Meeting Saturday for the sixth time, the 12-member Commission on the Unification of the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency — the Unification Commission for short — learned during an online gathering the timeline for the work ahead and shared some of the progress made by a pair of the commission’s four work groups.
The Unification Commission spent the bulk of its Saturday morning together divided into the four teams that will do much of the commission’s work over the coming months.
It took commissioners all day Friday, but by the end of the second day of Unification Commission meetings, the 12-member group had spread the considerable work it must complete over four teams: Governance, Financials, Common Mission and Consultations. Two or three commissioners volunteered themselves for each of the four teams.
During its monthly meeting, the Unification Commission went to school Saturday, receiving lessons on the histories of the Office of the General Assembly, the Presbyterian Mission Agency and, more recently, the Administrative Services Group. Members also took in a statistical overview of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other communities of faith.
Three churches in southern Indiana have separate focuses to their Matthew 25 work. But through a thoughtful process of establishing a cohort to strengthen each of the three ministry efforts, the three congregations — First Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, First Presbyterian Church in Columbus and Fairlawn Presbyterian Church in Columbus — have begun, in the words of the Rev. Kelley Jepsen, transitional associate pastor at FPC in Bloomington, “to think creatively, to dream more broadly and to find concrete ways to begin moving from learning into action.”
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s #GivingTuesday broadcast came to a close with a communion service from Austin, Texas, and presentations on churches and a committed mid council caring for immigrants and people without housing or enough to eat.