A key day of the 227th General Assembly will be spent out in the community

GA planners say the Presbytery of Milwaukee and its partners will help determine what Community Day will be

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

The last time a General Assembly undertook an event like Community Day was at the 223rd General Assembly (2018), when marchers sought to end cash bail in St. Louis. (Photo by Danny Bolin)

LOUISVILLE — An innovation in store during the 227^th General Assembly, which will be held online and at the Baird Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 23-July 2, 2026, will be Community Day on Saturday, June 27.

According to Kate Trigger Duffert, director of General Assembly Planning in the Office of the General Assembly, the additional in-person day was added to the docket of the assembly in response to feedback from commissioners and advisory delegates to the 226^th General Assembly, held last summer online and in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“This feedback expressed the importance of time for community building, connecting with online committees and engaging more with the broader church,” Trigger Duffert said.

Initial discussions have begun, she said, with the host Committee on Local Arrangements for the Presbytery of Milwaukee, but just what form Community Day might take — a march, a protest, perhaps an educational gathering — has yet to be determined.

An event like Community Day hasn’t been held since the 223^rd General Assembly (2018) in St. Louis, when Presbyterians marched to end cash bail and raised more than $47,000 to bail people charged with misdemeanors.

“The addition of Community Day is a beautiful opportunity for the church to come together during the assembly,” Trigger Duffert said. “It has been such a gift to refine the online committee/in-person plenary format with the wisdom of input from participants, feedback from partners and the experience of the 226^th General Assembly. My hope is that GA planners can continue to discern how this day can bring together the church as a community of faith and action.”

The Rev. Dr. Dave Davis

“The addition of a Saturday Community Day to the schedule for GA227 creates time and space for relationship building, outreach and service action, worship and the formation of new connections,” said the Rev. Dr. Dave Davis, Moderator of the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly. “The concept of the Community Day has developed as members of COGA joined with the Stated Clerk and the GA planning and implementation staff in a broad debrief of GA226 and a deep review of the evaluations of all GA226 attendees.”

The timing of Community Day — it’ll be held following three days of online committee days on the day after most commissioners and advisory delegates arrive in Milwaukee — “is a reflection of the theology that undergirds our polity,” Trigger Duffert said. “As committees come together to form one discerning body in plenary sessions, participants will gather in person for the first time as one body, united in worship, witness and care. This will only serve to strengthen the discernment of the assembly as they begin their business the next day.”

The morning of action will be open to all GA attendees. Whatever form it takes, it’ll be “an opportunity to deepen relationships and the sense of community,” Davis said, “while being shoulder to shoulder as the Body of Christ with our siblings in Milwaukee.”

COGA’s “first priority related to General Assembly has always been the experience of the elected commissioners and the business that is before them,” Davis said. “After the committee work is done virtually, commissioners will arrive in Milwaukee and have time to be together and share a meal in committee before the start of the plenary portion of GA.”

Ministry Connection will be another GA227 feature that wasn’t available during the last few assemblies, mainly owing to time constraints. While it won’t be a traditional exhibit hall, it will give assembly goers the chance to connect with organizations related to the PC(USA) as well as PC(USA) agencies and entities.

“The Community Day concept will also allow us to take advantage of the physical space available to us in the areas surrounding the plenary hall,” Davis said. “In that space, the broader community of the PC(USA) will be able to gather. Agencies and other Presbyterian-related entities will have the opportunity to have a presence and participate in a ‘tabling’ time.”

Worship in local congregations will occur the day after Community Day, with the initial plenary completing the Sunday schedule.

Kate Trigger Duffert

“Those who participated in the GA226 evaluation process expressed a desire to worship together at the outset. The thought at the moment is to explore outdoor worship” before scattering to worship in local PC(USA) churches, Davis said.

Trigger Duffert said part of the reason GA planners are able to respond to feedback, add a Community Day and adjust the schedule to accommodate what many people are asking for “is because we are doing the same format two assemblies in a row, which we haven’t had since 2018.”

It is a gift we are able to do this kind of refinement because we have the same format,” she said. “We can continue to build and reflect and make amendments to the plan without having to make a new plan.”