GA Committee assignment

During the GA, there will be several committees discussing very complex issues. Some of the issues to be discussed include the following:
Civil Union
Social Justice
Interfaith Relations
Peacemaking
Middle East
Church Growth
Theological Issues
as well as several other issues.
The committee I have been assigned to is called Form Of Government or the FOG committee. For those of you that are not familiar with the Presbyterians government it is very similar to the US government structure. Local government is the church and session (made up of Elders who help run the day to day operation of the church). The Presbytery is a regional governing body like our local municipality or county governments, the Synod contains several Presbyteries is like the state government and the General Assembly is like the Federal Government. The Presbyterian church has a book or rules and guidelines called the Book of Order. This has rules that govern how meetings are run, how to hire and fire pastors, defines the structure of governmental bodies and committees and many, many other details.

So back to the FOG committee. The goal of the FOG (Form of Government)Task Force was to revise the Book of Order (BoO) to make it less of an operations manual and more of a constitution. Therefore, it will be shorter with many more decisions being made at the Presbytery or congregational level. This sounds like a good idea but is pretty scary to many because the BoO has grown to such length because we don't trust each other to make good decisions. Also it has been my experience that the BoO is your friend when someone (a member) wants to do something outlandish. It is so much easier to say, "Sorry the BoO says I'm not allowed. Isn't it a shame." than to just say "no" against the political pressure that can sometimes be brought to bear.

Perhaps this committee sounds a bit boring and bureaucratic, it is actually quite interesting in that it could represent one of the biggest changes in the Presbyterian church government in several decades. It is supposed to be a peace plan to help us get along with each other better.