General Assembly 2025: Reflections and Take Aways
What to say about the 150th General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church in Canada! Well, first and foremost - Happy 150th Birthday PCC!
Season 2, Episode 13 of the Ministry Forum Podcast featuring the 149th Moderator, The Rev. Patricia Dutcher-Walls
Our thanks to the 149th Moderator The Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls for her generous service to the denomination this past year - if you’d like to hear more about her reflections on the year that was, I’d encourage you to check out our Ministry Forum Podcast episode with her. Congrats and our prayers for health and vitality to the Moderator of the 150th General Assembly The Rev. Jeffrey Murray who moderated humbly and graciously - setting, perhaps, the tone for this year’s gathering. I really appreciated that he included his chaplains, The Rev. Dr. Emily Bisset and Brian Neilson in the closing prayers for each sederunt.
If you want to read the reports and review the recordings of the sederunts, you will find everything here.
Hope and Possibilities for the Presbyterian Church in Canada
We hosted a We Need To Listen General Assembly Edition (today - June 12 - as I write this message) - I wanted to get a sense of what stood out for people who attended or watched online.
Not surprisingly, the Narratives of Hope and Possibility was high on the list. I think we came away from the conversation (and GA) tenaciously clinging to the hope that change is possible. Maybe that’s just me. I think communication will be key - the Commission will need to be able to communicate effectively and regularly with the widest cross section of the PCC.
Each of us has a role in this - whether you are a minister, lay person, elder, or past commissioner, Presbytery Clerk, etc… the message must get out to The Church if we have any chance of it being a meaningful journey that will result in transformative and lasting change for our structure, leadership, and resources. We will need to commit the members of the Special Commission to our prayers both private and public. I actually think that it would be most helpful for there to be a resource produced to be shared with congregations that liturgically ‘commissions’ the Special Commission (in absentia) and prays for their work. A Summary of the Report was created for GA - if that could be revised and the names of the Commissioners included along with a brief commissioning liturgy I think our congregations could feel closer to this “narrative” that is going to be written over the next two years.
New Support For Presbyteries Coming Soon!
For those who still know what “the B side” means, I caught a few unique items of note that I’d like to share.
First, the Clerks of Assembly recommendation to create a role of Interim Moderator Assistant will be coming to Presbyteries under the Barrier Act this year. This may help address the demands of many of our clergy in Presbyteries where there are more vacancies than Interim Moderators available. I certainly hope it will as that reality is true for almost all of the Presbyteries across the PCC at the moment.
Authentic Christian Pilgrimage
Second, the International Affairs Committee report included a recommendation on “authentic Christian Pilgrimage” to the church to inform and guide visits to Palestine and Israel.
At Ministry Forum we are often promoting pilgrimage as a spiritual practice. As someone who many years ago participated in a congregational trip to “the Holy Land” I can honestly say that such a resource would have been helpful in our discernment of what kind of experience we were looking for. I imagine it would have been a very different tour. The resource can be found at the Alternative Tourism Group (ATG)’s site.
The IAC offers the following explanation in their report:
“The Alternative Tourism Group (ATG), a Palestinian NGO established in 1995, specializes in tours and pilgrimages that include an in-depth examination of the history, culture and politics of what is often called “the Holy Land”. It has long recognized the Israeli intention to erase or disassociate Palestinian life and history from tourism. This group holds as central “the creation of economic opportunities for the local community, positive cultural exchange between host and guest through one-on-one interaction, the environment and political/historical education.”
ATG has worked tirelessly to end exploitative mass tourism and to adopt practices that positively affect the host population. To that end the group has developed a Theology of Pilgrimage: Listening to the Living Stones as well as a Code of Conduct for tourism in the Holy Land, which can be read here.”
A Recommendation for Truth & Reconciliation
And finally, the Life and Mission Agency recommended that congregations, presbyteries, and other courts of the church be encouraged to study the findings of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, Kimberly Murray and especially take note of the 42 Obligations she issued.
This 1341 page report seeks to fulfill the mandate which states:
“The Special Interlocutor will identify needed measures and make recommendations for a new federal legal framework to ensure the respectful and culturally appropriate treatment of unmarked graves and burial sites of children at former Indian Residential Schools and associated institutions.”
If you are looking for more resources and study materials, you are invited to check out the Indigenous Justice page of the Social Action Hub of the PCC. As this Sunday is designated National Indigenous Peoples Day and June is National Indigenous History Month, it may be appropriate in your context to pass this encouragement along as well as celebrate and recognize the many contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples. This was especially noticeable throughout the Assembly as several Indigenous ministry leaders played key roles in speaking, singing, and praying into the gathering from Young Adult Representatives (YARs) to National Indigenous Ministries Council (NIMC).
Thank you PCC Community!
It was great to share time with friends, colleagues, and make new connections. There were so many first time commissioners. It was fantastic to see how many of them came to the microphones and participated - that too spoke to the spirit of this year’s gathering. I think people felt safe to express themselves and people were treated with respect and grace. And a shout out to the YARs who made their presence known and offered a meaningful contribution to the court through their report. We look forward to seeing you in the Greater Toronto Area next year for GA 2026.