Blog 10 Last Day! May 2, 2008

Well the “queer” question has generated lots of responses.  In short, it is reported that this is used by the younger folks (thus showing my age) for people who self-identify as “questioning” the categories of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered etc.  Some say it is an effort to reclaim a hateful term.  For a longer list of responses, check out yesterday’s blog 9 and just below it hit “comments.”

 

Today was a sprint to the finish line.  The budget was adopted with relative ease.  Shocking how easy it is to vote for $642 million over 4 years.  They have a very interesting and complicated formula for how they arrive at that number, but it was explained and everyone voted it in.  All attempts at amending it were met with booing and crushing “no” votes.  We passed all the “financial implication” petitions by Monday, so the Finance Committee could re-work the budget during the week.  No one was in the mood for changing their hard work on the last day.

 

Then the crunch began.  We worked through petitions with people getting increasingly grumpy….I ended up with the night shift on the floor suffering through the inefficiency an minutia and I was getting grumpy too.

 

Today was an amazing day for my petitions.  I brought one about a Constitutional Amendment to allow the GC to mandate a “conflicts of interest” policy for the Judicial Council.  You may remember that went down in flames in committee 50-0, because people thought it was unnecessary.  Well, who knew the general council for the church (ie Big Lawyer) had recommended a petition requiring All Groups and organizations of the church to have Conflict of Interest policies.  Sure enough, it came up today and passed and along with it my idea…even though my petition was crushed.

 

The second petition I brought was the “Conflict of Interest Policy” for the Judicial Council.  Well, it was referred to the Judicial Council Sunday, I submitted a brief to keep it alive Tuesday, and on Wednesday they read the result where the Judicial Council ruled it unconstitutional…citing the paragraph of the constitution I had tried to amend with my first petition that died.  Apparently it was necessary.  So, two out of three of my petitions were dead, but one of the ideas lived on.

 

But there is more good news!  The new President of the Judicial Council has requested copies of the unconstitutional petitions, because they want to use them as a starting point for adopting their own conflict of interest policy.  The problem was that the GC could not mandate them, but the new members of the Judicial Council—the sane ones we elected Monday–recognize that they need one.  And, now there is constitutional support for them to do it.  So, two dead petitions, but two ideas moving forward.

 

But there is more!  At 11 pm sharp Friday night, the last day, at the time we had set to finish, with only 5 petitions left, an Amazing Moment occurred!  Up on the floor came my last petition.  It had failed in committee 27-17, which meant it was not on the consent calendar.  But, I had long since lost track of it and I assumed it had died days before.  Furthermore, we saw statistics today that showed of the 1,800 petitions presented to the General Conference, 98% of the time the plenary agrees with the committees’ recommendation to accept or reject.  Only 18 of 1,800 were passed with additional amendments from the floor.  And only 3 times out of 1,800 had the plenary reversed a committee’s recommendation.

 

Well there was my sorry little petition that would require Judicial Council members to have been members of the UM church for 4 years before they could be elected.  Currently the Discipline makes no specification for Judicial Council, but requires persons to have been a member of the UM church for at least 2 years to be elected to serve as a delegate to General Conference.  My rationale was that it is a bigger responsibility to serve on Judicial Council than to be a delegate, so it should require more years.

 

Well, I stood up and spoke for the allotted 1 minute stating my rationale, and low and behold it passed!  It became number 4 all week to reverse the committee!  It was my first and only speech this year on the floor of the General Conference and I made it count!

 

So, three petitions presented, two voted down but the ideas passed in other forms.  And one snatched from the jaws of defeat at the last moment.   Yeah.

 

They had closing worship scheduled for 11:15 pm. I decided to quit while I was ahead and get back to finish this blog and go to bed!  I fly out in the morning and I am ready.

 

Well, next week I may do a summary blog…to be determined.  But for now my work is done.  Thanks for your interest!

 

May God richly bless you, your family, and your ministry!

