The Presbyterians Assembled

Last Sunday at about 5:30am I returned home from being a commissioner at the Presbyterian Church(USA) General Assembly in San Jose for a week. Every two years about 700 commissioners elected by their presbyteries gather to make some policies for the denomination,receive and act on overtures that come from churches, elect leaders and generally just have a grand old time. Yes, it is exhilarating and inspiring as well as being utterly frustrating.

The moments of inspiration come from just meeting incredible people from all over the church. In line for breakfast one morning, I struck up a conversation with an extraordinary physicist who teaches at Stanford. I explained my interest in science and my limited knowledge and he began to talk about a new project he was developing. With physicists in Switzerland, he was searching for the anti matter that somehow disappeared after the big bang. So here was a world class physicist who was also a Presbyterian. Great energy. Glorius people. The Holy spirit at work.

But also great leaders for our denomination. We elected Gradye Parsons as our new stated clerk and Bruce Reyes-Chow as our moderator. Youth advisory delegates have voice and vote in committee and voice on the floor. What an energetic, and impressive group. Many of them spoke with passion and clarity before this audience of more than 1000. Strong leaders are coming into the church.

We disagreed on many issues. And we processed those disagreements both through prayer and through Robert's Rules of Order. We believe that this is the best means avail be now for us to be respectful of minority opinions and also to allow the majority to act

But one very big problem is that the GA tries to do way too much. Too many issues come onto the floor--huge issues like abortion, gun control, poverty, Iraq, Palestine/Israel, homosexuality, housing and health care. And the Assembly tries to respond to them all.

By the end as we were having a 30 minute discussion on universal health care and then voting for a single payer system, I identified with a speaker who said that he was a health care analyst for his company and had spent a career in the nitty-gritty of balancing money and quality of care. The issues are extremely complicated he argued persuasively. Someone called the question and we voted for a single payer system anyway.

One deep irony is that the theme text was Micah 6 which calls upon us to walk humbly with our God. We weren't humble when advocating social policies. I don't know if that is the fault of our system or our personalities. but we ended up making glib statements about complex issues.

Antonio Machado, the Spanish poet, said,`It is more important to make things well, than to make things.' at GA, we make alot of statements, but many are certainly not made well.