Day 1 at General Assembly - Election of the Moderator

Day 1 at the General Assembly began with a Presbyterians for Renewal overview of the business before this year's GA at 7am.

That was the plan.

But since I didn't get into my hotel room until 1am and because I was still on West Coast time, I couldn't fall asleep until 3am East Coast Time, there was no way I was going to make the 7am meeting.

But I really wanted to be there...NOT!!!

The highlight of the day was opening worship.

For many evangelicals who have been at the GA's, that may sound odd coming from a fellow evangelical. Because you see, in most of the previous GA's there is a lot of dancing and pageantry but very little of straight out proclamations of Jesus Christ.

But today's worship, the moderator of the 219th General Assembly, Cynthia Bolbach, unabashedly challenged the church to be about the ministry of Jesus Christ.

It was awesome!

I can't remember the last time I said that from a worship service at a GA. In fact, there have been worship services where I had to walk out because I was so offended at what was being preached.

You can read about the sermon and the opening worship at here.

The Moderator of the 219th GA Preaching at Opening Worship

After opening worship, the commissioners spent the afternoon getting used to the electronic voting system and getting oriented about how they would go about doing their work.

After the dinner break, the main business before the GA was the election of the moderator of the 220th General Assembly.

After four votes, Neal Presa, a pastor from Middlesex, NJ was elected by 52% of the votes.

So here's my take from day 1.

So far so good. I thought Neal did the best job of answering the questions that were asked of the moderatorial candidates. I believe Neal will do a fine job of leading the assembly and being the face of the church for the PC(USA).

Sunday morning, folks will be worshiping at local presbyterian congregations and will gather in the afternoon for the election of the Stated Clerk.

For now, I'm signing off as I'm pretty tired.

Good night and have a blessed Sunday worshiping the risen Christ!

My home for the next week