the last three days...

Greetings to fellow Presbynerds and curious entities,
I apologize for my silence these past few days. My time has been quite filled! To catch you up:



Sunday morning, my roommate Sarah (from Union PSCE) and I attended worship. It was held at two large venues -- the San Jose State Event Center and the Convention Center Civic Auditorium. I attended the latter, which was pretty dang full by the time the service got started. The above is my hasty photoshop work to paste together the three photos it took to get it all in. There was a jumbotron screen in the front where Joan Gray was beamed in to us from her place at the SJSEC and the organ music rocked the rafters. They chose all of those huge-sounding hymns that are amazing when sung by a large group of people. They recognized retiring missionaries, among whom was my beloved Bill Yoder in Thailand as well as his colleagues, John and Martha Butt. They also commissioned new Mission workers, among which was Carol Dolezal-Ng, a fantastic woman who I met when I was at NEST in Beirut.


After that, we began our committee work. So, um, now the committee time was not quite the hotbed of awesomeness that I once had thought it might be. There were 68 elders and ministers from a number of different presbyteries and church ministry contexts. Our first full day of committee work was spent listening to various overture advocates in regards to the proposed new form of government of the church. Most folks were just requesting more time for their presbyteries to study the document and offer some feedback. Others, such as the GA Committee on Representation, were concerned about the omission of their committee from this document ("How will we ensure full representation?"). By the end of the day, we had gathered all the evidence to begin our discussion.

The next day, though, we got caught in the tangled web so easily woven by those who don't know how to properly navigate Robert's Rules of Order (that would be most of us). Oy vay! We spent the whole day deciding on a motion! But, we finally got it crafted and were able to pass it. Here's our conclusion:

To refer and recommend the Report of the Task Force on the Form of Government (FOG) to the Office of the General Assembly for a period of consultation and study with churches and presbyteries through a system or systems designed and implemented by the FOG Task Force and members of the 218th General Assembly Committee on the Revision of the Form of Government. The participation of every presbytery in the period of consultation and study will be strongly urged. New members of this expanded Task Force are to be chosen from the 218th General Assembly Committee on the Revision of the Form of Government by the Moderator of the 218th General Assembly in consultation with the moderator and vice moderator of the 218th General Assembly Committee on the Revision of the Form of Government.

The new task force will revise the Form of Government Task Force Report, taking into account the concerns and suggestions gleaned from the consultation and study process. The guidance of the Advisory Committee on the Constitution, the overtures, and the testimony received by the 218th General Assembly Committee on the Revision of the Form of Government and its comments are referred to the task force for serious and studied consideration.

The revised report of the Form of Government task force is to be submitted to the stated clerk of the General Assembly no later than October 15, 2009, for distribution to the church at large no later than January 15, 2010 for consideration by the 219th General Assembly.

Basically, we are suggesting that the document go out to Presbyteries for study and response over the next two years and then craft a revised form of that in light of everyone's feedback. Phew! Then, we submitted comments in regards to the issues that people noted in the document for the committee and presbyteries to take into account. After a long day and evening in circulated air under florescent lights, I was ready to be free!


And free I was -- first to visit the moderator who had invited seminary students to his suite for conversation, then to the Witherspoon Society Dance, where I danced my brains out. What a great way to end the day! Or, considering when I returned to my room, what a great way to start a new day! haha!


I've also got to give a shout out to my fellow Asian Presbyterians, with whom I had dinner last night. Thanks for a great dinner and thanks to Virstan for the ticket!

Bruce Reyes-Chow is our new moderator

Well, the biggest news of the day was the election of our new moderator, Bruce Reyes Chow. But, before we get to that, let me give you a brief rundown of the highlights before that! This year's GA is attempting to be totally paperless. Many kudos for saving entire forests from dissemination but, as one person noted, that it was ironic that in the Silicon Valley, the network was not running properly. However, the folks at GA are doing their best to try and make it work, so grace abounds...although it runs thin for the more technologically frustrated. Check out this photo of our laptop garden...


So, our plenary sessions started off, led by Joan Gray and we made our way through presentations by the General Assembly Council and other various distinguished entities of the National church (the best of which, of course, was the General Assembly Nominating Committee). And, so guess who said the closing prayer of the first session? Yours truly! Way cool, huh? Check me out in all of my prayerful glory...

