This year's General Assembly will have three matters of business before it that pertain to reforms that are needed to help us restore in practice what we hold in principle about giving voice to our sessions and congregations. The overtures are 02-16 which seeks an elected General Assembly Nominating Committee, and 02-36 which seeks to increase the number of voting elders at presbytery meetings. The third piece of business will come by way of a report from the Office of the General Assembly on the subject of granting vote to advisory delegates in plenary meetings of the General Assembly.

1. Ovr. 02-16: We need an elected G.A. Nominating Committee
The General Assembly Nominating Committee (GANC) is made up of sixteen members, one from each of our synods. Currently, the committee is appointed by General Assembly moderators. This may be the most powerful committee in the denomination since it essentially appoints hundreds of members of General Assembly entities each year, including the members of the GA-PJC, our highest church court, and the members of the General Assembly Council, the body responsible for carrying out the decisions of the General Assembly.

While the GANC receives requests for nomination from individuals and governing bodies, it alone makes the decisions about who will be nominated. Ostensibly, the General Assembly elects from the nominees presented by the GANC, but commissioners are presented with a slate that gives them no choice of candidates and they are provided with too little information to make a judgment about the qualifications of the candidates. Their only options are to offer a nomination from the floor, which the official body calls a challenge, or to give blind approval to the GANC's slate.

We in PPL believe that the nominating process in our denomination needs a major overhaul. Overture 02-16 is a good place to begin. The committee ought to be an elected body, as it is in our congregations. Election is consistent with our form of government. It would allow commissioners to nominate additional GANC candidates from the floor of the General Assembly. Adopting 02-16 would be of significant benefit to the church in transferring power out of the hands of the few into the hands of the many.

My presbytery is National Capital. The numbers are always in flux, but we have approximately 115 churches and 200 specialized clergy (clergy members of presbytery who serve in some specialized capacity and are not related to a session). Specialized clergy have a vote in presbytery. (My presbytery gives a vote also to elders who are Certified Christian Educators, which adds another specialized class, although that is not provided for in the Book of Order.) Each year, in order to balance the large numbers of specialized clergy, presbyteries allow churches to send additional elders until balance in clergy/elder representation is achieved.

Overture 02-36 seeks to amend the constitution to raise elder representation to presbytery of both small and large churches. The principle underlying this change is to increase elder participation in presbytery and to increase the voice of our churches in the business conducted by presbyteries.

This is another aspect of our church's life that needs a major overhaul. It is representatives from our local sessions that ought to be the primary decision-makers in our presbyteries. Specialized members, unattached to sessions, represent only themselves. Currently, they overwhelm many presbyteries, like mine. This overture benefits the church.

3. Response to referral: Advisory delegates and decisions at the General Assembly
Currently, the General Assembly gives full voice and vote in committee to advisory delegates. The 2001 General Assembly approved Amendment A (which would have removed the fidelity/chastity requirement for ordination) for a vote by the presbyteries. Amendment A emerged from the Ordination Standards Committee at G.A. as the majority recommendation. If advisory delegates had not been able to vote in that committee, Amendment A would have failed and would not have been the recommendation brought to the floor of the General Assembly.

General Assemblies are intended to be made up of an equal number of clergy and elder commissioners. In recent years, the Stated Clerk reports that advisory delegates--additions to the body without reference to a balance of clergy and elder--make up nearly 40% of the General Assembly. Their composition is youth advisory delegates, theological student advisory delegates, missionary advisory delegates and ecumenical advisory delegates. Ecumenical and missionary advisory delegates essentially choose the committee on which they wish to serve. The ecumenical delegates are not Presbyterian and are not required to meet our ordination standards. Currently, advisory delegates have voice and vote in committee and voice only in debate on the plenary floor.

Last year's General Assembly approved an overture from Genessee Valley Presbytery asking the Office of the General Assembly to study and report to the 2002 General Assembly the options for and against granting vote in plenary to advisory delegates.

Clearly the votes of advisory delegates already have the power to skew the outcome of a committee's work. And clearly they already have inappropriate influence on the General Assembly. As last year's overture points out, advisory delegates often have studied the issues and have a contribution to make to the discussion. But the very word advisory means that voice is appropriate, vote is not.

The church would benefit from a decision by the General Assembly to remove the privilege of the vote from all advisory delegates, and to honor their advisory contribution to the assembly by way of their voice only in committee and on the floor.

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