Meeting Saturday via Zoom, the Unification Commission voted to approve the formation a small task force to work with staff to review its charter “and all polity, process and procedural issues” related to the commission’s upcoming report to the 226th General Assembly next year and make recommendations to the Unification Commission at its next meeting, set for Jan. 18-20, 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky.
In a Sunday meeting that was a little hard for non-commissioners to follow because workgroup reports were kept private until the conclusion of the public portion of the Unification Commission’s online gathering, commissioners received a report on initial steps of unifying communications ministries of the Office of the General Assembly and Presbyterian Mission Agency.
On Saturday the Unification Commission took its first major step toward unifying the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency, combining communications ministries in the two entities as well as the Administrative Services Group. Their senior leadership has until the commission’s next meeting Nov. 12 to determine who will run the combined efforts and to whom that leader will report.
The Unification Commission had two main items for discussion during its Sunday meeting: what commissioners have learned after 17 consultations with various groups, boards and committees; and preliminary talks about what needs to happen ahead of the unification of the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency on July 1, 2025.
Dividing its time almost evenly between closed and open sessions on Sunday, the Unification Commission — which is working to unify the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency — voted to approve a timeline to complete its work by the 227th General Assembly in 2026.
Meeting online Saturday, the Unification Commission heard from three human resources experts in the Administrative Services Group — Ruth Gardner, Anisha Hackney and Rick Purdy — on how a consultant might be brought on to strengthen the work of the commission as it merges the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
On Saturday the Unification Commission, which is working to unify the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency, unanimously approved a 2025-26 Unified Budget Process that features the development of key unified priorities to help lead development, beginning in 2025, of a unified budget among the PMA, OGA and the Administrative Services Group.
Following an 8 p.m. dismissal on Thursday evening — which was the first day of what will be a three-day meeting of the Unification Commission at the Presbyterian Center — commissioners reconvened on Friday in closed session to continue their discussion around personnel and budget matters, on which no action was taken Friday morning.
“Defining what constitutes mission and how mission is funded and who has fiscal authority are fundamental questions that are beginning to arise for us,” said the Rev. Scott Lumsden, a member of the Finance Work Group within the Unification Commission, which seeks to combine the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
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.
