Day 9

My choir director at First UMC LaGrange asked me to be on the lookout for any good music. Today there was a good one – from the musical, “Rent” – “Seasons of Love”. Very good, and the choir that did it, from 1st UMC of Plano was very good. The sermon was by our Bishop Jung with the title “Jesus, Remember Me”. Jesus said to the others on the cross – you will be with me in Paradise. He did not ask the others on the crosses, “Have you been good?”

There is a theme or “Vision Pathway” most days of the conference that is in the worship book. I will catch you up:
Wednesday – Opening Service of Word & Table
Thursday – “Transforming Existing Congregations”
Friday – “Developing New Congregations”
Saturday – “Strengthening Clergy and Lay Leadership”
Sunday – “Eliminating Poverty in Community with the Poor”
Monday – “Teaching the Wesleyan Model of Reaching and Forming Disciples”
Tuesday – “Reaching and Transforming the Lives of Children”
Wednesday – “Ending Racism as We Authentically Expand Racial/Ethnic Ministries”
Thursday – Memorial Service
Friday – Morning Worship and Closing Worship

Two good comments today about legislation: “Kicking a dead horse harder, don’t make it run any faster.” “I am so methodical and cautious, I might find myself on an escalator, waiting for it to start.” And then there was, "As long as Catholics keep marrying Baptists, there will always be a United Methodist Church."

At the morning break, there was a continuation of the witness from, and reaction to, yesterday’s hurtful votes that continue our institutional discrimination. Many of those that were hurt by the votes came into the hall and formed a cross in the aisles, facing the delegates, and silently stood as the pain was described. Bishop Talbert spoke about the 1939 racism (the creation of the Black Central Conferences), and the parallel today with our policy of exclusion. I later learned that he did that on his own, and was not part of the plan - but as it turned out - very welcome. We were invited to go to the communion table that was draped in black and place a piece of black cloth on it and pray for those harmed and in pain. We then sang a couple of hymns and it was over – very dignified, painful, respectful, prayerful, and the right thing to do. We will press on. At the end, a group of Bishops went out with them and said that they were going to meet and see what could be done.

We then had 17 constitutional amendments to consider – all that would change the name of conferences outside the US from “Central” to “Regional”. There was a motion to have only one set of debate on all 17, and the presiding Bishop asked the house, and we agreed. But, he also said that since they were constitutional amendments, and needed a 2/3 approval vote, that we would have to vote on them individually “because of the constitution.” I got up and appealed the ruling of the chair that we could not vote them all at once, and just record the same number vote for each one. He conferred, then asked me where in the constitution I was looking – I told him – and he conferred again with the 2 parliamentarian bishops that were helping him as well as the petitions secretary and the secretary of the General Conference for a while, and then came back and said I was right. He asked the house if they wanted to vote on them all at once –they agreed, and we eventually were able to take one vote instead of 17. Probably saved ½ hour - likely more.

Well, the fat lady has sung. The Book of Discipline will be codified in 2012. 12 years from when Rod and I first got it to a General Conference, and it will happen. Actually the 2012 Discipline will probably really look different and the real benefit won't be till 2016 when there are no real changes. It passed on consent calendar B05 by an 824-29 vote just before 10:00 am today. As of 8:13 am there were still 117 individual petitions to go.

Bill Gates Sr. spoke this afternoon about the Nothing But Nets (NBN) program that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is helping. He quoted John Wesley a couple of times, using the "All the world is my parish" line to emphasize that it is the world's will to end Malaria, not just in the US. "People are dying, we can save them." Last week when the NBN program was presented, the Bishop making the presentation used a basketball as part of his visual aids. The Kansas delegation offered $420 for the basketball because they won the NCAA basketball and they challenged N Carolina, Memphis and California (UCLA) to mach or beat it. Well, as of tonight the bidding for the ball is up to $75,000 (I forget from where), and during his speech Bill said that he had heard about this challenge, and that his foundation would match the winning bid. They have also said that any losing bids should pay too, and I think we are up to a total of about $400,000 and climbing. NIC is involved, but I will let others share how, and how much. (We are not the leading bidder) Suffice to say, First UMC LaGrange will be accepting donations for those of us going to Annual Conference in June to bring with us. Oh yea, he was a pretty good speaker too.

Somebody asked for a ruling from the Judicial Council about one of the petitions and something about Local Pastors being able to choose if they want to be part of the clergy pension system. It was read fast, and asked about a conflict between two parts of the Discipline. All I got was that it involved calendar item 866 - I think.

At 7:30 p.m. - the start of the evening session - went till about 10:25 p.m. - they announced that there were 99 petitions left to go. They told us by the petitions committee coming on stage and starting to sing: " 99 petitions on the floor to go, 99 petitions to go, you talk about one, amend it and then, 98 petitions on the floor to go. . ." Then one of them interrupted and said, "I move to reconsider", so they went back to "99 petitions . . . "

I lost count of how many times I got up tonight - 3 or 4. Each time with a question or parliamentary question. The one about the constitutional amendments that I described above was one. Then tonight we had a another CA that had legislation linked to it for the book of discipline. They were starting to amend the linked petitions, and I pointed out that the Constitution says (I KNOW what it says since Rod & I wrote it 4 years ago) that you pass the CA first then immediately consider the linked stuff. I did rub it in a little when I said that this is the rule, but it is not in your Discipline since we passed 4 years ago. Some were saying to divide the question, and I said, no, it already is divided by the Constitutional requirement. I miss not having Rod & Dan next to me to help tell the Bishops what to do.

Since I had been up a few times tonight, at the end, we were looking at another CA that I think is really bad law, and I wanted to move it to the Book of Discipline, and the Bishop was looking right at me, and would not call on me. We ended up passing about 25-30 CAs that will need to be approved by an aggregate vote of all of the annual conferences at their 2009 sessions. The bad one is: "a new paragraph, somewhere near p5 - "All official organizations, groups, committees, councils, boards, and agencies of The United Methodist Church shall adopt ethics and conflict of interest policies, applicable to both members and employees, which embody and live out our Christian values." My proposal would have been to move it to paragraph 807 and add, as one of the duties of CF&A (top finance group of the UMC) an additional duty to "establish and publish policies that may be used by All official . . .".

It passed 744-86, and I voted for it so that I have the option tomorrow - if I can find some that agree - of moving to reconsider to move the above action. I may not do it, I will have to see how things go. As I found out tonight I may need to save my times of speaking to times when it really matters.

This evening the Bishops (16 of them) that had gone to meet with the witnesses from this morning. I read a report that was very positive. It will be in the DCA tomorrow, and may be on the UMC website. A couple of things that I noted were that the UMC is broken, and that faithful people disagree about things.

We will see. Peace to all, Jack