Day 10 - Finished at Last and My Trip Home

Even though I am writing this Monday evening, I will start on Friday.

I went to a wedding today. Susan Laurie and Julie Bruno had a wedding in the park across the street from the convention center. It was a beautiful day in Ft. Worth and the ceremony was very nice. One of the things that we did not accomplish at General Conference was allowing this ceremony to be held in side our churches with our clergy officiating. Maybe next time.

One of the traditions of General Conference is cookies. Churches from all over Texas baked cookies and put 2 or 3 into a bag, sometimes with a note. The bags were put out on tables in the lobby for all to eat at breaks - sometimes they can turn into a lunch. I saved a note: "A gift from The China Spring United Methodist Church - Waco District." On the back is Matthew 19:26 - "With God all things are possible". I think I heard that there were over 100,000 cookies baked!

I just added up all of my expenses, and on a couple of the receipts, it says: "20 oz Draft - $10.00" The dinner at the convention center was $10.00 and the cash registers were set up for all kinds of events, and it was probably easiest to hit 1 button for a $10 charge - it just looks a little unusual.

Tie today was Dilbert (maybe that was Thursday - this is the problem with not writing it the same night).

Friday was jam packed with stuff, with the wedding just one of the highlights. The opening worship had special music sung by Barbara Johnson Tucker. There was also a special jazz dance by the worship director that was very good. Sermon by Bishop Hope Morgan Ward - quote from it: "We have so many writers because we have so much to explain," and our question as we leave GC should not be "What did you do?, but what did you learn?"

I learned that there are a whole lot of very nice people that can have very different ideas about things.

After passing the last of the consent calendars, as of 9:30 am we had 68 petitions to go.

Of the 1308 petitions done as of Thursday evening, the plenary only disagreed with the committee on 14.
There are 145 interpreters working/volunteering at GC. In case I did not mention it before, they are simultaneously translating into: French, German, Portuguese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, and ASL (American Sign Language).

The budget was passed Friday morning on 11 separate votes. One of the ways that they arrive at the budget number to use is looking at the total giving of all local churches - $17,970,240,568 - almost $18 billion, and the amount for the General Church budget is 3.572% of that or $641,897,700 for the next 4 years. They had an economist explain the formula, and even my MBA from the University of Chicago didn't prevent me from being confused the way they use past performance and project future giving. I don't think it is voodoo economics, just more confusing than it needs to be.

As of 10:30 am the final bid for the basketball used in the nothing but nets promotion was $80,000 by West Ohio. With Bill Gates Sr. matching that, and bids from other annual conferences, the total is at about $428,040. Northern Illinois needs to raise $40,000 - about $100 per church to bring to Annual Conference in June.

During the discussion of the Episcopal Fund part of the budget someone from the SE Jurisdiction moved that if you cut a Bishop you get to keep the dollars saved in your Jurisdiction. At some point I asked if a bishop dies (since the Fund covers the cost of current and retired bishops) do we get the money? Somewhat tongue in cheek, but the point I made is that there is a significant cost to pay for expenses of the retirees.

There was a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Social Creed. It started in 1908 (duh) with a list of 11 Social Reforms, notably about child labor. Harry F. Ward from Chicago was one of the 3 that worked to get it in place, and it was passed at the General Conference that year in Baltimore.

4:05 p.m. - 55 petitions to go.

We passed another constitutional amendment, that may be the biggest one yet. If I am reading this one right, it will overturn JC decision 1032. It is Article 4 and removes "without regard to race, color, national origin, status or economic condition" and leaves behind, "All persons who seek relationship in Jesus shall be eligible to . . . become professing members in any local church. . ." It passed 558-276 - 67% (it needed 2/3 approval to pass). By my count that is 2 votes more than needed. Now it, and about 30 other constitutional amendments, need to be passed by 2/3 votes of all Annual Conference members voting next year. This - if it ultimately passes, plus the Judicial Council elections are probably the two biggest things to happen this year.

The Judicial Council came back with two rulings - it did not have time to finish them, and they will be on the October docket.

At 9:45 p.m. - 29 petitions to go.

The complete re-write of paragraph 2701 that my little 7 person sub-committee worked for 2 days on passed a few minutes later.

At 10:34 p.m. - 17 to go.

At 11:13 p.m. - we finished ! ! !

The closing worship was short - about 1/2 hour, but (we are United Methodist) still had a sermon. Greg Palmer (Iowa) - "Buoyed by Hope." (The theme of the whole conference was "A Future with Hope", so Hope was a common theme throughout. He spoke about the parable of the seeds from the perspective of the sower. We need to sow the seeds of life everywhere - they will not all work, but we must sow everywhere." Very good closing.

One final note about the worship and music. Marcia McFee (worship) and Mark Miller (music) led us through the whole conference, and it was amazing. Mark is one of the most talented musicians around. He is the director of Music at Drew Theological School in New Jersey and a lecturer at Yale. BA from Yale, and Masters from Julliard. An outstanding person and musician. Marcia has a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Liturgical Studies, and has worked with Dave Brubeck Quartet (among others).

There were plants on the stage, and throughout the convention area. The plants were from seeds collected from United Methodists across the global connection. They were planted by churches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and people were invited to take them home to nurture.

As part of the worship, we used the Wesley Chalice, sent to Francis Asbury at St. George's in 1785 and The Asbury Bible, a pulpit bible belonging to Francis Asbury.

It's all about the people. As I was leaving, I stopped in one of the offices to talk to, and say good by to, Janet Stephenson from Iowa. We talked for a couple of minutes, and when I got outside, I had missed the bus. I waited with a volunteer from Fort Worth who was working as a proofreader of the verbatim transcription. She was driving to one of the hotels on my bus route, parking for free and riding the shuttle to the hall, thus saving $7/day parking. She recognized my name since I had spoken a few times. Worship was over at about 11:45, and I got back to the hotel at about 1:00 am - we were the only 2 on the bus. That is when I could not log on, and why I am writing this rather long missive on Monday night.

There is life after General Conference - I got back to work today, logged on, and found 212 emails waiting for me.

Thank you again to all of you that have been reading these sometimes rambling, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always heartfelt reactions to the daily events of a General Conference. Only two more conferences to go this year. Northern Illinois Annual Conference in June at St. Charles, IL, and the North Central Jurisdictional Conference in July at Grand Rapids, MI.

With your prayers, thoughts, and comments supporting me, I have Hope for the Future.

Peace to all, Jack