GA 2010 afterthought

As a good Presbyterian, I usually enjoy going to the big meetings in Edinburgh. I was looking forward to this one too, but after three days I was thinking of ending things…it was so relentlessly budget driven and so little real vision and inspiration was obvious.
I maybe needed to look harder, or it hadn’t arrived with me yet. As already posted, the children saved the day for me with their sheer honesty and bluntness. Their participation turned the whole atmosphere of the GA on its head. At least for me.
There were the usual closing of ranks by committees, sorry – councils, when any one of them was seen to be under threat, and there was even a wee fankle about what to do with a motion to revisit the Westminster Confession. Might have been interesting to do that and actually define what ‘the substance of the faith’ really is… but with next year’s landmark GA on the way, another major controversy was not what the church needed.
Was it worth attending ?
Even with the bout of depression at the beginning, I’d have to say it was. Partly to meetbup with colleagues again, but also to hear the small stories of great things being done in the church, stories that really didn’t get the publicity they deserve probably because they didn’t appear in any report, but in the casual conversations about work in progress.