Tuesday Meetings

Jenna Gunnoe, a youth advisory delegate from Whitewater Valley Presbytery in Indiana, spoke during the Committee on Church Orders and Ministry meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Photo by Joseph Williams

Tuesday morning we attended the Worship service - more great music and a dynamic, and somewhat controversial, sermon.

We then went to three sessions of Jenna's Committee on Church Orders and Ministry.  The morning session was hearing from more supporters of overtures.  The afternoon session began consideration and voting on the various overtures.  The committee work was scheduled to be done by 5 PM, but they did not get done by 6 PM, so scheduled to return at 7 PM to try to finish.  There was a lot of inspirational debate about the issue amongst the committee members.  Jenna spoke very eloquently several times and represented our Presbytery well.

I am very proud of the Youth Advisory Delegates (YADs).  There are about 6 to 8 YADs on this committee.  The YADs had a trip to Santa Cruz for an evening of fun scheduled to begin at 6 PM and all of the YADs elected to skip the trip and stay to finish the committee business.  One spoke for all of them and said "We have done all this preparation and work for this committee, we will stay and see it through."  I should mention that YADs have full voting privileges in the committees.  In the Assembly, their votes are only advisory.

It became clear as the committee's work progressed that the majority of the committee was in favor making some changes to the ordination standards and sending that recommendation to the General Assembly for consideration.  The committee felt that the Assembly should approve their proposal and send it to the Presbyteries, who must approve the change before it becomes official in the Book of Order. 

In the end, the committee sent two overtures to the Assembly.  One requires equal weight and consideration be given to all standards of ordination, not allowing one to be given more weight than another; thus allowing for a candidate to declare a scruple relative to a standard and still be considered for ordination.  The other overture replaces G6.106b with substitute language that removes the fidelity/chastity/marriage language and allows for ordination of homosexuals.

Please see the following link for the news article - note whose picture is there!

http://www.pcusa.org/ga218/news/ga08069.htm