Presbytery Meetings
160th Stated Meeting
Tuesday, November 12th
First Presbyterian Church, Cleveland
Dear Friends,
I am looking forward to seeing you all at the presbytery meeting on November 12 at First Presbyterian Church, Cleveland. At this meeting we will express our gratitude to PK Kim for his leadership as moderator this past year and install Doris Thomas as our moderator for 2025. We have worship with one another, new members to receive, a budget to approve, workshops where we will gain resources, ministries to celebrate and thanksgivings to offer as well as prayers for healing and recovery for those still dealing with disaster clean up. We will seek to do it all with love – the love we promise to serve our people with when we are ordained and installed as ministers and elders. Indeed, as we approach Advent, remembering our promise to serve with love is fitting. This year we have reflected on our commitment to serve with energy, intelligence, imagination, and now love. God created, redeems, and sustains us and creation in love. Jesus Christ took on our flesh and came to us as a vulnerable newborn and then died and rose again in love for us and all creation.
What do you think of when you promise to serve and pray for the people with love? Where have you seen another demonstrate that love in community, in worship, in pastoral relationship? As we prepare to receive again the one who came to us in love, may we reflect on the way have lived into our promise to love, the way we witness to that love in all that we say and do.
We will not have quizzes and chicken bag prizes at this meeting, but there will be some community fun and gifts of love. You’ll have to be there to experience the surprise!
Grace, peace and LOVE,
Wendy
2024 Presbytery Meetings
Saturday, February 10th – Zoom Only
Tuesday, May 14th – New Providence Presbyterian Church
Saturday, August 10th – John Knox Center
Tuesday, November 12th – First Presbyterian, Cleveland
Who Attends Presbytery Meetings?
The presbytery is the council serving as a corporate expression of the church within a certain district and is composed of all the congregations and ministers of the Word and Sacrament within that district. The presbytery shall adopt and communicate to the sessions a plan for determining how many ruling elders each session should elect as commissioners to presbytery, with a goal of numerical parity of ministers of the Word and Sacrament and ruling elders. (G-3.0301).
How Many Elders?
The Presbytery’s formula for determining how many elder commissioners attend from each congregation is based on the size of the congregation.
- Membership of 1001 to 1500 members = 3 commissioners.
- Membership of 201 to 1000 members = 2 commissioners.
- Membership of 1 to 200 members = 1 commissioner.
- Additionally, elders serving on the Coordinating Committee not serving as church commissioners, Commissioned Lay Pastors, and a representative from the Presbyterian Women of the Presbytery all are given a voice and vote at each meeting.
Who Can Vote?
All elder commissioners, those additional elders noted above, and all minister members of the Presbytery have privilege of voice and vote. Ministers serving within the Presbytery, but whose membership is in a different presbytery are recognized as Corresponding Members and have privilege of voice, but not vote.
A Very Brief Guide To Parliamentary Procedure
The presbytery is responsible for the government of the church throughout its district, and for assisting and supporting the witness of congregations to the sovereign activity of God in the world, so that all congregations become communities of faith, hope, love, and witness. As it leads and guides the witness of its congregations, the presbytery shall keep before it the marks of the Church (F-1.0302), the notes by which Presbyterian and Reformed communities have identified themselves through history (F-1.0303) and the six Great Ends of the Church (F-1.0304) (G-3.0301).