Julia Leeth, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Lompoc, California. Presbytery – Santa Barbara

The Layman is asking each candidate to identify the top five issues at the upcoming General Assembly, and share your position on each. (Answers are printed exactly as received – each candidate had a 500-word limit)

I pray the Assembly protects the traditional definition of marriage as supported by the Bible, the Book of Order, and the Confessions. I also pray that the Assembly will wrestle with the hard choices about how to love each other in the midst of the conflicts……

……While the nFOG gives greater flexibility in some areas, it does so at the expense of a framework we need to achieve our goals together. The nFoG is not sufficient to handle the larger problems we face……

……There are many potential obstacles ahead for our denomination and potential challenges if the mission overture is passed, but a commission may be the only realistic entity to wrestle with all the questions and circumstances that arise.

The one thing that is clear is that there is no obvious solution for its problem in the Middle East. The best thing, in order to walk humbly before the Lord, seems to be the overture recommending that the Assembly focus our collective efforts on offering prayer, supporting peacemakers, advocating a peace process, condemning all terrorism, and providing humanitarian assistance……

I pray the Assembly will maintain the Church’s current fidelity and chastity standards for officers……

READ MORE: http://www.layman.org/News.aspx?article=27124 [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]