Day 9, May 1, 2008

Started out to be a pretty mundane day following all of the excitement from yesterday.  The morning worship and early session went on with business as usual.

 

Then at 10 am—as negotiated between the bishops and the protestors—the protest began.  A large group of maybe 150-200 persons protested the exclusive votes against homosexuals.  They came in quietly wearing mostly black with black arm bands.  They filled the middle isles, which formed a cross.  When everyone was in, they stood and sang, “Where you there when they crucified my Lord.”  Notably, they only sang the first three verses, which included, Where you there when they crucified, when they nailed him to the tree, and when they laid him in the grave.  They did not sing the verse about resurrection.

 

Many of us in the gallery stood in support of them.  Most of our KS East delegation stood with many other delegates as well, including about a third of the bishops.  Bishop Melvin Talbert, retired African American Bishop also made a powerful speech correlating this to the 1939 decision by the General Conference to segregate the church by race.  The difference he said was that at least African Americans were in the church, LGBT people are excluded. 

 

The protestors then invited delegates to take black veils and drape the cross on the communion table in the center, very much a Good Friday theme.  The presiding bishop then told everyone that 12 bishops would continue meeting with 12 representatives of the Reconciling Ministries Network.  Our Bishop Scott Jones did not stand in support of the protest but agreed to be one of the twelve.  At the end, he walked down with the other 11 Bishops and they joined hands with 12 protestors around the communion table.  We then sang another song which I cannot remember.

 

You can see the complete video of the protest on your computer:  Go to Jan and Stephanie’s blog:  http://stephandjanatthegc.blogspot.com  Or you can go to my blog and their link is on there.  You could also go to www.umc.org and find it on there…but you will have to look for it.

 

There was one interesting and surprising piece during the protest speeches.  In all of their literature the Reconciling Ministries has included LGBT—which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgendered.  This in itself rubs a lot of conservatives because it expands the issue of homosexuality to include other categories of people.  Well, during their speeches during the protest they added another letter “Q” which stands for “Queer.”  This has led to lots of conversation on two levels…First, what is Queer? Many understood that to be pejorative?  Second, many interpreted that we are seeking support an ever expanding list, and a list that is confusing.  If there is anyone reading this who can shed any light on “Queer” it will be greatly appreciated…and I will pass it along.

 

Afterwards we had a potty break and back to business as usual.  I admit it feels a little crass each time at General Conference that we check the protest off the calendar and get back to work.

 

Then the afternoon ground to a crawl as the conference began to review 23 petitions for Constitutional amendments.  These petitions were brought by study teams to look at the world-wide nature of the church.  All of these create flexibility in the church structure that will allow significant restructuring of the international church.  The short version of this is that the US church is divided into 5 Jurisdictions while the international church is organized according to “central conferences.”  This would potentially allow for a less US-centric structure.  This will only be relevant if the study team brings a new design to the 2012 General Conference.

 

Humorously, we adopted 22 of the 23 which made it stupid not to do the one.  So someone moved to reconsider it, which we did and then it passes.  Something like 6 hours of legislation time with no guarantee that the study team will make any changes in 4 years. 

 

The world-wide nature of the church is critically important because the General Conference delegates are currently 26% of the total.  This will change dramatically in four years when the Ivory Coast is admitted into full connection.  So in 2012, the estimates are that a full 40% of the 1,000 delegates will be from outside the US.   By 2020 the US delegates will be less than ½.  The international growth of the church is going on exponentially while the US and European churches are shrinking.

 

The conference is fascinating because simultaneous translation is being offered in at least 7 languages, including (I think) Russian, French, Portuguese, Swahili, Spanish, and others.  Ironically there is no translation offered for Texan, which has left more than one of us scratching our heads.  All the international delegates wear headphones and dial in the language they want to hear.  It is powerful when an African stands up and speaks in French, then they cut to the microphone of the translator who then speaks to everyone in English.  It really is very cool.  Some of you may remember that this is our dream at Trinity to offer worship in Spanish.

