The Biggest News of the Day

General Conference has just approved a constitutional amendment: ALL are welcome to the Church and, after taking vows of membership, eligible to become members. No more list of who is or is not included (ie, race, gender, social status, etc.). ALL!!!
We also amended our definition of family, affirming our hope that all families be composed of two loving parents. Nothing about gender is mentioned either way.

Plowing, Baby!

And we’re plowing on through legislation. A motion was made to accept the committee’s recommendation on all legislation with ten or fewer votes; there were attempts to remove several items, only one of which went through. We are coming up with more and more creative ways to get legislation through quickly. Entertaining, sometimes effective, sometimes not. But we will get through it…and it honestly might not even be all that late when we get out!

Reports and Introductions!

There is NOTHING in this world more exhilerating than sitting here right now. We've had introductions of the worship, translating, and secretarial staff. (Saying thank you is extremely important and valid, I have no problem with that, and it was nice to see the faces of some of the folks "backstage.") Those were fine. But we moved instantly from them into the GCFA (Finance and Administration) report. An economist explained to us how they find the baseline for the budget. I suppose this helps to explain to people and ease fears, but was it seriously necessary? How about a worksheet we could read on our own. And now we're doing the endless reports that are simple vote-ups. They're incessant, but necessary. So I'm pressing "1" for yes every two minutes and typing this. See, you can share my boredom! How lucky you are. But wait, the bishop has become more intelligent; we are know raising our hands to adopt. Takes less time, but takes my hands off the keyboard for a longer period of time. Ooh...now we just had to suspend the rules to consider one. That's exciting. I really am going to stop typing this now...I'll check back in with you after lunch; hopefully I'll have something worthwhile to say.

Well, This is Thrilling

We're now on Finance and Administration matters! Nothing, NOTHING could be more exciting. It's really not that bad. John and Jerry are on either side of me as our alternates.
Ooh! Our first amendment has just been moved. We're getting into fun stuff now. Here we go. And I thought the fun debate was going to be over for the night. I'm going to start paying attention now. Ta ta for now!

YEE-HAW!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy to announce that local pastors are going to be allowed to vote on clergy delegates to General, Jurisdictional, and Central (soon to be Regional) Conferences. I have officially taken care of my obligation to Kim Tallent (who helped to get me elected but couldn't vote for me or for the clergy delegates, being a local pastor) and am very happy to have done so. Laurie Haller is very happy, as is Jodie Flessner. Some kind of justice has been given to these folks who fall into a "never never land" of probationary (now provisional) membership.

Progress Reports

A note for fun (this local pastors' rights thing is boring, can you tell?): our legislative coordinator has had lots of fun creating fun videos and skits for us to report on our progress (ie, how quickly we move through petitions in legislative committees and calendar items on the floor). These have included entertaining animations of ducks moving along a bar graph, a video with our legislative committee chairs shooting water guns, and a song to the tune of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" based on ninety-nine calendar items left. I can't remember the exact language; it was live-streamed if you'd like to see it.

Lah-dee-dah-dee-dah-dee-dah-dee-dah, laa-dee-dah, laa-dee-dah...

And more local pastors' voting rights. We're getting away from debate and more into how to get specifics taken care of...they are being very picky. We just had a brief break so the bishops and secretaries could figure out where we are. And now were back...and right back into picky-ness. But we shall finish sometime. I would assume we'll at least finish this one tonight...but I would hope that we manage to do more than that.

Local Pastors' Voting Rights

Yeehaw, kids. We're in a deadlock on local pastors' voting rights. We can't figure out how to best make the language work, we can't agree on whether or not to do it, etc. We've had point of order after point of order. And now we've got another one...but boy oh boy are we having fun.

I love Rosa!

And we just had another awesome speech. Rosa Washington spoke about allowing local pastors to vote on clergy delegates and it was GREAT! So check that out.

Ha!

Thank you, whoever moved to reconsider. We had one petition changing "central" conferences to "regional" conferences that didn't pass. But we went back and changed it. So we're good, never fear.

We're Moving!

Sometimes slowly, othertimes more quickly. We're honestly getting through some stuff. Calendar items taken off the consent calendar were moved back to it via suspension of the rules. That will help us get through stuff but was annoying since I had something I pulled off. The sub-committee made legislation regarding youth and young adult membership that doesn't make sense disciplinarily. I'm hoping the editorial committee will be able to fix it, though, so I guess it's no big deal.

Go, Devin!

