a Session believe that our presbytery can no longer simply turn over its representation at General Assembly to the minister who has 'seniority' or to the elder who happens to be from a particular geographic area of presbytery, who just happens to be available for those ten days, and who may not have been much involved in presbytery affairs," the overture said. The proposal recommended a model such as that used for selecting the moderator and stated clerk of the denomination. Candidates make statements, answer questionnaires and respond to questions from commissioners before those elections take place. The following is the text of the Greenwood overture: OVERTURE TO ST. ANDREW PRESBYTERY Whereas General Assembly is now meeting only every other year, and Whereas General Assembly nearly voted in 2004 to set aside the authoritative interpretation related to ordination standards which has governed this denomination since the 1970's, and the church catholic for hundreds of years, and Whereas we as a Session support the Constitution in G-6.0106b with its requirement for church officers "to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness", and Whereas the General Assembly tends to reflect some decisions out of touch with the majority of Presbyterians in the pews, and Whereas had just a handful of General Assembly commissioners in 2004 cast a different vote on the ordination question, we would have been sent as a denomination down a most perilous path, and Whereas proponents of ordaining self-affirming, practicing homosexuals have already made it known that they will launch extensive efforts in this regard in 2006, and Whereas we as a Session believe that our presbytery can no longer simply turn over its representation at General Assembly to the minister who has "seniority" or to the elder who happens to be from a particular geographic area of presbytery, who just happens to be available for those ten days, and who may not have been much involved in presbytery affairs, and Whereas we know it is not "the Presbyterian way" to require a commissioner to vote in a specific way on a specific issue, and Whereas the General Assembly itself sponsors a question and answer period, prior to the election of a Moderator, following presentations by each candidate for Moderator, Therefore, be it resolved, that the Session of First Presbyterian Church, Greenwood, overtures the Presbytery of St. Andrew to re-visit its policies for electing commissioners to General Assembly, found in 3.4.00 of the Manual of Operations, and it overtures the Presbytery to nominate at least two persons for each minister and elder commissioner, that it require a verbal presentation from each minister and elder nominee, and an open question and answer session to be held at presbytery, immediately prior to the election. Respectfully submitted, Session of First Presbyterian Church August 16, 2004

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