 

Only 1 more day!!!!  Yeah!!!  I can’t wait to see my family.

Day 8, April 30, 2008

An historic, painful day.  The morning was pretty ho-hum, but right before lunch the first petitions about human sexuality began to arrive on the calendar.  The first substantial one was a petition that originated in the Kansas East Conference, which says we must condemn homophobia.  The highlight of this debate was someone saying homosexuality was from the devil which prompted one gay individual to start a devil’s anonymous group.  The resolution passed just before the lunch break on a vote of 60%-40%.  Remarkably, some 400 people think homophobia is ok, but it passed nevertheless.

 

After lunch, it became more painful.  We debated for 2 ½ hours whether or not we would retain the language that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”  The committee successfully removed it on a vote of 39-27 with a laboriously written paragraph as follows:

We challenge all members of our community of faith to commitment, integrity and fidelity in their sexual relationships.  We know that all are God’s children and of sacred worth; yet we have been and remain, divided regarding homosexual expressions of human sexuality.  Faithful, thoughtful people who have grappled with this issue deeply disagree with one another; yet all seek a faithful witness.  We continue to reason and pray together with faith and hope that the Holy Spirit will soon bring reconciliation to our community of faith.  The fire in our arguments points to a deeper human mystery than we know.  We believe that the Spirit has brought our collective conscience to acknowledge this mystery more honestly, and to make our claims with greater humility before God and our neighbors.  We therefore ask the Church, United Methodist and others, and the world, to refrain from judgment regarding homosexual persons and practices until the Spirit leads us to new insight.  In the meantime, let us seek to welcome, know, forgive, and love one another as Christ has accepted us, that God may be glorified through everything in our lives.

This paragraph was defeated 55%-45% on the plenary floor or by about 75 votes.  We went back to “incompatible” with no recognition that we are not of one mind.

 

This is inconceivable to me.  I do not know how we cannot admit the truth, that we do not agree.  Some of the speeches were eloquent and passionate some were….well let’s say less eloquent.  Several gay delegates stood and introduced themselves to the conference as such.  Several persons from Africa appealed to what the Bible says.  It was unclear until the results went up as to what would happen.  I think everyone on both sides was surprised by the outcome.  I think people thought it would be closer or even pass.

 

There was a deep sense of brokenness and despair on the losing side.    Many broke into tears.  All of the supporters, both on the floor and in the viewing area stood in solidarity.  Everyone just wanted to leave, but instead we had to wait 20 minutes while the secretary read the decision of the Judicial Council that said all of my petitions were unconstitutional…it just prolonged the pain.

 

When we came back from dinner, the conference voted to retain the pastors’ authority to decide membership.  This is a pretty complicated issue and the speeches were compelling on both sides.  I was on the floor for this part and I voted to let anyone join…mostly because I prefer the problems that stance poses to the problems of exclusion.  This failed to pass by 12 votes out of 950 or so…very close.  I guess I don’t feel too bad about that one because I could go either way, but for some it was another hit.

 

We finished the night by voting 67%-33% to retain the exclusion of Gay and Lesbian persons from ordination.  Many in the gallery stood and sang “Jesus Loves Me” during the proceedings as a protest.  Many of them wore veils.  There was very little joy from anyone.  I believe the conservatives are not enjoying “winning” anymore than the liberals are enjoying “losing.”  But this is the state of the conversation right now.

 

Our delegation spent over an hour until midnight talking about how we can change the nature of the dialogue.  Four of us guys stayed up until 2 talking about the same thing.  We are so locked into the fight that we are getting nowhere.  At one point a woman pointed out that both the left and the right spoke against a compromise, and they both lost.  There is just no compromise here. 

 

I have a lot of thoughts about that, but it will have to wait another day.  I am probably more annoyed this year than sad.  Last time I was really sad.  This time I think we had a window of opportunity to move towards the center and both the left and the right botched it with the all or nothing tactics.

