{"id":550,"date":"2012-07-09T11:12:32","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T18:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/?p=550"},"modified":"2012-07-09T17:14:44","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T00:14:44","slug":"ga-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/09\/ga-update\/","title":{"rendered":"GA Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been too busy to follow the GA closely, but I&#8217;ll post a few items that I noticed over the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>(By the way: the only way to get timely information about GA seems to be by following Twitter or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/services\/rss\/\">RSS feeds<\/a> for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/\">Christian Post<\/a>. Our denomination&#8217;s official sources are either unnavigable or  updated at a tempo that is rather, umm, leisurely.)<\/p>\n<p>The big news, of course, is that GA did not approve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pres-outlook.com\/pcusa-reports\/ga-2012\/17008-assembly-stops-short-of-the-brink-on-same-gender-marriage.html\">the committee&#8217;s redefinition of marriage<\/a>. The defeat was by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/presbyterian-church-usa-rejects-same-sex-definition-of-marriage-by-narrow-vote-77804\/\">a narrow margin<\/a>, however, and is probably only a matter of time, however, with the continuing exodus of more-conservative congregations.<\/p>\n<p>In other news, GA:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>rejected an attempt to go back to the <cite>status quo ante<\/cite> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/pcusa-rejects-attempt-to-reinstate-ban-on-gay-clergy-77875\/\">ordination standards<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>amended the list of qualifications for ordination to include <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/pcusa-rejects-attempt-to-reinstate-ban-on-gay-clergy-77875\/\">repentance of sin and diligent use of the means of grace<\/a>. (Same story as previous item, but further in.)<\/li>\n<li>kicked the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcusa.org\/resource\/mid-council-commission-final-report-with-full-data\/\">report of the Mid-Councils Commission<\/a> to the curb. I haven&#8217;t read the report myself, but I know somewhat and have great respect for Tod Bolsinger, the Commission&#8217;s moderator, so I&#8217;m inclined to read this as a missed opportunity.<\/li>\n<li>voted to approve a number of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcusa.org\/news\/2012\/7\/7\/assembly-approves-actions-support-immigrants\/\">recommendations to &#8220;support immigrants<\/a>. (I&#8217;m personally unconvinced about the merits of several of these &#8212; advocating for the DREAM act, for example &#8212; as either Christian witness or public policy.)<\/li>\n<li>voted to approve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcusa.org\/news\/2012\/7\/7\/general-assembly-approves-all-recommendations-chur\/\">recommendations of the Church Growth\/PILP committee<\/a>. I haven&#8217;t read the details, but nothing in the summary jumped out at me as being applicable to the church I serve. (It&#8217;s nice to talk about &#8220;igniting&#8221; a &#8220;movement,&#8221; but what it <em>looks<\/em> like is a bunch of dying white congregations giving advice to people of color about how to become growing churches. Hello?)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcusa.org\/news\/2012\/7\/9\/name-mission\/\">renamed the General Assembly Mission Council<\/a> to be the Presbyterian Mission Agency. (AT LAST!)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcusa.org\/news\/2012\/7\/7\/general-assembly-mission-council-renamed\/\">failed to change the four special offerings<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>is resolved against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/pcusa-passes-resolution-against-spanking-children-77776\/\">spanking children<\/a>. (But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presbyterianmission.org\/ministries\/101\/abortion-issues\/\">aborting them is a personal decision<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcusa.org\/news\/2012\/7\/7\/220th-ga-removes-about-50-300-plus-authoritative-i\/\">removed 50 authoritative interpretations<\/a> of the Book of Order issued since Unification back in \u201983 that had been made moot by the New Form of Government.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been too busy to follow the GA closely, but I&#8217;ll post a few items that I noticed over the weekend. (By the way: the only way to get timely information about GA seems to be by following Twitter or the RSS feeds for the Christian Post. Our denomination&#8217;s official sources are either unnavigable or &hellip; <span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/09\/ga-update\/\">Continue reading &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[455,355,40,670],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-ga220","tag-news","tag-pcusa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}