Over 2,000 Presbyterian Church in America pastors and elders descended on the Chattanooga Convention Center for the denomination’s annual General Assembly. They were in town to conduct church business, debate doctrine and recharge for the year ahead before returning to their home congregations.
At times during the gathering, though, it was hard to see how the men debating endlessly in the assembly hall could chortle at the same jokes over supper.
But that’s exactly what happened Wednesday evening after the day’s order of business was complete and the assembly went into recess for the night. Many of the representatives, called commissioners by the denomination, made their way up Lookout Mountain with their families in tow to a picnic hosted by Covenant College.
Presbyterian General Assembly concludes annual gathering
“We do have differences of opinions,” said Drew Ricketts, an elder at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, in an interview. “But the great thing is at the end of the day, normally, 99 times out of 100, we respect each other’s opinions and we’re willing to go with what the majority decides and trust that God is guiding our commissioners, you know, to use their experience and wisdom to make good decisions on behalf of our denomination.”
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And at the end of the day, they did come together. A bluegrass band played “I’ll Fly Away” in the background as the ministers and lay people filled their plates with barbecue, corn on the cob, coleslaw, macaroni and cheese and beans, and they sat down to dine together at tables donning blue gingham tablecloths.
“We Christians talk about being a family of believers, and I think something like this, having a big family meal, is just a good reminder of that. I think it connects and unites us,” Dave Gambrell, dean of enrollment management at Covenant College, said in an interview. “I think that’s important when you’re doing a lot of business meetings that are practical and issues and things like that, having time for just relational connection. I think it’s encouraging to a lot of our hearts.”
The assembly, spanning Monday through Friday, tackled tall topics, with debate on subjects ranging from leadership processes and the distribution of communion to items condemning racial superiority and recommendations to create a study committee to determine if the ideology found in Christian nationalism diverges from the denomination’s system of doctrine.
The recommendations, called overtures within the denomination, are submitted by presbyteries, or regional groups of churches in the denomination. The overtures act as requests for the General Assembly to do something, say something or change something. All of Thursday afternoon, the body debated overtures brought before it.
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A recommendation requested the body amend the Book of Church Order, a document that governs the way the denomination functions, to specify that only officers, or people ordained by the church, can distribute communion.
Pastor Randy Thompson presented the majority opinion to the body.
“My burden is not about women or even young people per se, it is that they were clearly non-ordained, shall we say, common terminology, lay persons, distributing the sacraments,” Thompson said, “which I believe is the role of ordained officers.”
Thompson said the suggested change was simply to codify a practice that was presumed by those who authored the Book of Church Order. There was a minority opinion presented to the body that claimed the suggestion was not warranted by Scripture and contravenes the historical practice of the church.
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The proposed change prompted nearly an hour of debate, with one pastor from Mississippi, Zach Byrd, likening the distribution of the Lord’s Supper to being served hush puppies in support of the change.
Byrd posited that the server diagnoses your hunger and distributes your meal, a metaphor for the ordained minister’s role in distributing the Lord’s Supper, but there is a difference in distribution and passing the plate.
“When I pass that beautiful plate of hush puppies to my new Yankee friend, I’m not getting a tip, I’m not being paid by the owner of the restaurant, I am simply passing the plate,” Byrd said. “I am performing a logistical function.”
After Byrd’s speech, which also decried hush puppies as “bits of manna from heaven,” moderator Kevin DeYoung joked that the General Assembly bingo card would, henceforth, include “hush puppy.”
Ultimately, the minority report was adopted, and the change was voted down.
Though much of the debate was intense and long, made even longer by parliamentary proceedings Presbyterians are known for holding near to their hearts, it was kept lighthearted by jokes enjoyed by a room filled with 2,000 Presbyterians.
“We all need to always be learning that we can still love our brothers even though we don’t agree on maybe things that aren’t just trivial but things that might be kind of weighty. We can have different opinions,” said Ricketts, the church elder from Birmingham. “I mean there’s certain things, you know, principally, theologically, that we definitely want to be aligned on. Maybe some things related to how we share our culture. But past that, we can have a lot of different opinions about what a worship service ought to look like, what our priorities ought to be. We understand that we’re coming together to take care of the business of the church.”
And take care of business, the body did.
Contact Kailee Shores at kshores@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659.