As director of operations for the PC(USA)’s Office of the General Assembly, Hay is neck-deep in preparations for the 219th General Assembly in Minneapolis. Part of his job involves trying to make sure the assembly runs smoothly, in a way that both gets the work done on time and gives commissioners a sense of having been part of something spiritually significant.
The trip to Scotland gave Hay a chance to see how another denomination structures its national meetings. As a delegate from an international partner church, Hay was allowed to speak in the gatherings (although he didn’t), but not to vote.
The Church of Scotland assembly has about 850 commissioners, but very few observers and few advisory delegates, Hay said. The assembly meets every year in the same hall at New College Edinburgh University – unlike the PC(USA)’s assembly, which migrates around the country every two years.
As the assembly of the national Church of Scotland, “there’s a whole veneer of pomp and tradition that’s fun to watch and participate in,” Hay said.
The Scottish assembly meets in full plenary – with the entire body considering each of the reports, unlike the PC(USA) assembly, which divides the business up first for consideration by committees (19 this year) and then comes back to consider all the business later in plenary.
The Scottish pace is slower. No business is conducted after about 5 p.m., unlike the PC(USA) assembly, which sometimes still is going strong as midnight looms. To some extent, “it feels like a big presbytery meeting,” Hay said of the Scottish assembly. It does not use Robert’s Rules of Order, instead relying on its own set of rules developed over centuries. The moderator is chosen six months in advance by a committee, is confirmed by the full assembly, and serves for a year.
The assembly worships each day in the plenary hall – singing traditional hymns a capella, “sung like they were at a rugby match,” Hay said, “sung with gusto and enthusiasm.”
Most of the commissioners have served as commissioners previously – unlike at a PC(USA) assembly, where about 80 percent of the commissioners have never attended an assembly before, Hay said. While respect was paid to the views of some experienced commissioners – some of them seminary professors, who could bring a sense of history and depth to the discussion – “there were few youth,” he said. “There was very little diversity in color or background” – which sometimes left him wondering how a broader range of views might have influenced the debate.
Some of the issues confronting the Scotland assembly might seem familiar to American Presbyterians.
The ordination of gays and lesbians is a hot issue for the Scottish church, although the assembly is in the midst of a two-year hiatus from discussing business related to that, Hay said.
“They’re facing enormous financial crunches,” cutting the number of ministers’ positions the church funds.
And “they had a lively debate over what it means to be the national church,” Hay said. The gist of that was “we are a church that is concerned for those who are not concerned about God … with a sense of responsibility for those in their community who don’t care about the church, but God cares about them.”
