Sunday Worship
Sabbath morning began with worship. Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls, dean of the Vancouver School of Theology, led the assembly in a thoughtful, challenging sermon on “A Portrait of a Worshipping Community,” based on Isaiah 56:1-8 and Mark 11:15-18. 
Dutcher-Walls discussed the challenges facing two groups of Israelites who were together again in Judah after a period of exile. “Together they had to figure out how to be God’s people once again,” she said. Add to this confusion several other groups traditionally considered outsiders, and “How then shall we live?” became the question of the day.
“Isaiah … answers exactly that poignant question,” said Dutcher-Walls. “It is not enough, says Isaiah, just to claim to be God’s people. Rather, the people actually need to do the actions and practices of their faith: keeping the Sabbath, maintaining justice, doing what is right, refraining from evil, holding fast the covenant, loving the name of the Lord, serving their God. These admonitions recur like a refrain meant to drill into their consciousness and theology that who they are, depends on how they live God’s word and God’s reality.
“In our passage, Isaiah wades right into the middle of the ongoing debates. His particular focus is that two ‘outsider’ groups are to be welcomed into God’s people that gathers to worship. Imagine the surprise of the community to hear that eunuchs were part of God’s people—these imperfect ones who were unclean because they could not fit the priestly definition of a whole person. … Imagine the surprise of the community to hear that foreigners were also to be welcomed as God’s people—these outsiders who were beyond the boundary of the community. But Isaiah declares an amazing word: [they] are welcome on the holy mountain and would be joyful in God’s house of prayer.”
The priestly cast, however, preferred to keep the exclusive community, well, exclusive, and argued that these groups had no place in the temple.
But “Isaiah ups the ante.”
His oracle expands its focus to envision an eschatological future. In the final verses, the passage imagines a time when God’s house will be a house of prayer for all peoples, when God who gathers the outcasts of Israel will gather others besides. What the community experiences now in worship and prayer by including all who serve the Lord, all who keep the covenant and Sabbath, all who do justice and righteousness, in Isaiah’s prophetic imagination becomes an image of the future God will bring into being.
The story in Mark underlines Isaiah’s words. When Jesus overturns the tables of the money-changers, he says, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
“He keeps Isaiah’s message alive and also extends its meaning so that his own actions and message resonate with Isaiah’s words,” noted Dutcher-Walls.
“Perhaps we are enriched to recognize that Scripture through the provenance of the Holy Spirit has included a wide variety of voices.
“This quality of Scripture is so pronounced and so engaging, no matter how infuriating particular texts might be, that I wonder if it is in fact a metaphor for how we are to live with each other now, and how we are to conduct our intense and gracious engagement with God, the text and each other.
“And if we follow Jesus’ link between his actions and Isaiah’s word, what more can we say about the Kingdom of God? At the beginning of the final week of his life, Jesus shapes his message about the Kingdom in the temple that day when he threw out the money-changers. If in this moment, as in the whole gospel, we hear the message that the Kingdom is at hand, then we are invited to imagine life centred in worship that opens wide as a place for all peoples, yet with a clear paradigm for the Kingdom’s way. With clarity and dramatic insistence, Jesus draws a boundary not against those marginalized and vulnerable ones whom he always included, but against values that would commercialize access to God’s holiness, and against those who would put themselves first and God on the margins.”
You can listen to Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls’ full sermon on the PCC’s assembly livestream.
Praying Circles
Following worship, the assembly spent the rest of the morning in “praying circles.” Each table group—the same groups that met on Saturday when discussing human sexuality—thought about the following question: “If you were to summarize the conversations held yesterday by your own and the other table groups as a one-sentence prayer in your own words, what would that prayer be?”
When finished, several commissioners brought these prayers to the front and led the assembly in prayer. The prayers were collected by Justice Ministries and the Committee on Church Doctrine, who will create a prayer booklet and distribute it to the church during the upcoming year. It is hoped the prayers will aid the church as it discusses the LGBTQ overtures.
Committee to Nominate Standing Committees
Intense debate erupted on Sunday afternoon when the Committee to Nominate Standing Committees brought forward the first of four recommendations.
The controversy surrounded a portion of the recommendation that would have replaced the name Rev. Mark Chiang with the name Rev. Jinsook Khang on the Committee on Church Doctrine. A second portion of the same recommendation aimed to replace the name Rev. Gail Johnson-Murdock with the name Rev. Dr. Nancy Calvert-Koyzis on Knox College’s governing board. The recommendation was eventually split in two and the second portion—to add Calvert-Koyzis to the college’s board—passed without debate, as did the committee’s other recommendations.
