What's Going On at General Assembly?

If you are reading this you can go to www.pcusa.org/ga220 for the offical home page of the assembly. The local Presbyterians hosting the assembly (Committee on Local Arrangements - COLA) have a great site at: www.cola2012.org

More than you want to know about what is being considered is in a rich database at PC-Biz

News stories are posted at: http://www.pcusa.org/news/ and you can sign up to get them email to you at: http://gamc.pcusa.org/subscriptions/lists/presbyterian-news-announcements/

Old school folks can get a recorded summary of the day’s General Assembly news by phone on VoiceLine: Call 1-800-728-7228, ext. 2012, or 502-569-5000, ext. 2012. They are updated daily before 6 PM

Twitter folks can follow @presbyGA and search for the hashtag #ga220 specifically or #pcusa in general. Both in lower case.

Both Saturday afternoon’s 1 PM opening worship and the 12 plenary sessions will be live streamed on the web. Look for a link on the www.pcusa.org/ga220 page.

Hints for Presbytery Speakers

In March of 1998, my then teenaged daughter Rachel attended a Presbytery meeting as part of her confirmation process for active church membership. She posted some helpful hints for speakers on the Presbytery web site. How well will General Assembly do in heeding her advice?

1. maximum time is 5 to 7 minutes
2. look around!
3. change your voice so people don’t fall asleep
4. move, walk, or something!
5. use hand motions
6. have charts or something to look at
7. stick to one subject
8. make people laugh or smile at least once
9. talk loud in the beginning to wake people up from the last speaker
10. wear different colors so we can tell when a new person is speaking
11. try to get an early spot before our brains are numb

What is your favorite? Which do you do?

Snakes & Shaves Praise the Lord

Brian Musser (tie) and I (stole) are going through his God and Me award for Scouting. During one of the sessions, Brian “filled in the blanks” for a psalm of praise. We used his work as our Call to Worship for our Children’s Sunday.

Call to Worship      (Say YOUR NAME in the blank!)

One:     Hiss for joy, you snakes!
All:    Bite for joy, every alligator

One:     Shave for joy all Dads!
All:    God is our creator

One:     God created all things Good!
All:    God created __________ and God loves me!

by Brian Musser as part of his Scouting Religious award

Children’s Sunday at Goodyear Heights Presbyterian - photo (C) Mary Lu Ramsey

GENERAL ASSEMBLY Plenary Sessions

Times when the entire General Assembly…assembles…are called “plenary sessions”, meeting times whenever all the commissioners (never “representatives”!) are invited and entitled to meet together, to watch, listen, vote, debate, pray and worship.

The assembly opens the week in plenary session, elects a moderator, breaks up into committees then comes back to plenary to vote on the committee recomendations at the end of the week. 

Here is the schedule. It may be changed by the assembly during the session lengthening a session or starting a session early, but generally the commissioners will be meeting during these 12 periods of time.

REMEMBER - You must be registered with a badge ($30) to enter the meeting hall. (Not the exhibit halls or other free and ticketed events.) Video monitors on site and streaming on the internet are available for those not in the hall.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY EXHIBIT HALL HOURS

Here is a handy grid of when the 220th Presbyterian General Assembly in Pittsburgh’s exhibit hall is open. The hall full of missions, ministries, books, swag and stuff, opens a day before the start, varys from day to day during, and closes 3 days before the end.