 

I had a very productive lunch conversation with a very conservative pastor from Atlanta.  We really had a profound talk, shook hands, and thanked each other for the conversation afterwards…we need more of that…

 

The protests are slated to begin tomorrow.  Pray Church…Pray!

Day 7, April 29, 2008

Full day again today.  We were up early, started worship at 8 am…the sermon was awesome…and right on time.  We had an ecumenical celebration this morning and in part to honor the vote we took to enter “full communion” with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA).  This means that we fully recognize one another’s theology, ordination, etc.  We are not merging, we just say we really like each other.

 

The preacher was the president of their denomination, Mark something…I don’t remember his last name, but that first part sticks with me.  Anyway, he brought a great message about rooted-ness and how memory is valuable for framing the future, while nostalgia is a misrepresentation of the past that stifles the future.  Really fun and meaningful.

 

We then went back to our Methodist ways of hours of minutia.  We adopted a new national vision statement:  Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.  I think each of the 1 thousand delegates tried to amend it to their better liking, but alas all attempts failed and here it is.

 

We spent a lot of time trying to agree on a formula for how many bishops the shrinking United States needs while the growing African Countries are calling for more.  Lots of hyperbole…some of it couched in some regional bitterness between the more conservative and vastly larger southern areas and the vast, but smaller and more liberal western areas.  Distrust proved to be too slippery a slope for a decision so we referred it to a committee to study for 4 years…this was our action on the recommendation that came from the last study committee when we couldn’t decide four years ago…so, nothing.

 

All the homosexuality petitions are rumored to be heading to the floor of the conference tomorrow.  We will see.  My guess is that there will be a softening of the “incompatible with Christian teaching” language and probably a “we disagree on this issue” statement.  But the issues of gay marriage and ordination will no doubt continue to be defeated.  There seems to be a more conciliatory tone to this conference.  This should not be mistaken for a wash of liberalism…but a genuine feel for getting along.  If this proves true, I have several ideas about it, but that blog can wait until we see how things pan out.

 

The Judicial Council has not yet announced their ruling on the constitutionality of General Conference mandated recusals for them.  That should come tomorrow.

 

The highlight today was the president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf came and spoke to the Conference.  This was really a big deal.  Security started taking over the building at noon.  At 3:55 pm they locked down the entrances and exits to the building.  She is a lifelong United Methodist, educated at a Methodist high school in Liberia (far west Africa) and has a masters from the JFK school at Harvard.

 

She gave a great talk over 45 minutes and had about 20 standing ovations.  After she was done, she stood and shook all the Bishops hands…which took so long we thought maybe we should have done away with a couple when we had a chance.  They unlocked the doors and turned us loose for dinner.

 

Since there was nothing pressing after dinner, besides 4 more hours of legislation ranging from…and I am not making this up…passing a petition that adds a comma to the Book of Discipline…to dropping another couple of million dollars over here for some critically important initiative in a developing country…a couple of us reserves managed to find our way to the ballpark to watch the Royals beat the Rangers 9-6.  It was nice to be outside and unwind.  Turns out, we ended up sitting next to some delegates from North Georgia.  We got back to the hotel the same time as the delegates and we had an hour’s worth of discussion about coming legislation…that meeting ended at 12:15.

 

It was also good to get out tonight because there will not be any more time for breaks until this is over around midnight Friday.  Discussions of money and sex are on their way to the plenary floor…

 

More tomorrow…

Day 6, April 28, 2008

Full day today.  We were up early, started worship at 8 am…the sermons are on a downhill slide…I look for someone to step up soon. 

 

HUGE NEWS!! We had the elections for the Judicial Council this morning.  The super-conservative group Good News was endorsing two incumbents…and neither was elected!  It was unbelievable.  The entire Judicial Council is back in the hands of reasonable people.  This represents a major backlash against this group that so dubiously broke faith with the denomination by allowing a pastor to deny a gay man membership in the church.

 

We tried not to gloat after the elections, but people were all amazed at how overwhelmingly they did not win.  So decisive the vote, one of them made the 6^th alternate (like we need 6?)  And the other one did not even make that.  Wow!

