What Kind of Church Will We Be?

From Luke 18:9-14

A message in the wake of this year’s Presbyterian General Assembly looking at the church through the lens of unity and purity: What Kind of Church Will We Be about the struggles among the faithful and the possibility of help in Sinners Anonymous.

220th Presbyterian General Assembly Video Clip Guide

(C) Presbyterian Church (USA) Used by Permission. Photo by Danny Bolin

Here are some video clips of some of the mountaintop moments and walks through the valley of the 220th General Assembly of the PC(USA) meeting in Pittsburgh in July 2012. Not official or complete! Have one not on this list? Leave a comment to get it considered! 

Mountaintops - Inspirational

• Welcome to Pittsburgh! by Committee on Local Arrangements (COLA)
  Muli-Media presentation 
  A LIVE Speedy Delivery from Mr. McFeely of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood  (David Newell)
• Neal D. Presa Speech for Election to Moderator
• Small group prayer
• Mark 2:1-12 Reading & “The Welcome Mat” worship drama
• Jump Prayer with Children at Tribute to Mister Rogers
• Energizer by the YAAD to “Revolution” by Kirk Franklin & the Family
• Advisors are here to advise

Valleys - Difficult

• Vice Moderator resigns office “I am a pastor”
• Redwoods Presbytery’s compliance with the PJC decision’s rebuking Rev. Jamie Sphar
• We Need Greed
• “…large number of people incarcerated through our social justice system”
• Abortion payments by the Board of Pensions
• Merging Pensions & the EPC church discussion
• Same gender domestic partner benefits
• Divestment discussion

 Memorable Speak-Outs

• Jeremy Glideen welcomes cousin Sally & Andy’s upcoming child
• Followed by Dale Deist leading the Assembly in “God Bless America”

 Featured Overtures

• Forwarding of Per Capita  03-02 (Presbytery of Detroit)
• Property Trust Clause Intro 06-06 (Stockton Presbytery) & 06-07 (Santa Barbara Presbytery)
   Resuming Property Trust Clause 
   Mr. GA Help himself, Robert Austell asking about ruling recorded above
• End of Corporal Punishment (Spanking) 11-05 (Presbytery of Grace)

The Best of Gradye

• Strange Birds
• Limits of the Clerk’s Expertise
• Counting Abstentions in a Majority Vote
• Praying Gnome for Bills & Overtures

Videos

COLA’s Welcome to Pittsburgh

• Walk
• Run
• Soar

1001 Worshipping Communities

• The Bridge @ Union Church
• Northland Village
• Common Table
• New Hope
• Team Sweaty Sheep 
• Thien An
• Water’s Edge
• Bare Bulb Coffee
• El Buen Pastor
• New Faith

Last General Assembly’s Come Walk with Us video invitation to Pittsburgh

Reports

•  PCUSA Demographics Report

Still working on this as I go through the videos, emails and comments.

Other Sites

There are other individual sites for General Assembly information.

Robert Austell at the GAHelp.net site

 Steve Salyards at the GA Junkie site

What's Going On at General Assembly?

If you are reading this you can go to www.pcusa.org/ga220 for the offical home page of the assembly. The local Presbyterians hosting the assembly (Committee on Local Arrangements - COLA) have a great site at: www.cola2012.org

More than you want to know about what is being considered is in a rich database at PC-Biz

News stories are posted at: http://www.pcusa.org/news/ and you can sign up to get them email to you at: http://gamc.pcusa.org/subscriptions/lists/presbyterian-news-announcements/

Old school folks can get a recorded summary of the day’s General Assembly news by phone on VoiceLine: Call 1-800-728-7228, ext. 2012, or 502-569-5000, ext. 2012. They are updated daily before 6 PM

Twitter folks can follow @presbyGA and search for the hashtag #ga220 specifically or #pcusa in general. Both in lower case.

Both Saturday afternoon’s 1 PM opening worship and the 12 plenary sessions will be live streamed on the web. Look for a link on the www.pcusa.org/ga220 page.

Hints for Presbytery Speakers

In March of 1998, my then teenaged daughter Rachel attended a Presbytery meeting as part of her confirmation process for active church membership. She posted some helpful hints for speakers on the Presbytery web site. How well will General Assembly do in heeding her advice?

1. maximum time is 5 to 7 minutes
2. look around!
3. change your voice so people don’t fall asleep
4. move, walk, or something!
5. use hand motions
6. have charts or something to look at
7. stick to one subject
8. make people laugh or smile at least once
9. talk loud in the beginning to wake people up from the last speaker
10. wear different colors so we can tell when a new person is speaking
11. try to get an early spot before our brains are numb

What is your favorite? Which do you do?

Snakes & Shaves Praise the Lord

Brian Musser (tie) and I (stole) are going through his God and Me award for Scouting. During one of the sessions, Brian “filled in the blanks” for a psalm of praise. We used his work as our Call to Worship for our Children’s Sunday.

Call to Worship      (Say YOUR NAME in the blank!)

One:     Hiss for joy, you snakes!
All:    Bite for joy, every alligator

One:     Shave for joy all Dads!
All:    God is our creator

One:     God created all things Good!
All:    God created __________ and God loves me!

by Brian Musser as part of his Scouting Religious award

Children’s Sunday at Goodyear Heights Presbyterian - photo (C) Mary Lu Ramsey