Devin Mauney, a young adult delegate, just totally made the best speech of General Conference. Look for his speech in the transcript of Thursday, May 1, around 4:50 pm. It was totally genius. I don't want to do his speech injustice, so I'm not even going to try to let you know about it. I'll post the transcript when it's available.

Oops...

We only got 62% of the vote on one of the petitions...kind of silly, since they're all essentially one issue but require separate votes. So we're going to have to do more work next General Conference anyways. After we defeated one, there was a motion to refer the rest. That went down. So now we're just kinda stuck. We'll see what happens...but the name changes don't take place until 2013. So it's going to be a bit of a mess.

Worldwide Nature Legislation

Well, it's taking forever...but we are managing to pass by large majorities the constitutional amendments dealing with the worldwide nature of the United Methodist Church. There is a lot of confusion, but we're managing to pass and fail what the committee (plus the Council of Bishops and Connectional Table) are suggesting. Yay! We're now celebrating the 100th anniversary of the General Board of Pensions and Health. Yippy! And then it's time for lunch.
I'm much happier now that I was this morning...
GOD IS GOOD!

Wednesday Morning

The Young People's Choir, the first choir ever to be formed out of General Conference (seems crazy, doesn't it? You would have thought that we'd have a ton...), performed in worship tomorrow along with the Africa University Choir and a church choir. The morning was about racism, we watched a video explaining white privilege (you'd like it, Dad...and Jerry DeVine speaks in it!) We had a report from Africa University...they are doing awesome work and would like to continue receiving their apportionments. The choir, as always, rocked. They performed "Africa Will be Saved"...and then substituted in "America"...and then "The Methodist Church." Way to go, choir! Brilliance, whoever had that idea.

And then on to legislation...the homosexuality discussions have started. I don't want to clog up the whole blog (haha...clog the blog...) with a bunch of ranting posts, so refer to the "Open Hearts? Open Minds? Open Doors?" post and all comments. I will tell everyone that we passed a resolution speaking against homophobic discrimination and violence. It's the violence that carried it...but the language does speak against all discrimination. Some people raised the issue of our not ordaining openly practicing gays...would this resolution contest that?

Tuesday Evening

Dinner was right after the Liberian President...we had dinner with the delegation at the Hilton. A very yummy buffet, of which I ate much. Bishop Keaton was able to join us; a nice treat.

We did some legislation...it was grand. A lot of time was spent on Episcopal Areas and how we can get more bishops into Central Conferences that are growing massively and desperately need leadership. Unfortunately, a procedure isn't currently in place to figure out how to allocate bishops, determine what need is most major, etc. This was then referred to the newly-funded Standing Committee on Central Conferences (which, now that I think of it, we really should have named something else...next GC, someone remind me to do that). Sadly, it will be four years before the areas get new bishops...my prayers are with all in those areas. May the Church continue to grow, may resources continue to pour in. It was be an enormous sin if the United Methodist Church in the United States hampered the growth of the Church worldwide by funding US-based study groups, etc. which will have limited effect when we could be funding amazing, powerful, and very obviously effective ministries in other regions. But I'll get off my soapbox now...

We had a break at 9:30. When we came back, we were all exceedingly happy to hear that we had only one calendar item left to consider. Unfortunately, we did a lot of extra business. Most of the rest of the business was well intentioned but impractical. One good thing did come out of the extra business…a study on ministries with Pacific Islanders in the US was lifted out of rejection and into referral to the General Secretaries’ Table; they have agreed to help with a study out of their budgets. The one calendar we had was an issue with accountability and finances of the General Board of Church and Society. A court case is currently pending per request of the Trustees, so taking action here didn’t make any sense and could cause legal issues. But there was a minority report…so the issue was going to take a long time. Fortunately, some genius had the idea to table it indefinitely before we had even heard the minority report…so we managed to get done at a decent hour! That man is going to be very, very popular for a few days.

A few random notes:
1. I have discovered what happens at 10:32. Someone rings a really loud bell or something each am and pm just outside the arena doors. It’s not against the rules of the Conference in any way, but we can definitely hear it. I’m hoping they’ll be doing it each day and that more and more people will begin to understand what it is that they are hearing.
2. Funny moment of the night occurred when Arthur Jones moved to suspend the rules to call the question…his father was presiding. Poor Scott. Fun moment for the rest of us. I think that some people still aren’t aware that Arthur is Scott’s son; I had to explain the joke to Jerry. But it’s very amusing for those of us on the “in,”

I think that’s all for the night…I’ll be singing in the “Young People’s” choir (composed of fifteen to “forty-ish”) tomorrow morning at worship, so I have to be on the 6:15 shuttle. No rest for the wicked.

