216th General Assembly -- It's Saturday, and We Have A New Moderator

General Assembly Report - Saturday Evening



Our church has a new Moderator -- he is young, dynamic, exciting and on fire for Christ and the work of the church. He is an elder from Arizona, and at the age of 40, he is the youngest Moderator our church has had since -- well, nobody seems to know if we've ever had anyone this young for the position of Moderator!

In all honesty, I walked into the Saturday evening session a bit bored by the anticipation of tonight's election process -- three men were running for the position. There were to be three 5-minute nomination speeches, followed by the three candidates having another 5 minute each to give a speech, followed by 45 minutes of questions and answers.

The person nominating Rick Ufford-Chase appeared at first to be nervous. She even called her nominee "Nick" on one occasion, prompting a smile from the speaker and a bit of laughter from the audience. But I'm not sure she was as nervous as she was passionate and excited about her nominee, so eager to talk about her nominee that she kept stumbling over her words.

The other two nominees seemed to be outstanding people -- Moderators of our General Assembly always are outstanding leaders. But I think that Rick came across as extraordinary.

On the first ballot, Rick came in with the most votes, but not a clear majority (he had only 46% of the vote, followed by David McKecknie with 34% and Ptomey with 20%). On the second ballot, Rick won with 55% of the vote. Immediately following the election, he was installed as our new moderator and he will preside over the meetings for the rest of the week..

The primary duty of the moderator is to serve as the presiding officer of the assembly's meetings in the same way that a committee presides over a meeting of a committee in our local church. Of course, with 544 voting commissioners.

But there is more to the moderator than presiding over this week-long meeting. The moderator of the General Assembly will continue to serve throughout the months ahead as the ambassador, spiritual leader and pastor of our denomination. As we move from annual meetings to bi-annual meetings, Rick will be the first moderator who will serve for two years.


The Grace of Christ be with you...

The Rev. Dr. W. Maynard Pittendreigh
Senior Pastor
Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church
1400 Killian Hill Road
Lilburn GA 30047

www.pittendreigh.com