30 years ago — May 12, 1986
“Like a church session, a General Assembly is a representative body, the most representative in the whole church. Unlike a session, where the elders outnumber the ministers, a General Assembly is made up of an equal number of elders and ministers, elected by a presbytery. “Unlike a session, the moderator could be an elder. “Like a session, the assembly delegates its work.” The assembly meets every other year so “it must have boards and staff to do its work between meetings. Receiving reports from these boards is a major item on an assembly’s agenda. It is such a large task that those reports and other items of business must be referred to assembly committees for recommendation and action at that assembly. … Just as a session must then deliberate on the reports of its committees, the assembly then acts on the committee reports; and, as in a session meeting, some of the reports will be handled in a routine fashion and others will be vigorously debated.”
From the article “General Assembly: Session writ large” by George Laird Hunt
