We’re getting into the homestretch before the 219th General Assembly convenes on July 3 in Minneapolis. Which leads to today’s topic for discussion: will that be a bad thing or a good thing? Discuss.
Everybody agrees that a good thing about GA is that it’s like a family reunion. It’s a time when people from across the denomination gather together, in all our diversity, quirkiness, and uniqueness, but also in our common love for Jesus Christ and in our grounding in the Reformed tradition. We worship together, we pray together, we make new friends, we reconnect with old (oops, sorry, long-time) friends.
But then there’s the other, evil twin side of GA: the divisiveness, the frustration, the late-night debates, the sense of winners versus losers, the tension as we fear a church being pulled apart.
Foothills Presbytery has sent in an overture that suggests that “official meetings” of GA be held only every six years, and that a “general convocation” be held in those years when we’re not having “official meetings.” The rationale — and I hope I’m not oversimplifying — is that since we don’t do decision-making very well, maybe if we do it less often things will be better.
But putting off bad decision-making isn’t the answer. The answer is to figure out how to improve our decision-making. The Committee on General Assembly Procedures will be dealing not just with the Foothills overture but with a number of other overtures that address this issue.
How can we improve our decision-making? One important step would be to make sure that sessions and presbyteries understand a simple, basic rule: that just because you CAN send an overture to GA doesn’t mean you SHOULD. There are many good and needed overtures that come to GA, but there are also many that simply reflect one individual’s quest to get official GA recognition of his or her pet issue. Or maybe pet peeve. Every session or presbytery that proposes an overture should first consider this question: is this really an issue that deserves the time, attention, and resources of more than 700 commissioners who have only one week to deal with all the business before them?
Maybe I’ll propose an overture in 2012 suggesting that an “overture impact statement” accompany every overture. Oh, wait. That’s just what I’ve said we shouldn’t do. Never mind. I’ll just talk about it instead. Spread the word if you agree.