Steve Yamaguchi – My Favorite GA Skateboard Evangelism Story

At the GA meeting we got to meet many wonderful people doing great ministry. We heard stories of effective new ministries. Here is a link to a video of one of my favorite GA stories. It’s about skateboarders and a First United Presbyterian Church – maybe a church like yours.

Pastor Karen Rogers to her congregation:  You’ve been asking… “Where are the youth? Where are the youth? And the youth are right out in the parking lot. You keep shooing ‘em away, ’cause you don’t want ‘em skateboarding around here.”

You can watch this video and others like it at “Grow Christ’s Church Deep and Wide”

http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/evangelism/

Steve Yamaguchi – First Post-GA Post

Thank you for your prayers. Those of us at the General Assembly meeting in Minneapolis sensed the Holy Spirit at work among the commissioners, helping people move through difficult issues with grace and respect. The moderator and vice moderator did an excellent job of maintaining decorum, light heartedness, effectiveness, and efficiency.

Other news headlines are tending to be confusing again. I encourage you to go to one of these two resources to get more accurate news:

• the PC(USA) news source for the 219th GA
• the Presbyterian Outlook online [this is an independent news service, i.e. not officially PC(USA), but desires to serve the church and tries hard to be objective and accurate]

Our commissioners from Los Ranchos were excellent. They provided leadership and good input in committees and on the floor of the assembly. We finally got to enjoy dinner together on Friday evening. They are all tired and rightly so. We are traveling home now so we are in planes, airports, and cars. I am in the Minneapolis airport lobby and I can see Keith Geckeler from here where my laptop is plugged in.

We will be posting more news as we get home and have better access to computers and internet. We are filled with thanks for a good assembly. Nothing cataclysmic happened, and lots of wonderful ministry got highlighted. New friends were made and reunions were enjoyed with old friends.

Thank you for your prayers and comments and notes throughout the week.

Steve Yamaguchi – the news gets it wrong again

The Wall Street Journal leads the way this time in misrepresenting the actions of the General Assembly. You can find a photo of the front page of Friday’s Wall Street Journal here. Just a reminder that after every General Assembly at least some of the news services get the story wrong. It may be that they try to sensationalize because that sells, or it may be that they don’t understand the thoughtful and deliberate process by which Presbyterians do things. My guess is that the process is misunderstood, which leads to the temptation to sensationalize. In either case, those of us who were at the GA meeting urge you to read the news headlines with a grain of salt. We hurried out of the convention center to airports and airplanes. We will be posting more as we arrive home.

Steve Yamaguchi – Grateful & Gracious Response from our Jewish Friends

Kathy Sizer’s work in her committee was excellent (see her post below). My dear friend, Rabbi Marc Dworkin, Executive Director of the Orange County Chapter of the American Jewish Committee, just sent me this information about the AJC’s response to the General Assembly’s action on the Middle East.

Here is a link to the complete response from the American Jewish Committee: AJC Welcomes Presbyterian Church Middle East Stance. I include portions of the response here (underlines are mine):

July 9, 2010 – New York – AJC welcomed the more nuanced stance on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict adopted by the Presbyterian Church (USA) at its 219^th General Assembly in Minneapolis.

“Despite intense pressure, the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly rejected the calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel,” said Emily Soloff, Associate Director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations for AJC. “A measured and just approach to this complex conflict cannot allow exclusive blame to be placed on one side. The civility with which Presbyterians reached their decisions in the wake of passionate argument on different sides of each issue is impressive.”

In a joint statement, the Jewish organizations stated:  “In recognizing Israel’s security needs while striving to remain faithful to the church’s Palestinian Christian partners, the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has embraced a more thoughtful approach to Middle East peacemaking. ….. the General Assembly has modeled a more inclusive voice on the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  We fervently hope that the new Middle East monitoring committee will meet the GA’s charge for authentic balance in the study of and teaching about the complexities of the Middle East. We will remain partners in this pursuit.  The parties to the conflict deserve nothing less.”

Steve Yamaguchi – Good Moderators & a Good Spirit

I am very positively impressed by the moderators. The GA Moderator, Elder Cynthia Bolbach, and her Vice Moderator, Rev. Landon Whitsitt, are very skilled moderators. That is so helpful! The debate has been full and fair. People have their say, the body does not get tripped up. The assembly even handled a motion for a substitute motion without confusion. Thanks for your prayers for them. They are a blessing.