 

We spent 15 hours today in plenary with a shortened lunch and a shortened dinner break.  We had a deadline of dealing with ALL petitions that had financial implications by this evening.  Then the finance committee met at 11:15 pm to construct a budget.  Apparently we are having trouble staying within the $642 million cap…we even postponed a petition that would have required us to stay under it…just in case.  I spent about 4 hours on the floor this evening filling in for one of our delegates…the fatigue is incredible and you have to do a rotation to be able to think clearly.

 

Lots of petitions, motions, amendments, questions, points of order, etc.  It was Robert’s Rules of Order heaven…or hell…depending on your theological leanings.  We ended today on page 2,050…that is not a typo…and we are only on day 6!

 

Also, my petition to require the Judicial Council to recuse themselves from conflicts of interest was referred to the Judicial Council to review its constitutionality.  So, I had to write a Judicial brief today to say why I think the petition is constitutional.  They will hear the case tomorrow and probably announce their decision by Thursday morning.  Is anyone concerned that this is the only judicial administration in America that does not have a recusal policy?

 

Please note I have added two blog links on the right panel of the blog page.  One links to Jan Todd and Stephanie Seth’s blog…they have pictures of conference.  And Eduardo Bousson has a blog that he is doing by video.  He’s a pastor in Atchison and my roommate here.  If you are receiving the emails, you have to log onto my blog on the webpage to view thier links…sorry!

 

I will keep you posted.

Day 5, April 27, 2008

A good decision to sleep in this morning.  I have now had 2 good night’s sleep.  The first split over 3 days and 1 last night.  Apparently the sermon this morning was pretty good…but I was losing focus.  I did say a prayer for Trinity this morning as is my habit whenever I am absent.  I trust Dr. Holland had things well in hand!  Thanks Dad.

 

My lobbying efforts paid off and my petition to require the recusal of Judicial Council Members when faced with a conflict of interest passed 33-9.  It cost me a trip to the ballgame, but I have been working on this petition for two years, so I could not afford to miss the final meeting.  Now it goes forward on the consent calendar!  Yeah!

 

In an intriguing twist, a member of the Judicial Administration committee (the committee I have been in and is considering all of my petitions) stood up in the plenary of the whole GC and referred this issue of recusal to the Judicial Council.  The Judicial Council must rule on the constitutionality of this issue in the next couple of days and will report back.  If they rule that the Discipline cannot mandate recusal, then my first petition about the constitution, which went down in flames yesterday 50-0, becomes central to the discussion!  So, I will have to gather 10 signatures to pull it off the consent calendar so it can be discussed on the floor of the whole GC.  If they rule that the Discipline can mandate recusals, then this dead petition can stay dead.  Confusing?

 

In some big news the Church and Society voted out the controversial language in the Discipline that says, “Homosexuality is incompatible with Christian Teaching” and replaced it with a very well written statement that says we are still conflicted over the issue of homosexuality, so we will continue to love everyone.  It passed in Committee 39-27.  It remains to be seen if this is a strong enough majority to hold up on the floor of General Conference.  We will not know until mid-week.

 

Tomorrow morning begins the voting for the Judicial Council.  This is the most hyped issue this year.  Will the incumbents be reelected or will the GC put in some fresh faces.  The voting starts at 9:20 am, so pray early and often that we can get some new people on the board!

 

There are some of the committees that are still meeting as I am writing this.  Some will probably go until 1 am or later.  Tomorrow is going to be a marathon start to finish.  We will spend about 12 hours in plenary…

 

More tomorrow…

Day 4, April 26, 2008

Another very long day!  To start there was a Race for the Cure downtown when we got up and Starbucks was swamped beyond our ability to wait in line…then our back up coffee shop was closed on Saturday.  This began the day with a scent of desperation as I have had about 1 good night’s sleep split over 3 days!  But alas, I found good-enough coffee and a bagel…otherwise I might have just turned around and gone back to bed in despair.

