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Humans of GA: Father and son edition

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  I typically consider it luck when all tables in a room are taken, and I have to take a seat with a stranger. This time, I hit the jackpot. As I spun around the convention center searching for a perch to people-watch, Edmund Freeborn, a 66-year-old pastor with eyes that crinkle like Santa Claus, invited me to join him. After a minute or two, I realized the conversation had morphed from pleasantries into a sort of makeshift therapy session, with each of us vying for the clipboard. As I divulged the history of my soul, I managed to learn some of his. Presbyterianism is a Freeborn family affair. Edmund's father was an elder, while his mother was a professional opera singer. At  age 16 she joined the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and Edmund could vividly remember her singing the Lord's Prayer in church. Edmund isn't a time-waster. He was ordained at age 24 and has since observed 42 years of Presbyterian politics. When I asked what's changed since his … [Read more...]

Tagged With: GA223

“I love John Calvin, but we are disciples of Jesus” – Jimmie Hawkins addresses Presbyterians for Earth Care

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ST. LOUIS – The Presbyterians for Earth Care (PEC) luncheon and annual awards took place June 19, led by recently elected Moderator Dennis Testerman, with Jimmie Hawkins as guest speaker. The event quickly became a deep discussion on the environment of the church, and its relationship with the rest of the world. After a brief “hello” from co-moderator Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri, Testerman commenced the luncheon with an excerpt from a Jean Vanier book, “Community and Growth”: “A wedding is one of the great celebrations. It is a time when all that is most divine seems to meet all that is most human in joy… but there is always an element of sadness in celebration. We cannot celebrate without alluding to it, because there are people on this Earth of ours who are not celebrating, who are despairing, anguished, starving, and mourning. That is why all celebration, which is like a great ‘Alleluia’ and song of thanksgiving, should end with a silence in which we remember before God all those … [Read more...]

Tagged With: GA223

105 degrees, 210 miles, 1 goal: Walking for a fossil-free church

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Video by Ed Sackett EAST ST. LOUIS, ILL — In preparation for the 223rd General Assembly, Fossil Free PCUSA, a project of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, organized a walk from the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Louisville to the doors of the America’s Center Convention Complex in St. Louis, where General Assembly is being held. The asphalt at the BP station where marchers for Fossil Free PCUSA assembled on June 15 was a brutal incubator, pushing the heat index to 105 degrees. In a patch of grass, organizers and walkers who’d driven ahead set up lunch on a folding table. Soon, the rest of the Fossil Free PCUSA crew arrived, clad in orange shirts emblazoned with “for creation!” They came to congregate, eat and coordinate the final few miles of their journey. After lunch, about 30 people who had trekked from the offices of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Louisville, Kentucky, to a dusty BP in East St. Louis, Illinois, began assembling two-by-two along the … [Read more...]

Tagged With: fossil fuels • GA223

Discerning our way through General Assembly

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Did you know that, but for the commissioners’ vote on the floor of a plenary session at General Assembly, our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) headquarters would be in Kansas City, Missouri, today instead of Louisville? It happened at the 1987 GA in Biloxi, Mississippi. A task force charged with researching a post-reunion location had been hard at work for over two years, narrowing down finalists and eventually presenting their choice of Kansas City with great fanfare. It was a site where the cost of living was reasonable, near a major airline hub and it was closer to the country’s center than the Eastern time zone. The responsible GA committee endorsed their choice and the whole team made a grand presentation: Kansas City dignitaries gave glowing welcomes, a video illustrated all that Kansas City had to offer and many balloons awaited overhead for dramatic release in the assembly hall. But then something happened. A surprise substitute motion was offered from the floor to move … [Read more...]

Tagged With: GA223

Building the kin-dom one prayer at a time: An invitation to prayer practices for the General Assembly

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Motel 6 famously advertises, “We’ll leave the light on for you.” A clever slogan that embodies a sense of hospitality and home, and in St. Louis the lights are already on in anticipation of the arrival of family for the General Assembly. It is a homecoming of sorts as denominational “relatives” from north and south, east and west, gather for a time of discussion, decision-making, reflection and worship. The connections between churches and leaders who otherwise would not cross paths is renewed or established, and we recognize one another as kinfolk. Although others stay back to tend the home fires, still we are one family, sheltering under the promise of the kingdom and kin-dom of Christ.  The theme for this year’s assembly – “Renewing the vision: Kindom building for the 21st century” – strives to emphasize this connectivity. Warmly captured by Isaac Villegas in “The Kin-dom of mi abuelita” (published in The Mennonite), he describes it this way: “God’s kin-dom looks like my … [Read more...]

Tagged With: GA223 • prayer

Compelled to respond:  The 223rd General Assembly and climate change

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To work for the transformation of society The two of us have spent the last two years (and longer) working in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on overtures about climate change, with proposed actions including both divestment from the fossil fuel industry and a variety of other efforts to change individual and institutional behaviors. abby mohaupt (she prefers not to have her name capitalized) is the moderator of Fossil Free PCUSA (a grassroots movement focused on adding divestment to the other things being done to respond to climate change). Jim Allison has been active in the group trying to define alternatives and additions to divestment. It is not unimportant that Jim is an economist and former employee of a fossil fuel company, and abby is a Presbyterian pastor and activist, as well as a Ph.D. student in religion and climate change. With those kinds of credentials, it is perhaps not surprising that we do not agree on the particular question of divestment. However, we do agree … [Read more...]

Tagged With: fossil fuels • GA223

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