Dear Cornerstone Family,

This week is the Presbyterian Church in America’s General Assembly, the annual gathering of teaching and ruling elders from across the denomination. This gathering is June 23-27 just down I-24 at the Chattanooga Convention Center.

Cornerstone Presbyterian Church will be well represented by seven commissioners: pastors Nate, Sebastian, Drew, and Tony, and elders John Millard, William Tice, and Jim Payne. Randy Allen and Joe Haworth will join the group midweek as observers.

The PCA is a connectional church. That is to say—we are not autonomous. We are connected organically and organizationally to other churches throughout the U.S. working together to support one another as we carry out our mission and ministry.

The week at General Assembly is devoted to worship, fellowship, and the business of the church, including reports from the agencies of the PCA and responses to various overtures from presbyteries. An overture is a proposal from a lower church body (a presbytery) to a higher body (the General Assembly) requesting the higher body to take some particular action. There are fifty such proposals this year. To give you a snapshot:

Some are as simple as redrawing presbytery boundaries to accommodate growth.
Some are as important as how to transfer ministers from other denominations.
Some are as weighty as addressing matters of racial affinity worship or how the church is to address immigration laws.
Some are proposing study commissions to deal with various matters.
Some are proposing amendments that seek to clarify, strengthen, or otherwise alter the Book of Church Order.

As the Assembly goes about its business, how we go about it is crucial. In preparation, I ran across these words written in 1898 (long before there was a PCA) from Rev, F. P. Ramsay, Presbyterian pastor, and for a time, president of King College in Bristol, Tennessee:

“In considering an Overture before the General Assembly, the Elders of the Church have a high privilege and responsibility, before our Lord, before the Lord’s people, and before a watching world. The calling to uphold the will of the Lord of the Church as revealed in Scripture, to love for the brethren, to reasonable engagement in a collegial spirit, and to seek not the good of a party, but the good of the church, would be hopelessly burdensome but for the promise of our Lord to work in and through our efforts at faithfulness.”

Please pray that the Spirit of Christ would be among us, leading, guiding, and controlling our speech, actions, and decisions—and that the Head of the Church would be honored by this part of his Bride.

Your servant,

Tony