 

Eduardo Bousson let me sit on the floor of the Conference for him during the morning session.  I wanted to sit down there while we were all wearing our KU National Championship shirts.  I have sold 38 of 40 shirts that I brought, so we had a great contingency.  Then, Bishop Jones made an announcement challenging the conferences from Memphis, North Carolina, and California to match our delegations’ contribution to “Nothing but Nets” a national effort by the church to buy life-saving bed nets for children in Africa to protect them from Malaria carrying Mosquitoes.  We will hear tomorrow if they will accept the challenge!

 

Another rockin’ great sermon this morning in worship….please note I have logged 4 sermons and 6 ½ hours of worship…not to mention about 17,000 songs…mercy!  Bishop Bill Hutchins of Louisiana rocked the house talking about remembering our baptism and getting excited about our faith.  Then to business…apparently someone stole the Bishop’s gavel from the podium, so an appeal was made for its return.  Then we had more reports that could have been shorted from 2 hours to like 30 minutes!   Then we went to a nice Mexican restaurant for lunch.

 

Phone-gate is heating up here.  Apparantly the Good News movement did purchase phones for select international delegates.  One group called them out and Good News claimed they were just trying to help them…which absolutely no one believes.  Anyway, there was an appeal for the ethics committee of the GC to review it.  The motion passed and then some people wondered aloud if there even is an ethics committee of the GC.  Who knows.  People are really fired up about this attempt to manipulate the international delegates. 

 

Then, back to our committees.  Well, I was very optimistic yesterday about the progress on my 3 petitions about the Judicial Council.  The first one was a Constitutional amendment that allowed the General Conference to set some organizational procedures for the Judicial Council.  Well, they misrepresented the point, and it went down in flames with the record so far in our committee…it lost 50-0!  There have been other unanimous votes, but none with everyone there.  I feel like I am contributing to the unity of my group.

 

Then, less than 20 minutes later someone gets up and raises the question of the constitutionality of the proceedings and referred exactly to the paragraph I had cited.  No one caught the irony—because only a sub-committee of 5 had even read the petition.

 

Then my second petition which requires Judicial Council members to be members of the United Methodist church for at least 4 years was cruising along until a very influential person…who I like and could have smacked…got up and spoke against it.  It failed 27-17…which is the most contested vote on any petition.  I feel like I am contributing to the divisiveness of my group.  This one will come on the floor of the whole conference, so I will try to substitute in for another member of our delegation so I can try to save it at the microphone.

 

My third petition sought to provide for recusals of Judicial Council members in the face of conflicts of interest…like every other court in America.  This one endured a grueling re-write and went from 4 short paragraphs to an astonishing 3 pages!  Verbosity is the kiss of death for petitions…so I have only guarded optimism that it will survive.

 

Both KS East and West had a combined dinner with our Bishop and his wife.  Then we had 4 more hours of committee work.  So…I am skipping worship tomorrow and sleeping in.  We have had 4 great sermons in a row…5 has never happened at GC and I cannot believe the string will hold…I need some rest.

 

The biggest bummer is there is a baseball game tomorrow afternoon…and it is supposed to rain…and my last petition that is hanging on a thread is due to be heard in the committee during about the 3^rd inning…so…the game is in jeopardy…

 

Stay tuned!

Day 3, April 25, 2008

This blog is dedicated to my wonderful wife Julie, who is home with our three boys, Daniel, Gabriel, and Luke.  She is the most awesome wife in the world to stay home while I run off to conference for 2 weeks.  What would I do without here?  I don’t know either, but it would not be pretty.  I love ya’ honey!

 

Well the third day was very long.  We started with worship at 8:00 am.  The music was great again…though we sing way too many songs!  Bishop Jaoa Muchada from Mozambique preached in Portuguese with a translator.  He was great.  He said we cannot transform the world if we ourselves are not transformed.  He also had the shortest sermon so far this week, and that alone should have earned him the standing ovation he received.

