This year, as part of the shift to every-other-year General Assemblies, the number of commissioners attending will jump by about 200, to 752. So everything about this assembly, to be held June 21-28 in San Jose, will be bigger.
To make it work, “you’ve got to have more of everything — more laptops, more tables, more chairs,” bigger rooms in which to meet, said Gradye Parsons, director of operations for the Office of the General Assembly (and the nominee of the Stated Clerk Nomination Committee to be the denomination’s new stated clerk).
Because there are more commissioners, there will be more committees — 16 instead of the 14 the assembly had in 2006. “If the committees get too big, they just don’t work,” Parsons said; even so, some of these committees will have as many as 60 members.
As is fitting for a Silicon Valley confab, the assembly also will lean heavily on technology. This is, more or less, a paperless assembly with commissioners downloading materials onto laptops rather than lugging stacks of paper that weigh as much as the average neighborhood mutt. The plenary hall will be hard-wired for commissioners to plug in, with wireless access in committee rooms.
And for commissioners for whom laptops are not second-nature, some staff members will be assigned “just to do care and feeding of laptops,” said Deborah Davies, the PC(USA)’s manager of Assembly Services (think: czar of General Assembly logistics.)
So far, Davies said, only a handful of commissioners have asked for paper copies of the reports, the rest have made the electronic switch.
The online system for tracking assembly reports has been given the title “PC-biz,” — it replaces the system called “Les” that was used at the Birmingham assembly in 2006.
“PC-biz is a much improved product,” Parsons said. “It should be faster. It has a better search engine. We learned last time (in Birmingham) that if you make it too pretty … it slows things down. It’s a little less attractive, but it’s more functional.”
Some other denominations will be watching to see how well PC-biz works.
The Episcopalians and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are sending representatives to the San Jose assembly to take a look at PC-biz and at the system the PC(USA) uses to recognize speakers on the floor of the assembly. “We’re not totally cutting-edge, but at least among the mainliners, we’re in the lead,” Parsons said.
Some other changes to expect:
• The ratio of elected commissioners to advisory delegates will shift. In recent years that ratio, the source of some debate at previous assemblies, has crept up to close to two elected commissioners for every advisory delegate. But with the addition of more elected commissioners at this assembly, the ratio will drop to roughly 3:1 — close to what it was at the reunion of the northern and southern branches of the Presbyterian church in 1986, Parsons said.
• Even though there are more commissioners, there won’t be more time to speak during the plenary sessions. One more microphone will be added for commissioners to line up behind, but “the percentage of people who actually get to speak might decrease,” Parsons said, although all elected commissioners will get to vote.
• More ecumenical guests will attend — in part, to honor Clifton Kirkpatrick, who is ending a 12-year stint as the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, but remains the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.
• Worship will be conducted in the plenary space on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday during the assembly. And Sunday worship will be conducted in two places simultaneously. “They’ll both be watching and both be doing,” Parsons said. Both locations will have choirs, both will serve communion, both will have a role to play, “feeding off of each other. That’ll be cool.”
For those attending, the San Jose assembly should provide some welcome conveniences. Most of the official assembly hotels, for example, are within easy walking distance of the convention center.
“San Jose is a very good place for the assembly,” Davies said. “We have eight hotels in the (official) block and six of those are downtown. There is space for all of the commissioners and other official participants in the downtown hotels.”
But the hotel parking is costly. And in general, “everything is just more expensive” in California, from the cost of meals to Internet connections, Davies said. “We’ve spent a lot of time answering questions about why things cost so much.”
So: think bigger. More expensive.
More bloggers.
More blow-ups over controversial issues? Who knows.
But for commissioners, “worship is consistently the highest-rated thing” at the assembly, Parsons said — that and “the chance to be connected to the larger church” and to meet Presbyterians from across the country.
On the evaluations, even the most attention-getting items of business rarely make it into the top four or five.
For commissioners, it’s being there, experiencing a connected, worshipping, praying, discerning church, open to the will of God that seems to matter the most.
