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Wednesday May 17 2017
We will be providing daily updates from the Assembly Hall. Feel free to get involved in the debates by contacting us through Facebook, Twitter or email. A live webcast and video archive of the proceedings, along with full reports and key speeches, will be available through the General Assembly area of the Church of Scotland website.
Read our interview with the Moderator-Designate, the Rev Dr Derek Browning.
Here are our summaries of the reports to the Assembly
If you're a General Assembly newbie, you may want to check out our Beginner's Guide.
Here's what happened last year, and a dip into the archives to the Assembly of 80 years ago.
The retiring Principal Clerk to the General Assembly, the Very Rev Dr John Chalmers, told this year’s final session that he hoped issues around human sexuality would not hang over his successor the way they had over him.
He said that it had followed him ‘from the day and hour I set foot in this office… sometimes the elephant in the room, sometimes the bull in the china shop’, and that he hoped he had dealt with people on all sides of the debate fairly.
Adding that he had always tried to find a way forward in disputes ‘through the power of talking and listening and mediating differences’, he said: “I hope over this last few years we have crossed the line to find ways of living together in our differences.”
Thanking the staff and people he had worked with, he added: “I will be forever grateful for the honour to serve the church in this way.”
The Moderator, the Rt Rev Dr Derek Browning, told Dr Chalmers: “The Church feels you are ours, you belong to us, and you have made us feel we belong to you… the whole Church is in your debt.”
Dr Browning told the Assembly that he had valued the prayers of all the Commissioners and delegates: “Without prayer, none of us is anything. With prayer, we have a world to bless in the name of Jesus.”
He gave his final ‘word of life’ reflection on ‘love’: “Love is an act of defiance, the foundation of our church, the past, present and future of the church. It’s not Christianity’s sole property, but our faith is predicated on love.”
The Lord High Commissioner, Princess Anne, in her closing speech, said it had been ‘a pleasure to listen’ to the Assembly, although she claimed it was ‘intimidating… your standards are very high’. She added that her word of life was still ‘love’ and that she hoped commissioners would take that away with them; and that the relationship between the Lord High Commissioner and the Assembly was ‘a very important link’: “Together we represent everything that’s good about this country and the way the Church works.”
Report: Church extends 'open hands, not clenched fists'
Silence for Manchester victims
Tribute to the Very Rev Dr James Weatherhead.
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