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!