Day 5

It is only 9:00 p.m. and I am writing this, so you are probably wondering what is wrong. Nothing. In the past, the General Conference started a day earlier and Sunday was a day off. As I have told you there have been a lot of special events at the beginning. We started Wednesday evening at 6:00 pm, which was unusual since starting just after lunch was more customary. But by starting that late, and then not having our first meeting of the legislative committees till late Thursday afternoon, and not really looking at petitions till Thursday night, it didn't feel like we had done anything yet. So, now it is Sunday, and we are still looking at petitions in committees. The whole 1000 person plenary passed a few petitions today. We passed consent calendar A01 with 10 petitions on it; B01 with 6; C01 with 14; and D01 with 5. Consent calendars are: A - Discipline change for adoption; B - non-disciplinary change for adoption; C - any item for rejection; D - any item for referral. We had to pass some individual petitions that committees had approved because they included adding money and the budget will need to be either increased or something cut.

The agenda had time from 10:30 - noon for passing legislation. Since many committees are still working a motion was made to have that time be in committees. It passed. The the conference staff came back and said there was a problem - the pages, marshals and interpreters were not scheduled to be in the committees till this afternoon. So, I guess it is definition time:
Marshals - they are volunteers that are kind of like doormen, gatekeepers, etc. Everybody has a badge with a color on it. Delegates are Red and can go anywhere. Bishops are Purple and they can go anywhere, and more. Alternates are Brown and they can only go onto the floor of the convention only if a delegate is absent, and they have a permission slip. The marshals are at all of the entrances to the plenary floor - wrong color badge, and you don't get in.Pages - they are volunteers that will get messages to people, make copies, find somebody. Basically runners and gofers.

Interpreters - the plenary sessions are simultaneously translated into several languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, Mandarin Chinese, German, and I think Russian. When we break into committees an interpreter either is in a booth in the back and the delegate wears a headset, or they sit right next to them and interpret as we go.So keeping to the agenda is important so that all of the support staff is in the right places at the right time.We ultimately re-voted and left the agenda alone.

Tie today - Autographed baseballs.

The sermon at worship was by Bishop Minerva Carcano and she was very good. There was another good anthem - "God's got the Whole World" by Mark Miller.
There were presentations about Strengthening the Black Church Initiative and a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Central Jurisdictions. (More about that at lunch below).
One of the guys from my committee asked for a ruling from the Judicial Council about several petitions in our committee. The constitution says that the JC makes their own rules about procedures. But there are petitions telling them how to do things about their organization, I think about paragraphs 2607 and 2608. We should get a ruling in the next day or two.

Near the end of the morning there was a motion to not use the word "defeat" - like in a motion was defeated, etc. I guess the implication is that defeat is a military term and we are not trying to defeat each other. Obviously a new delegate. Anyway, it passed 517 - 262.

Two terms that came up in our committee that we are trying to get into the Discipline are schlepping and cobble together. One of the attorneys from the general church Irene Howard was with us for a while last night when we were working on paragraph 2701. She likes what we have done, and said that was a confusing paragraph and appreciated our re-organizing of it.

Harriet McCabe is the chair of the Presiding Officers committee. Every plenary session has a bishop presiding with two others sitting behind for parliamentary and other support. Every morning she is on stage announcing who will preside at each of the sessions the next day. Starting tomorrow there should be 3 sessions each day with a different presiding bishop at each. They try to get the ones that are good are running meetings when they know controversial stuff is coming up.Before GC I had 1560 pages of pre-conference stuff to read. We get an update every morning that includes petitions passed by committees and consent calendars. Consent calendars are printed 24 hours before being acted on. They pick up the page numbering from the pre-conference stuff. We are up to page 2052.

At lunch I went to the park across the street from the Convention Center to a lunch and discussion about "Racism and Heterosexism in the Church". Rev. James Lawson (former president of the SCLS) and Rev. Gil Caldwell (co founder of BMCR) were the speakers. The lunch was sponsored by Soulforce - their logo is the faces of Ghandi and Martin Luther King.

Caldwell talked about his father being at the unifying conference of 1939 when the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Church South and Methodist Protestant Church merged. At this time the Central Conferences were formed. These were conferences for black churches. He said that they "exchanged slavery for segregation"; talked about "serial isms - Race-ism, Sex-ism, heterosex-ism." He closed by saying "When they came for the blacks, I did not speak up. When they came for the women, I did not speak up. When they came for the gay people, I did not speak up. When they came for me - there was no one left to speak for me."

Lawson said that after 1968 when the central conferences were abolished, people needed some else to marginalize, and some turned from black to gay. Some people think that religion is ABOUT Jesus, not OF Jesus. He noted that you "can't be anti sexist if you aren't anti racist." All isms teach that there is not one creator or all. The creator only created those like me. Others are outside of the grace of God. A slightly shorter day - but very busy.

Peace to all, Jack