Actually, it was pretty cool mainly because people ended up coming up to me throughout the day and thanking me for it and so I got to meet a lot of really great folks.

So, in between plenary sessions, and meals, I ran into some folks along the way -- most of whom I mentioned but didn't have pictures of and thought I'd post them up for your viewing pleasure...



Okay, so now on to the moderator elections. There were four candidates who were pretty distinct in their focuses...focii. There was Carl Mazza, a minister who was very mission oriented and has been involved with homeless work for a number of years. There was Bill Teng, a minister and the former president of Presbyterians for Renewal. There was Roger Shoemaker, the only elder running, whose focus seemed to be on church growth. Finally, there was Bruce Reyes-Chow, pastor of an emergent church in San Francisco whose energy level and articulation of vision stood in regards to the future of church growth. You can read a little more about him here.

The election process basically consisted of an advocate giving a five minute speech on behalf of their candidate, the candidate giving their own five minute speech (complete with a clock countdown) and an hour-long Q&A session. Probably the most important question (the one that was on most folks' minds), came from a Youth Advisory Delegate, inquiring as to what each candidates' stance was on inclusion and ordination standards. The first two to answer (Teng and Shoemaker), were fairly ambiguous and basically said that anyone who is fit for ministry according to Book of Order standards ought to be ordained. Bruce broke the ice by saying something like, "I think the question being asked here is whether or not it's okay to ordain homosexuals." He went on to explain his personal position (that he was in favor of it) but also recognized that the church wasn't there and that his role as moderator, is to walk with the church where it was at. It was an impressive and rather bold response that recognized the nuances and difficulty for most folks regarding this issue. His transparency, I think, really bolstered him in some folks' minds.


After that, the votes were cast. First, with the advisory votes (young adults, seminarians, missionaries and ecumenical visitors), and then for the commissioners. We had to go around twice, but it was clear from the first vote that Bruce was highly favored. The evening ended with Bruce's installation and, after a bit, I made my way to his post-election party which I never saw him show up to. I'm not sure he anticipated winning, as it was during some other important shindigs that were going on that night and his Facebook announcement was that it was on even if he didn't win.


Anyhoodles, that's the news so far!

Finding My Way in San Jose

So, I arrived in warm, sunny San Jose around 10am for
the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)and hit the ground running. After boarding a Royal Coach full of Presbynerds like myself (two of whom I met on the plane from Seattle -- Jim from Bellevue and Jesse from Silverdale), I headed to my surprisingly hip hotel. Then, I moved on to the San Jose Convention Center to embark on a full week of church meeting goodness. After registering for everything, I ran into a number of folks I knew, including my friend Valerie Small who helped me figure out which way was up.
Brenton Thompson, my fellow TSAD (Theological Seminary Advisory Delegate) from McCormick attended our orientation and cruised the offerings in the large (but not too daunting) Exhibition Hall, where we collected a number of interesting but surely useful items, the most interesting of which can be seen below...

I also met some Presbyterians that don't look like your typical Presbyterian. Here's a shoutout to Iyana from Spellman College which, incidentally, was the college in that show from back in the day "A Different World."

So, what the heck am I doing here? Well, I've been chosen, along with Brenton, to give a theological student voice to the assembly deliberations here. We've both been assigned committees, Brenton's being Christian Education and mine being the Form of Government revision overview. I look forward to attending my committee's meetings, as there will surely be a variety of opinions on this new document that attempts to slim down the church's Book of Order as a way of allowing more freedom of Presbyterian Churches to govern themselves as is suitable to their context. This committee, apparently is on the top ten issues identified by the Stated Clerk of the PC(USA) for this GA.

I've also encountered the Moderatorial race fray! People get way into it and it was interesting to see how the crowds of constituents were divided up according to the moderator candidate they supported. Of course, mom Sarah Reyes was gonna support her baby boy Bruce all the way.

So far, it's been a great start! I've seen so many people just today: Mary Paik & Dwight Morita (on a stopoff before heading for Sweden), Irene Pak, Hardy Kim, Joe Genau, Christine Vogel and, of course, my two MTS compadres below: Andy Sonneborn (in his hip GA smock) and Brenton. With company like this, how can I go wrong?