Good night, all. Lots of love.

Is Bermuda a Country or a State?

One of the easy-pass petitions today involved making Bermuda part of the Northeastern Jurisdiction. The jurisdiction has been sending pastors and resources there for several years; this petition formalizes this relationship. An issue was raised, however, because the Disciplinary paragraph being amended listed several states. We were worried that people less familiar with the US might believe Bermuda to be a state. So we added the words "the country of" immediately in front of "Bermuda." We easily voted for this amendment. Just afterwards, one of our delegates from the British Methodist Church pointed out that Bermuda is not a country...it's a protectorate of Great Britain. Oops. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the best and the brightest of the United Methodist Church.

Evening Plenary

Alrighty…we have made it through the financial implication petitions that we needed to. The Study Committee on the Worldwide Nature of the UMC went through finally, though we struck the language binding the committee by the guidelines. The other big issue was on African Episcopal Areas (though it may be main in my mind simply because it was the last discussed). We had moved to refer to the new Commission on Central Conferences, but some African delegates spoke patiently, it was suggested that we table until after the report from the Episcopal Study which might open some funds, and then reconsider. The problem with referring is that the conferences would have to wait for another four years to get a new bishop, and they’re growing so fast that action really is appropriate and necessary now. Hopefully that will work out for them. It was a nice wake-up call for Americans who think that we can simply refer everything away to some committee or another instead of acting on it.
The main discussion in the bus seems to be revolving around the new hymnal…a new hymnal project has been approved, as has a study on an Afrikana Hymnal (this study will use the resources already budgeted of boards like the Board of Discipleship). It was a long evening, but it worked out very well; we got a fair amount done and aren’t too desperately behind schedule. Poor Russ and the rest of the members of the Finance and Administration Legislative Committee are going to be meeting tonight. The Board of Global Ministries Legislative Committee was meeting as well, but I think only for about fifteen minutes. The Rules of Order Committee was called briefly, but it shouldn’t take too long. The issue requiring their attention is the distribution of legislative materials…a lot of paperwork encouraging the election of certain persons or adoption of certain legislation has been going on delegates’ tables, which is against the rules of the General Conference. Folks have been flagrantly violating this rule or getting around it by using the pages to send delegate-to-delegate “letters”…even in the Church, there is political corruption. Sigh. Still, no need to end on a depressing note. I’ll be happily in bed by like 12:30 and able to sleep…a workout might be in order tomorrow morning (for real this time).

Afternoon Plenary

We are now in afternoon plenary. Things are moving fairly slowly due to many amendments on each petition and much discussion. We were supposed to have all petitions with financial implications done by 5 pm today. We missed. We still have like thirty-one petitions. So we're going until 5:30, will come back at 7:30, and will presumably meet until we're done. So my beautiful night of sleep might have just flown out the window...

Morning Plenary

This morning: Good sermon about "fresh bread" from the story of God's giving the Israelites food for the day. We are encouraged to wake up and get up. I was in worship only for the second half but heard almost all of the serrmon. Topic for the day is "Building Hope." DeLyn (one of the musicians) sang a gorgeous song about building things together. Thanks were given by folks in the regions affected by Hurricane Katrina and the information that help was still needed (money and work teams). The business of the morning focused mostly on elections for Judicial Council and University Senate. The majority of the time was getting the keypads working with two-digit voting and assuring people as to how they worked. We adopted the consent calendars for the day without issue and spent time on the petition to grant more funding to Africa University and an additional $2 million on theological teaching (aka training pastors) at other schools in Africa. One professor from Africa shared that each year they receive hundreds of applicants to the school for degrees in theology and they can accept only 10-20. If only we had that problem in the United States! We did finally manage to put our money where our mouth is and approve it. People were worried about the budget, but it finally passed.
Just before lunch was the celebration of "The Advance." "The Advance" is a way for United Methodists to give money to specific programs in developing countries (women's sewing groups that generate income, hospitals, farming projects, etc.) without any overhead. We had two ladies there, one from Bolivia and one from Sierra Leone who spoke to us about their projects. It was extremely moving. All in all, I started crying like ten times this morning...part of it is that the reports truly were moving and wonderful. Part of it is that I need to sleep...but tonight, it really will happen. I'm on lunch break now and am about to head to the Young People's Choir Performance...we'll be performing Wednesday morning. Looking forward to that.