The spirit of the commissioners and delegates is positive. They had a “Speak Out” opportunity (15 minutes of open mike) this evening and they were effusive about what a positive experience they were having with each other, under the leadership of their committees, and at the hands of the very hospitable Minnesotans. The commissioners recessed EARLY for both their afternoon meeting and their evening meeting. I think that is partly due to the good moderating, partly due to the good spirit of the commissioners, and MAINLY due to the Holy Spirit moving through the assembly.

Steve Yamaguchi – Here We Go

We are here in Minneapolis, in the Convention Center, in the plenary hall, just getting started. Thanks for your prayers. Here we go. God be with us.

Steve Yamaguchi – Joyfully Anticipating GA

The Association of Executive Presbyters has been distributing a daily prayer reflection. The series is called 40 Days of Prayer. My offering was posted on Day 26 (it was also posted on the PGF blog).

Today’s reflection, Day 38, “Like the Big Tent, Except the General Assembly” was particularly refreshing for me. I was at the “Big Tent” event last summer (along with Keith Geckeler, Sara & Jim McCurdy and others). The Rev. Dr. Erin Cox-Holmes is the new EP in Donegal Presbytery (Lancaster, PA) and she gets the story just right. I wanted to share her offering with you today:

Like the Big Tent, Except the General Assembly

Last year at this time, I covered the PC(USA) National Multicultural Conference for the Presbyterian News Service at the first-ever Big Tent event. Picture it: the swirl of ten simultaneous partner conferences; amazing worship; John Calvin leading a procession to the park. The run-up to the conference was filled with dubious mutterings: the registration process was bulky, the economy ensured numbers would lag. But the experience surpassed expectations: the biggest gripe I heard was that the staid Healthy Ministry (COM and CPM) conference was lodged right next to our much more exuberant Multicultural group, and at times they couldn’t hear themselves talk.

What was positive about it wasn’t the talking anyhow: it was the sheer relief of being together to focus on the many things that bind us together as Presbyterians – the touchpoints. “Like General Assembly, without the business” is the shorthand synopsis that emerged. Gerard Manley Hopkins calls it “the dearest freshness deep down things.” As Presbyterian people of faith, we’re hungry for what is deep down. What links us is our shared passion, the growing of mission-shaped congregations, our sure conviction that we are the hands, feet and pocketbooks that God uses to care for the least of “these,” including and especially those who have names we cannot pronounce, who live in countries we would be hard-pressed to locate on a map.

The Big Tent concluded with that grand procession to Olympic Park. We were celebrating the birthday of the PC(USA), marked with rack upon rack of PC(USA) sheet cake. I ended up  behind the tables helping to dish it out. There were napkins, but no forks, so proper Presbyterians were getting icing all over their not so stiff upper lips.

And there were also, playing in the fountains, hundreds of the children of Atlanta, skimpy bathing suits barely covering a glorious multicultural diversity of skin tones. The news of free cake spread like it was gospel: pretty soon seemingly all the children of Atlanta descended upon us to get some. And, from the diversity of icing colors on their upper lips, some were sampling all of the flavors of cake.

Here’s what is wonderful about being Presbyterian: the grownups with the PC(USA) nametags stepped back and let the bathing suit crowd scamper in ahead of them. Some of them, repeatedly.

The only person who made a fuss about repeat visits was the caterer, and Presbyterians handed him cake too, and told him to enjoy the sight of children getting more than their fill. Everything that links us was captured in that one moment.

We certainly are being stretched – frayed – by the controversies that we currently cannot resolve, and the toll the conflict takes. But we also are stretched by new ways of vision. You might have suspected, watching the celebration in the park that “Let them eat cake”” was a mandate issued by the Bread of Life.

Prayer: O Living Bread. O Fountain of Life. O swirling source of all that is abundant, and flavor-filled, and beautiful in diversity, grant to us, we beseech you, a General Assembly in which we remember to celebrate what binds us together. May we be more linked by mission, than divided in our contentions.  May we pause to notice children prancing in parks. When we give our post-Assembly reports, may we find occasion to say, “We prayed and talked about difficult things. But, you know what, we also shared some cake. And it was good cake, too.” Amen.

Rev. Dr. Erin Cox-Holmes
Executive Presbyter
Donegal Presbytery

All – Welcome!

We will soon be posting commentary from our Los Ranchos Presbytery Commissioners, YAD and Staff to the 219th General Assembly.

July 3-10, 2010