Stage
 Mass Choir | Wow! This has been quite a day! The opening plenary session of the General Assembly was a worship service that knocked our socks off! The beautiful music featured a mass choir made up from local churches, an orchestra, a pipe organ, an incredible female soloist, and even dancers. The imaginative and poetic liturgy led up to an impressive communion service, and the powerful sermon delivered by the two co-moderators of the 222nd General Assembly, Denise T. Anderson and Jan Edmiston, served to unite us and fill us with hope and joy – emotions that have been hard to come by given the current political discord. |
When it was over, the woman next to me embraced me and said she could go home right now feeling completely satisfied the GA had done all it could do. There were over 800 of us in attendance, 538 service as commissioners like me and others serving as advisory delegates and another type whose descriptor I can’t remember.
The offering taken during the service was used to address the issue of the unfairness of the bail bond system. Those who are arrested and can afford to pay their bail simply walk out of jail and wait at home for their trial to come up, but those who are arrested and can’t pay their bail because they are poor and stuck in jail, causing them to lose their jobs, which furthers their poverty and brings hardship to their families. It likens the situation to a debtors’ prison. So the proceeds of the offering was taken to the local jails and used to pay the bail for poor prisoners.
The offering taken during the service was used to address the issue of the unfairness of the bail bond system. Those who are arrested and can afford to pay their bail simply walk out of jail and wait at home for their trial to come up, but those who are arrested and can’t pay their bail because they are poor and stuck in jail, causing them to lose their jobs, which furthers their poverty and brings hardship to their families. It likens the situation to a debtors’ prison. So the proceeds of the offering was taken to the local jails and used to pay the bail for poor prisoners.
 New Co-moderators of GA | The afternoon plenary was our first business meeting and dealt with the usual business needed to get a large convention underway, but the evening plenary featured speeches from the three teams who were candidates to take over as moderators of the 223rd General Assembly. Each of the teams addressed the commissioners – two teams with two people wanting to serve as co-moderators and one team with one person serving a moderator and the other as vice-moderator. After their speeches, we were invited to ask questions of the teams. One question reminded me of the sermon from last Sunday at VPC. The question was, “What would you do to |
bring more people into the church?” One of the candidates answered, “The first thing I would do is forget about bringing them in to the church. I would bring the church out to them, wherever they are.” It was necessary to vote four times before one of the teams had a majority of the votes, and that was the team I was voting for – Vilmarie Cintron-Olivieri from the Presbytery of Tropical Florida and Cindy Kohlmann from Boston Presbytery. They are dynamic and articulate, completely at ease in front of the large audience, and eager to get busy doing the Lord’s work.
Tomorrow I go to worship in one of the churches in the area. Knowing nothing about any of them, I selected First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood, Missouri. I’ll let you know about the experience tomorrow.
Tomorrow I go to worship in one of the churches in the area. Knowing nothing about any of them, I selected First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood, Missouri. I’ll let you know about the experience tomorrow.
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