General Assembly, more committee meetings

After running late with our committee meeting last night, I arrived late to the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary reception to visit with other alums and staff.  No surprise to discover lots of connections.  One of the alums is a person with whom I went to college where we were fraternity brothers.  Our time in seminary overlapped, but because of how our internships fell, we never lived on the seminary campus at the same time.   That we knew each other was not surprising, but when I started talking to his wife, it turned out we also had lots of connections.  At one point, she was in tears as she remembered some of the people she spent time with in her youth at presbytery events.

But today we are back doing business in our committee meetings.  I left frustrated yesterday over people who seem to need to speak endlessly at the microphone and for what seemed to me to be weak committee leadership.   I continue to discover that when committee leaders feel uncertain about process, it makes the committee unsure and people feel the need to try and help, which seldom helps.

Yet today is a new day.  The committee leadership seems to have done some homework last night and are taking charge of the process a bit more.  We are still spending more time on what I think are unimportant issues, but I am hopeful that God is at work in our midst, despite our failings.

I again found the morning Bible study to be helpful for us in our conversation with the added bonus that the text discussed Barnabas, who is another one of my sermon topics this summer.  In addition to an article I read last night about another sermon topic, my time at GA has included discussion of three of my updating sermons.  At this rate, the summer preaching series will be complete before I head back to OH.

We just heard the powerful testimony of a male minister who had been sexually abused at a youth convention by the youth leader, who was a Commissioned Lay Pastor.  He shared his story with us because we are voting in a bit on a policy on child protection for the General Assembly.  Part of his story is about how the presbytery knew the man had a conviction for child pornography, but chose to believe he had repented and let him take the youth from the presbytery to a convention.  Part of his story also reveals how the church institution sought the cover of legal responsibility instead of openly addressing the charges.  Even as I wonder how those other Presbyterians and their committees could make those choices, I am prayerful that the groups with which I work have (and will) recognize when the institution needs to protect others, instead of protecting itself.