Two commissioners rose to speak against the recommendation to replace Chiang’s name with Khang’s.
It passed with a vote of 113 in favour and 63 opposed. Twenty-seven commissioners asked to have their dissent to the decision formally recorded in the minutes of assembly.
Rev. Wendy Adams from Kamloops presbytery made a motion to reconsider the matter.
According to the Book of Forms, which sets out the church’s laws and polity, motions to reconsider a decision must be made and seconded by commissioners who voted with the majority originally, and they require a notice of motion. This means the mover must notify the court in one sederunt that she or he will be making a motion to reconsider, and the motion itself must come at a future sederunt. As no sederunt was planned for Sunday evening, the next (and likely final) sederunt would take place the following morning.
Rev. Laurie Deacon from the Presbytery of Westminster spoke in favour of the motion to reconsider. She said she had voted in favour of the initial recommendation, “and I sense I don’t have all the information. Something’s going on here and I’d just like to know what that is.”
Rev. Keith McKee from London, Ont., moved to adjourn so the court could be reconstituted and the motion to reconsider could come before it immediately. The motion carried, and the Moderator adjourned and reconstituted the assembly.
Rev. Dr. Charles Fensham from the Presbytery of East Toronto moved an amendment to remove Rev. Jinsook Khang’s name in the recommendation.
“I highly respect the Rev. Jinsook Khang,” he said. “This is not about her name or fitness for this particular nomination. The reason why I suggest this amendment is because the Rev. Mark Chiang will bring to the doctrine committee a voice from the LGBT community. We have spent this morning talking about listening and respecting but we have not listened to a single LGBT voice yet. And removing his name is going against everything we were saying and praying this morning.”
Rev. Daniel MacKinnon, a commissioner from Ottawa, asked the Moderator to lead the court in a prayer for wisdom and discernment. The court paused to pray.
Rev. Barry Mack from Montreal said he was voting against the amendment out of concern it could “open a Pandora’s box” and “begin the politicization of the nominating committee. It’s not a road I want to go down.”
Rev. Pieter van Harten, from Lambton-West Middlesex presbytery, also spoke against the amendment saying “this court and presbyteries and synods have chosen to work by committees. And the way to get the work done is by committees because as a group of 300-plus it takes forever to make any decision, as we are seeing. We need to trust our committees and trust the reports of our conveners and take them at their word that they have duly considered all concerns.”
The amendment carried with 109 in favour and 100 opposed.
As the court considered the amended recommendation, one commissioner asked for more information from the convener about why the committee to nominate decided to bring the recommendation to the court.
“Mark Chiang was originally on our list,” convener Spencer Hanson said. “This assembly needs to know that the first the committee is aware of an LGBT issue was today. So the decision to put him on or take him off has nothing to do with that issue. We received an amendment form which the committee has to look at and the amendment form was to replace him with Jinsook Khang and the rationale that we were given was: the first ordained woman in [a] Han Ca [presbytery] that served as a moderator for three years and served as a clerk. So we felt that that was an important issue, and that’s why we chose one over the other.”
The recommendation to approve the slate of nominees, including Rev. Mark Chiang, was carried. Twenty-one commissioners registered their dissent to the decision, including 10 from the Han Ca presbyteries.
You can watch the recording of these events on the assembly livestream. The report of the Committee to Nominate Standing Committees begins at 7:20 in the video of the ninth and 10th sederunts.
Process for Dealing with Overtures on Human Sexuality
The assembly approved a number of recommendations to establish a process to deal with two-dozen overtures on human sexuality.
Normally overtures are referred by the General Assembly to a committee or agency, which will study the matters presented in the overture and return to a future assembly with a report and recommendations. The overtures on human sexuality were no exception. They were referred to the Committee on Church Doctrine and Justice Ministries. The two groups will work on the matters raised in the overtures in the coming months.
However the General Assembly set aside time for commissioners to discuss the overtures and their own thoughts and feelings on matters of human sexuality. Although the contents of the table group discussions will be kept confidential, each group prepared some notes to be shared publically. The assembly agreed to submit these to the church doctrine committee and Justice Ministries.
