The 219th General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to create a 21-member middle governing body commission with authority to act on the Assembly’s behalf in responding to realignment requests from synods and presbyteries. The vote was 566-104.

The commission, with authority to “act as the General Assembly,” is needed, said Cliff Lyda of Chicago Presbytery, moderator of the Assembly Committee on Middle Governing Body Issues, “because of rapid cultural shifts … that have created the need to make our structures more functional.”

Former Auburn Theological Seminary president Barbara G. Wheeler received the Committee on Theological Education Award for Excellence in Theological Education.

She is “a bold and resilient leader,” the Rev. Lee Hinson-Hasty, coordinator for theological education and seminary relations for the PC(USA), told those gathered Thursday morning at the Theological Education Awards Breakfast at the 219th General Assembly.

Wheeler is director of the Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education, which she founded in 1991. She also served as Auburn’s president for 30 years.

Seminary leadership has especially been at the forefront of Wheeler’s recent research, and she shared some …

With a 50-vote margin (373-323-4), the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved an overture from the Presbytery of the Western Reserve that would amend the so-called “fidelity and chastity clause” of the Book of Order (G-6.0106b).

The amendment will now go back to presbyteries, where a majority of the 173 presbyteries must approve it for the change to make it into the Book of Order.

As participants arrived for the annual Native American Consulting Committee (NACC) dinner, the Rev. Irvin R. Porter, moderator of the Church of the Indians Fellowship in Tacoma, Wash., lit a sage branch and quietly smudged the room in preparation for the gathering. Among those in attendance were members of the Alabama-Coushatta, Maricopa, Tlinket, Hopi, Choctaw, Navaho, Delaware, Pima, T’hono O’odham, Nez Perce, Pueblo, Yupik and Cherokee tribes as well as many non-Indian guests.

The Rev. Jin Kim got a warm welcome Wednesday night when he spoke at the Multicultural Church Celebration at the 219th General Assembly (2010).

The Rev. Ray Jones took images that we have become all too familiar with in recent months and used them Tuesday to teach the importance of evangelism.

A lighthearted and collegial atmosphere prevailed at the Synod of the Covenant luncheon Tuesday.

Eight mission personnel with combined service totaling 222 years and two very recent gifts totaling $650,000 were honored Wednesday by PC(USA) World Mission Office leaders and guests at the mission personnel reception.

Camilo Mejia, the nation’s first soldier to publicly refuse to return to the war in Iraq, told the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (PPF) breakfast Wednesday his desertion and the  incarceration that followed “gave me a deep sense of liberation and made me feel I was in charge of my life for the first time. I was a human being before I was a soldier.”

Barbara Wheeler, recently retired president of Auburn Seminary and founder of the Center for the Study of Theological Education, was given the Excellence of Theological Education Award at the 219th General Assembly (2010) on Wednesday.