 

We then had nominations for Judicial Council—and this is a BIG deal.  You might remember that it was the Judicial Council who approved letting a pastor exclude a man from membership because he was a “self-avowed, practicing homosexual.”  Remember also that one of the JC members failed to recuse himself for conflict of interest and cast the deciding vote in favor of his clergy colleague from the Annual Conference where this took place.

 

Well, the Council of Bishops, in a VERY bold step did not nominate for reelection to the Judicial Council either this conflicted JC member nor another JC member who voted for this exclusion.  One would have to scan the history books to see if a sitting JC member who wanted reelection was not nominated by the Council of Bishops.  Very encouraging.  Of course they were both nominated from the floor…so it remains to be seen if the center of the church will hold them accountable for their actions.  The elections are Monday!

 

And, to add to the intrigue, apparently, the super conservative Good News movement has purchased ALL 250+ central conference delegates (those from Africa and Asia) cell phones to use during General Conference.  Allegedly so they can text message them who to vote for…during the Judicial Council Elections.  This is not all that surprising as they have already circulated their list of preferred candidates.  And, as delegates walk into their committees, the Good News hands everyone a list of every petition and how to vote on it.  (I am not making this up!)  How easy is that?  Even W could be a delegate here…but I digress.

 

Sooo, the sub-committee I am observing passed my two petitions, one requiring recusal for conflicts of interest by JC members and the other requiring JC members to actually be members of the UM church for 4 years prior to election.  A few more hurdles before they are passed on, but I am optimistic they will go on the consent calendar for almost certain final passage.  I won’t know until Saturday or Sunday.

 

Tomorrow is a big day!  Last week I emailed the whole KS East delegation and asked if we should all wear KU National Champions T-shirts together one day.  Everyone thought that was a great idea and asked me to bring the shirts for everyone…doh!  So I put 40 t-shirts on my credit card and I brought them down here and I have sold 34 of them so far.  We are all wearing them on Saturday (tomorrow)—Both KS East and KS West—and even the Bishop and his wife, and Bishop and Etta Mae Mutti, and two other former Kansas Bishops!  Should be a lot of fun.  Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

 

Bedtime!

Day 2, April 24, 2008

Blog 2

April 24, 2008

 

The second day began with 4 hours of sleep.  We did try a different coffee shop.  The coffee was not as good as Starbucks, but the scone was freshly made.  So what to do, maybe Starbucks and then the fresh scone…it’s hard work here…

 

So we started the day with worship.  It opened with the requisite banners, liturgical dancers…the bishops were more subdued, for which I was grateful.  Then, the liturgical dance ended with a concert-like light presentation and out from the back of the stage came the bishop to preach, emerging like a rock star.  Now there was no smoke, which would have been a nice touch, but out walks Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher.

 

Wow, she looked incredibly striking and is clearly the best dressed Bishop in the house.  She had the obligatory purple Episcopal shirt with the all white clergy collar.  But she was wearing a silver skirt suit, that almost shone like a lame’ that matched her silver hair.  She then proceeded to give a remarkably thoughtful sermon, highlighted by the quotation, “We must threaten this world with the resurrection!”  Which was not militant at all but drew a rousing round of applause.   Then they trotted out some male bishop, and bless his heart, they should have put him in a silver lame’ suit too, because he looked pretty darn drab following his colleague.

 

Then onto business.  We heard a looooong presentation on the new 4 priorities of the church: 1) Ministry to the poor, 2) Stamping out killer diseases, 3) Start new and revitalize existing churches, 4) Develop transforming leaders.  I liked the presentation and I am guardedly optimistic that it might help focus our church.  Two hours!  The best part of this is that our delegation is sitting in the very front, so every time they need a crowd shot for the 5 video screens hanging in midair from the rafters, it is our folk, who were not caught sleeping or picking their noses, which we on the sidelines were worried about.

 

They also mentioned that in the next quadrenium, 2009-2012, UM churches worldwide will collect $28 Billion.  Eighty-five percent will stay local, with the rest going to world wide missions.  They are proposing a $642 million budget for the church for those four years, a 1.2% increase.  Big numbers.

