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06523 October 17, 2006
Micah 6:8 chosen as 2008 General Assembly theme
Focus on relationships with God, others will benefit church, COGA says
by Jerry Van Marter
LOUISVILLE - The Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) has approved a familiar passage from the prophet Micah as the theme for the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) two years hence in San Jose, CA.
"He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8, NRSV) will be the biblical focus of the assembly and its related activities, June 21-28, 2008, at the San Jose Convention Center in the heart of northern California's "Silicon Valley."
"Micah's list of core requirements focuses on three things," COGA said in a statement accompanying its decision. "Two of them sum up our relationships to people around us, and the third sums up our relationship to God."
Micah 6:8 is particularly apropos for the PC(USA) today, the group said. "As we struggle to rind ways to relate to one another, to honor the diversity in the Church, and to live out God's will in the world, Micah's words can serve as a guide."
A tentative, bare-bones docket for the 218th assembly returns the PC(USA) to the more familiar pattern of convening on a Saturday and meeting until the following Saturday. To accommodate the first-ever concurrent assembly with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America this year, the 217th General Assembly in Birmingham ran from Thursday to Thursday.
To provide more time for plenary sessions, the opening plenary will be in the morning rather than afternoon of the first day, June 21.
Worship times will vary throughout the week: opening worship will be Sunday morning, June 22; there will be morning prayer and evening worship on Monday, June 23; worship will be in the morning on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday (ecumenical worship service), June 24, 25 and 28, respectively; and the assembly will worship right after lunch on Thursday and Friday, June 26 and 27.
The midday worship - on the assembly's two heaviest plenary business days - "is an effort to try and make worship and work a seamless whole," said the Office of the General Assembly's Director of Operations Gradye Parsons. He said the idea was borrowed from the World Council of Churches, whose melding of worship and plenary business "improved the tenor of the WCC's deliberations."
As in the past, the moderator will be elected at the evening session of the first day of the assembly. Assembly committees will meet Sunday evening and for two full days, Monday and Tuesday.
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