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
Monday, May 5, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
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
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
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