The various courts of the church as well as denominational committees are “encouraged to engage in a year of prayerful conversation and discernment and Bible study on the topics of human sexuality, sexual orientation and other related matters raised in the overtures.”
The church doctrine committee and Justice Ministries department are tasked with preparing a joint study guide to be posted on the church’s website by the end of October, and congregations, sessions, presbyteries and synods are invited to share the results of their conversations with them by March 31, 2016.
The assembly also passed an additional motion asking that the Moderator write a pastoral letter to all congregations, presbyteries and synods, inviting them to maintain “unity in the bond of peace,” to treat one another with respect, and to be particularly sensitive to those who feel vulnerable.
Korean Translation of Living Faith
In the final step required to create church law, the Korean translation of Living Faith was adopted as a subordinate standard of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Rev. Alfred Lee, a commissioner from the Presbytery of Western Han Ca and convener of the committee on remits, offered a special thanks for the denomination’s support of the Korean version.
Ministry and Church Vocations
The Ministry and Church Vocations department presented nine recommendations, most of them regarding transitional allowances for ministers in particular situations. All but one was approved.
In its report, the department shared the results of a study on long-term vacancies in churches and the task placed before the interim moderators who often balance their duties as full-time pastors with their obligations as interim moderators in vacant charges. Rev. Peter Bush put forward an amendment, which was endorsed by the assembly, that “the response be commended to presbyteries for study and reflection.”
Bush said being an interim moderator is an important task and “I want us to think seriously about this. We need to find ways to respond seriously to long term vacancies in congregations.”
Moment of Appreciation for Rev. Dr. Rick Fee
Rev. Dr. Rick Fee has served the Presbyterian Church for 39 years in a multitude of ways. He was commissioned on a “dark a stormy night” in 1976 to serve as a missionary in Nigeria.
He served there for 16 years as a parish minister and then as deputy clerk of the Nigerian Synod and as Africa liaison for the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He returned to Canada in 1992 and was appointed director of Presbyterian World Service & Development, the relief and international development arm of the PCC. He has served or is still serving on the boards of many international church coalitions including ACT Alliance, Kairos, and the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance. He has been a driving force for HIV and AIDS awareness in Canada and in churches around the world. Since 2006, he has headed the Life and Mission Agency.
We have all been called to Christian ministry, he told the assembly after the court adopted a minute of appreciation for him. “Individually we are called to exercise our ministry through one denomination or another, through one vocation or another, at one place or another. When such a call is accepted I believe there is a responsibility. It is a responsibility to loyalty, to dedication, and to being true to the vows that we take. Yes, we follow one Lord and Master. But we choose to do this through a fallible institution. The institution that we are finding ourselves in is not perfect. But we have this thing, a faithfulness to that call.”
“The world needs the church. The world is yearning for the church,” he said. “Our task is to share life, hope, peace, joy, and above all, love. For through that, Jesus will be known.”
Additional Motions
As the assembly drew toward its close, some commissioners moved additional recommendations that were endorsed by the court.
Rev. Samy Said from the Presbytery of Montreal asked that the assembly “urge individuals, congregations and presbyteries to respond to the pressing need for resettlement of vulnerable refugees through sponsorship.”
He spoke of the need of families in Syria, saying he receives prayer requests and calls daily from families who are in dangerous situations and don’t know what to do. “We have to do something,” he said.
In response to the debate around new members of the Committee on Church Doctrine, Rev. Alex MacLeod asked that the committee “be urged to add Rev. Jinsook Khang as an additional member at the first available opportunity.” The assembly agreed with the motion.
Special Committee on End of Life Issues
In response to an overture that asked for a summary of the church’s position on euthanasia and physician-assisted death, the assembly created a special committee to work on a report and present it by the end of the weekend.
The convener noted it had been 18 years since the church’s last statement or work on end of life issues. In addition to the summary, which was adopted, the court agreed the Committee on Church Doctrine should undertake a study of the issue of physician-assisted death. It also agreed the summary should be sent to each congregation, accompanied by a letter of pastoral concern from the Moderator, to serve as a resource for conversations.
Special Speakers
The Assembly also heard from the Young Adult Representatives, 19 youth who presented a skit and a video about the assembly and some of their thoughts on faith, God and the church.
Also addressing the Assembly were three students from each of the church’s theological colleges. To watch the YARs’ skit and student representatives’s presentations, visit the assembly livestream page.
