Back to the blog. Not necessarily "Back in Black" like AC/DC, but just, well, back to the bog. It's been the longest drought of my blogging activity since I started it. Much like I thought it would, the world continued to spend, Jesus' church continued to move forward, and God's will still came to Earth as it is in heaven. But I'm back now, at least for a bit, partly because of brain constipation (I get uncomfortable holding in ideas and thoughts which could be helpful to others to think about, agree with, disagree with, or wrestle with) and partly because I'm often encouraged by what I read on other blogs. I don't follow the angry, divisive guys. And there's a bunch of other "partly's" of why I blog that I need not go into now.
After vacationing in FL, I had the opportunity to go to General Assembly in Louisville, KY. If you are unfamiliar with it, its simply our denominational gathering. It is different than the Southern Baptist Convention, in that it's Presbyterian. That sounds like one of those "duh" statements, but it's really not. At least I don't think.
Presbyterians are different in their form of church government in that we don't believe in the autonomy of the local church. We are are both representational (its leaders are elected from among the congregation and not appointed) as well as connectional to other P.C.A. churches. Now our connectionalism is voluntary and the local church can at any time pull out of the presbytery if it believes the presbytery has seriously erred. But the relationship is one of accountability. At Redeemer, if Barret or I, or our session are acting like yahoo's, our presbytery can/should intervene, when folks in the local church ask for them to get involved.
At the General Assembly level, it is not simply a gathering or reunion (thought that's clearly my favorite part of it), but the actions taken at the denominational level are not simply suggestive. Therefore such meetings at presbytery and G.A. level are as important, as they are-often times-boring.
One lad, summarized what went on at the G.A. level here. I don't necessarily share all of his opinions, but for the most part, he does at least share what happened, should you at all care.
Since he has already reproduced what went on, I'll just conclude with one final thought on my experience at GA.
You can pretty much put people into certain camps based upon how they look and dress. Generally. You have the folks in suits, folks like myself in flip-flops, folks in sear suckers, pretty boys, old school guys with no fashion sense, some hipsters, etc...You can't judge a book by its cover all the time, but you can often figure out which way they'll vote simply by looking at the dress of such people in these meetings. I was glad to see at least some diversity.
