Yesterday was spent at an all-day meeting of New Covenant Presbytery near Galveston. It had its ups and downs. Among the ups were the chance to visit with old friends from a previous church and lead a small group discussion of what churches need from presbytery to help them grow disciples. Among the downs were the length of the meeting because the agenda was not well managed.
Please, people, refrain from the following:
~reading material previously distributed
~allowing acknowledgments to get too long
~giving EVERYONE their moment in the sun with the microphone
~pulling too many things from the omnibus motion
~giving a sermon instead of a budget report
~delaying the vote on the issues people came to attend until the end of the day
Okay. I feel better now that I've vented. Thanks for listening.
The next part of this post is for those of you PCUSA types interested in denominational issues--although this issue has also been raised in several other denominations. For me, it was a very big up.
The most significant piece of business yesterday was the endorsing of an overture (similar to a motion for you non PCUSA-types) to our General Assembly that would reverse the very controversial divestment policy that it passed in 2004. This overture ("Issues Affecting Israelis and Palestinians and the 216th General Assembly Divestment Action") passed by an overwhelming vote.
The text of the overture for those of you who are interested is available here as a pdf file--see pages 16-19. The goal is to turn the denomination from a punitive approach against the Israelis to seeking investments in the area that would either increase job opportunities for both Israelis and Palestinians, develop more social and health care infrastructures, rebuild homes, businesses destroyed by conflict and fund collaborative ventures between the two groups.
This is a well-researched and well-documented overture. We hope other presbyteries will join in endorsing it so that it will have a lot of support at the 2006 General Assembly.
The most significant piece of business yesterday was the endorsing of an overture (similar to a motion for you non PCUSA-types) to our General Assembly that would reverse the very controversial divestment policy that it passed in 2004. This overture ("Issues Affecting Israelis and Palestinians and the 216th General Assembly Divestment Action") passed by an overwhelming vote.
The text of the overture for those of you who are interested is available here as a pdf file--see pages 16-19. The goal is to turn the denomination from a punitive approach against the Israelis to seeking investments in the area that would either increase job opportunities for both Israelis and Palestinians, develop more social and health care infrastructures, rebuild homes, businesses destroyed by conflict and fund collaborative ventures between the two groups.
This is a well-researched and well-documented overture. We hope other presbyteries will join in endorsing it so that it will have a lot of support at the 2006 General Assembly.
9 comments:
This is heartening good news. Congratulations to your presbytery.
I'm very glad to hear this. I know your presbytery thoroughly researched this issue.
Wow. Thanks for this QG. I am going to bring it to my Session and hopefully then to our Presbytery.
I'll keep you posted.
Hey, I'm back. That is quite a packet your Presbytery puts together. Just curious, how did Overture B go?
I always find it interesting when folks list anything from Leviticus as rules-to-go-by since I'm pretty sure nobody is getting all of those rules right.
A great effort succeeds!
Pray that we can join the fight here in Mission Presbytery, March 3!
Congratulations!
Will Smama--great! If you need any other information, let me know and I'll see if I can get it to you from the presbytery.
Overture B failed. I emailed you an explanation of that.
Classical--wonderful. I grew up in Mission Presbytery. The pastor at University Church in SA went on the "listening tour" with folks from New Covenant last spring that led to this overture. Hopefully she is bringing it forward.
Grace, would you mind sending me what you sent to Will Smama? I too am curious how that debate went down. Thanks.
For those of you wondering what was Overture B, here is an explanation. I didn't mean to be evasive, just got lazy and didn't repeat my email to Will Smama which I then repeated to RM.
Overture B asked the GA to declare that homosexual activity was a sin according to scripture. It failed by a large margin.
The debate was pretty brief and most speakers against the overture urged its defeat because the Task Force Report on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church which studied ordination standards for the last 5 years is coming before the General Assembly this summer and the Task Force had requested that no overtures on the subject come forward until the report was fully debated and voted on to avoid distractions.
One of the most prominent evangelical members of the PUP Task Force is Rev. Jack Haberer, a respected and influential member of our presbytery, so many conservatives voted against this in deference to him and the request of the Task Force as well as because of the non-pastoral language of the overture. This was also Jack's last presbytery meeting with us as he is leaving to become the editor of The Outlook.
Good criteria. Brevity is the key to effective public speaking.
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