My friends in the Presbytery of Detroit know that I seldom agree with anything wholeheartedly, but “Save a tree. Kill an assembly.” sounds so real and true I thoroughly agree. I believe that people are less likely to read, comment upon, and study pages that appear on the internet and that it’s affecting the quality of participation at General Assembly deeply disturbs me. The work is simply too important to entrust to people who have failed to do their required homework. By the way, I have been a GA commissioner twice so I know and tried to live up to the preparation expectation. For those who made copies of their GA reports, I commend them but the copies made by individuals are more costly to the environment than the former newsprint-quality pages of GA notebooks. I suspect that the same phenomenon is true in presbyteries like Detroit that now expect commissioners to make their own copies or pay an annual fee for distribution and copies. Personally, were it not for the laser printer in our church office and an able administrator who regularly makes our packets, I would not have the hard copies because it takes too long on an ordinary printer. Also, while the presbytery sends out pages copied front and back, our copies are one-sided, thus using twice as much paper. None of us long to read the detail of any reports but we are more likely to do it when the actual paper crosses our desks. Thank you for drawing attention to the unintended consequences of an action that initially sounded good to me! Is an overture needed to change our system? Sent by regular mail. Gretchen Denton, interim pastor St. Paul’s Church Livonia, Mich.
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