 

Then we heard the first ever young people’s address.  An hour long presentation from 6 20-somethings about their view on the church…that Rocked.  They were the first one’s to actually say the church is divided over homosexuality.  The day before we had sensitivity training about how to be open minded about gender and race…and sexual orientation was disturbingly absent.  But the young folks hammered it home nicely.  Then we went to lunch.  Then back for another hour speech from the lay representative…which I am sure was great, but I skipped…look, we had just heard 5 straight hours of talking…how much can you take in?  And people think I talk too much!

 

Then we went to legislative committees where they divvy up the 4,000+ petitions.  We elected officers and went to dinner…BBQ…which was not as good as Gates.  Then back to legislative committees where we elected sub-committee chairs.  My committee is Judicial Administration.  It is the smallest committee with only 60 delegates and a little over 100 petitions…none of which we dealt with.  Instead we got to know each other and divided into 7 sub-committees…that took 2 ½ hours…and we were done for the night.

 

It was day, and it was night, the second day.

Day one April 23, 2008

A little long for the first day…

 

To begin, our entire delegation’s thoughts and prayers are with Yvonne, Hazel, and Nancy, three members of our delegation who are not able to be with us.  They have all had illness or illness in the immediate family and were not able to attend.  We are thinking about you!

 

I arrived late last night and as I got off the elevator at the hotel was delighted to be greeted by our whole delegation, all in good moods.  Since I made the hotel reservations I have had this recurring nightmare that I would show up and be greeted by an angry mob of Kansans in the hotel lobby with no rooms anywhere!  But alas, everyone was checked in and ready to go.

 

The General Conference (GC) staff notoriously treats GC as a 1,500 person conference with the requisite hotel rooms.  Well, they are only counting those who absolutely have to be here.  This is really a 3,000 person conference and consequently there are people staying 8-10 miles away.  That does not seem so bad except it runs from 8 am to almost midnight many nights.  Our hotel is a refreshing 4 block walk away from the convention center.

 

Today was slow with registration and orientation.  There were several meetings to step in and out of.  I did manage a Starbucks for breakfast.  The convention center has a dome at the center, seats probably 9,000 at capacity.  The seating has a floor area for the 1,000 delegates.  The stage is big enough for all the bishops (hundreds) and then there are padded stadium seats above and around in a horseshoe that seat all the visitors and reserves.  This a much better set up than the aluminum bleachers we all sat on in Pittsburgh.

 

Worship started at 6:00 pm with a bang.  There were an estimated 6,500 people in worship.  There was a huge processional of banners, dancers, and bishops…even some bishops dancing, unfortunately.  It looked like the start of the Olympics.  We sang every song in the world, some more successfully than others. 

 

Bishop Janice Huie of the Houston Area gave the sermon and she was AWESOME!  She is the current president of the Council of Bishops and she is really a leading voice in the church.  She reminded us that there are 1,000 delegates representing 11.4 million United Methodists in 128 conferences, in 48,000 congregations, in 50 nations, on 5 continents.  I wrote that part down, and I may still not have gotten it right, but something like that.

 

She talked about the special interest groups dividing our church, some who believe they have cornered the market on “righteousness”.  But, she reminded us of Paul’s message that all fall short of the Glory of God.  She also talked about “marshmallow faith” that looks good and tastes sweet, but when it gets too close to the fire, it drips off the stick onto the ground and burns up.  We have to have real faith in Christ.  Wow.

 

So after 2 hours of inspiring worship we went into 3 hours of meetings!  We really know how to spoil the moment.  We spent almost 2 hours adopting 64 pages (literally) of rules for General Conference!!  What?  Then we spent another hour of announcements and mind splitting minutia.  Then the rain stopped long enough for us to walk back to the hotel for a brief delegation meeting.  Then some of us stayed up until 1:30 talking about homosexuality.

 

More tomorrow…Keep praying!