General Assembly Update - the New Form of Government

For well over 10 years, if not closer to 20, there have been calls for either a new Form of Government to replace our current Form of Government (the first section of our Book of Order), or for massive revisions and rewriting of our current Form of Government.  No polity is perfect, and ours is no exception.  For the last almost 30 years, we as a denomination have tweaked and changed and "perfected" to the best of our ability our form of government, and as a result it has grown larger and, in some cases, has even become a hindrance to ministry in some of our presbyteries and congregations.  So for about the last 10-15 years or so, various proposals have been put forward to simplify and revise our Form of Government so that it can be more responsive to our ministry needs and yet still keep the standards and identify that make us who we are and bind us together.  Today, the General Assembly has finally found a version they felt was worth of passing on to the Presbyteries for their vote. 

The new Form of Government can be found at our PCUSA website here:  http://oga.pcusa.org/formofgovernment/pdfs/fog-report-feb2010.pdf.  NOTE:  THis is the UNAMENDED VERSION.  The General Assembly today made a few amendments to what you will find at this URL.  Once we get the link to the revised version, I'll post that as a comment to this note.  Those amendments were not numerous, so if you want to read it right away, this will still get you the general idea.

The process now is for every presbytery to look at this again (this or a version of this has been around for almost 4 years now) and vote on whether or not we want this to replace the Form of Government section in our Book of Order.  If a majority of the 173 presbyteries vote to replace the current Form of Government with the proposed Form of Government, then in one year's time the new version will become the rules we live by.  Of course then we'll start tweaking it, and in about 30 years or so we'll probably start the process over!

So take a look at this.  We'll have opportunities to discuss this at our presbytery before we vote, and we'd like as many people to be a part of our conversations as possible.

If you've got questions - ask away!

Sue Coller
     Rooted in God
     Open to Grace
     Filled with Joy