A show of hands, please

MILWAUKEE — Technology considerations meant that commissioners and advisory delegates to the 227th General Assembly had to use their voices and their arms to vote during the evening plenary session Sunday rather than relying on their fingers to cast their votes.

But steady efforts by the Moderators of the 226th General Assembly, the Rev. CeCe Armstrong and the Rev. Tony Larson, helped the body wrap up its business during the Assembly’s third plenary about 20 minutes early.

Kakay M. Pamaran, a partner advisory delegate, opened the session beautifully by singing “The Lord’s Prayer” in Filipino.

The Moderators led the body through some practice votes using MyGA, but then called for a recess. When business resumed, the Assembly’s parliamentarian, the Rev. Tricia Dykers Koenig, announced that any votes taken that evening would be voice votes.

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Commissioners and advisory delegates approved B&O-05, the plenary docket, then moved to PLEN-00, the Consent Agenda. Any commissioner can pull any item off the consent agenda, and they selected six for removal: GAR-12, Unification Commission Recommendation on the Size of Committees; GEN-06, Addition of Question to Ministry Discernment Profile; ORD-04, Overture on Ruling Elders Serving Beyond the Congregation; RIW-10, On Affirming Kairos Palestine II; RIW-07, Concerning Mission Co-Workers; and GAR-06, Recommendation for New Introduction to the Manual of the General Assembly from the Unification Commission.

Even with those six removals, 76 items of business remained on the consent agenda and were adopted without debate Sunday evening.

Four of those consent items were for the approval of four elected officials, all of whom spoke briefly Sunday.

The Rev. Dr. Bridgett Green, president and publisher of Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, said PPC’s mission is to create resources that advance faith and study, foster vision and imagination, and inspire action and justice.

Ian Hall, president of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation, said he believes administration is “one of quiet service, creating the structure, support and stability that enables ministry to flourish.”

Krysten Carter Holloway, the new president of the Board of Pensions, said her 95-year-old father, a retired PC(USA) pastor, “prayed over me before I left” for Milwaukee. She said she’ll lead with “humility, integrity, through collaboration and communication as we move forward together under God’s grace in this new season.”

The Rev. Dr. Tom Taylor, the president and CEO of the Presbyterian Foundation, called it “an extraordinary privilege to serve this Foundation, particularly with the marvelous staff I work with. I continue to be excited about the future and what God is doing in our church through the Foundation. And serving alongside all of you makes it a labor of love.”

Ruling Elder Linda Kennan, moderator of the Climate and Environmental Justice Committee, and the Rev. Mike Goodwin, vice-moderator, offered a brief report on committee work that saw each of the committee’s five overtures approved by majorities of 75% or more, which means all of the committee’s work was placed on the consent agenda.

“We challenge you to read these five items of business (here, here, here, here and here) as strands woven together, each one made stronger by the others,” Kennan said, “each one helping the whole church face our climate reality as it is, with a moral, biblical imagination for a world as it can become by the grace of God.”

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Members of the committee stood and were applauded by their fellow commissioners and advisory delegates.

At the request of a commissioner, the Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and Executive Director of Presbyterian Life & Witness, led a prayer and a moment of silence for Dusty Ray Spencer, a 74-year-old man executed in Florida last week for the 1992 stabbing death of his wife, Karen.

Oh noted that General Assembly policy dating back to 1959 has consistently called for a moratorium on capital punishment.

“God, we believe your grace is sufficient for all humans, and we lament the death of this man, a child created in your image,” Oh told the Almighty, praying for “a day when there will be equity and justice in our legal system.”

Young Adult Advisory Delegates Zaria Cuffee and Katherine Barden closed the plenary session with prayer. “We ask that you use us so that we may get closer to the grand vision that we know you have for us,” they prayed. “Search our hearts and souls so that we may give our all into this Assembly.”

The Assembly begins again at 8:30 a.m. Central Time on Monday with worship. Larson and Armstrong will be preaching. Watch the service online here.