May 1 - Rare Moment

I have been to General Conference to know that there are special moments that occur that bring a laugh, moisten the eyes, touch the heart that are spontaneous and humanize the whole experience.

Unlike NASCAR where the thought of a crash breaks the monotony of turning left and then going straight for a few seconds at 200 miles per hour, General Conference holds attention by the possibility that humor or goodness can break out unexpectedly.

In Tampa, that did not have sufficient draw for me to keep me in the plenary very long. I know there were many such moments because the DCA said so or someone would comment.

I was up there during one such moment. The break for lunch was called by the presiding bishop. He asked the secretary for announcements and then readied himself to offer the closing prayer. In his clear English, touched only a little by his German accent, he prayed in French.

May 1 - The Demonstration?

Late in the afternoon on Tuesday, as the plenary was winding down, suddenly the central aisle in the back of the floor was filled with people wearing rainbow stoles, carrying signs about rights for homosexuals.

A friend leaned over to me and said, “That’s awful timing!”

As the demonstrators surrounded the communion table in the middle of the floor, the bishop offered a prayer with conciliatory elements about the demonstrators in it and adjourned the meeting. There would be nothing occurring in the room for three or four more hours.

Earlier in the day, members of that group had processed quietly between the stands and the bar of the conference wearing their rainbow stoles and carrying their signs. I recognized and counted as friends a number of the demonstrators. The procession drew quiet attention from the visitors. While I noticed many in the visitor stands stood in silent solidarity as the procession went by (I was already standing mainly because I had not found a seat at that point). The plenary was not disturbed in any way. I did not notice if any of the delegates, even the ones wearing a rainbow stole, stood.

It seemed to me that there were rainbow stoles everywhere.

There were also light blue stoles worn mostly by delegates. Those had been distributed at the opening ceremony’s Communion Service, if I remember correctly. I saw no conflict between wearing of the two. Some folks actually did.

I had my red jacket but I didn’t have either kind of stole.

May 1 - Making Apostles

Ben Godsden in UM-Insight (http://um-insight.net/blogs/ben-gosden/the-danger-of-unasked-questions/page-2.html) challenges the lack of definition of the catch phrase “Making Disciples for the Transformation of the World” which is the stated goal of our denomination. I had to respond and did so with the following comment (typos corrected this time):

Making Apostles

I was a disciple in Sunday school. And, given our understanding of education as being a life long endeavor, I am still a disciple.

But I had to enter the adult world. And, thanks to some wonderful Sunday School teachers and leaders at Wesley Foundation when I got to college, I realized that I also needed to be an apostle.

There's a huge difference.

Whether or not I had a lot of gifts and graces, Jesus called me to use them as a means of showing God's love. Transforming the world would take care of itself because that was God's job. Mine was to be His/Her missionary wherever I was.

I've tried to do that by helping in the church because the local church is where fellow disciples and apostles met regularly to upbuild one another. I tried to be a good worker in my various part-time and summer jobs while I was in school. I tried to be a good neighbor. I tried to help on mission projects set up by the church. I tried to do that as a student. Then I got to try it in my vocation, which happened to be as a pastor in the United Methodist Church. I've tried to do it by working with other churches' pastors, by teaching confirmands and giving them mission opportunities, by setting up local church ministries to the city's hospital, county jail, etc., by helping pastors and laity in trouble with the denomination's administrative and judicial processes, and by using legislative and judicial options open to an individual to help move our denomination in directions I thought consistent with a Christian apostle's mission.

In retirement, I have had to focus declining energies and gifts, but I hope you see me hanging in there for a few more years.

Making disciples is not aiming high enough. Making apostles, turning loose God's people to be missionaries where they are and where God takes them, would be a better description of what the church actually does when it follows the Spirit.

May 2 - Demonstration!

The demonstrators were a lot smarter on Wednesday morning. They waited until just before the break in the plenary session before forming and trooping down the center aisle to form around the communion table in the center of the floor.

Once again the bishop offered prayer, adjourned the session and announced that police might be called to assist in clearing the floor. He announced the session would not convene until after the lunch break hour.

I was just entering the plenary when the demonstrators took off down the aisle. I asked a friend wearing a rainbow stole about what was happening and why he hadn’t joined the group. He said his wife was down there and he would probably join them for part of the time.

I asked if there was any negotiating going on to see if the demonstration could be moderated. The threat of police action was not a good thing.

He pointed at a corner of the group where it appeared a small number stood just slightly separated from the rest. “They’re negotiating now. I doubt the settlement will include any clearing of the floor by the police. No one wants to have that hit the papers because it would.”

“Maybe some of the demonstrators?” I asked.

“I won’t discount that but they are a pretty disciplined bunch and are not likely to go that far. They have their credibility on the line and don’t want to appear to be spurring violence in others. Disrupting the morning session is as far as they are likely to go, though their starting point in the negotiations is to stay there through the day if necessary,” he said.

I thought the whole scene was what it appeared to be. I wondered later if it was a pre-arranged “dance” where the bishops and the demonstrators already knew what would happen.

I left to return to my “office” and continue studying the pre-conference materials and taking care of some correspondence.

When I returned after lunch, the demonstrators who had been singing and generally enjoying themselves in the middle of the floor when I left were no longer there.

What I found were participants of the group standing at the respective entrances to the plenary space, holding crime scene tapes! They didn’t block the entrances but they didn’t go away. I believe they held their positions throughout the rest of General Conference.

I didn’t follow up on how the negotiations went. I spent my time writing the article just below entitled “Caucuses” for UM-Insight.

Update: Several demonstrators said they had been bullied. That made the news but I have no independent information about that.

May 2 - Caucuses

(Written on 5/2 and submitted to UM-Insight and was published there on 5/3 under the title “Influence at General Conference”)

Legislation is the product of the influence and resources of interest groups. So said my political science professor at the University of Wisconsin. He said to understand governing, you have to understand that it moves at the interactions of small groups.

Years ago when I first started observing General Conference, the "small groups" were mainly the boards and agencies of the general church. Those were the people who stood before the plenary, giving reports, explaining legislation, and providing the "stuff" on which the plenary acted. The legislative committees included many of the members of the agency whose legislation was before the conference so there was already at least 40% support for agency petitions before any votes were taken and those same delegates usually had in mind who they would nominate for the chair position. It was handled off-handedly as if it were spontaneous and most legislative committees went along with it. The democratic processes which provided some checks and balances came when the reports hit the plenary and were discussed and voted upon.

One of the oldest lobbying groups is Methodist Federation for Social Action which long and effectively sought social justice. A cluster of conservative lobbying groups formed over the years. While they appeared to be countering the social issues of MFSA, they were constantly working to gain power within the structures of the Church. To many observers, it also has been a conflict between Wesleyan and Calvinist theologies.

Delegations from the south seemed to be especially active in gatherings and somehow largely rejoiced in having gotten their own elected to chairing legislative committees. So next to the two social issues caucuses, it seemed that the most potent caucus was the southern. Southerners were on all the boards and agencies. The other jurisdictions were interested in programming issues that served their respective annual conferences. The southerners seemed more interested in the administrative processes and how to get decisions in their best interests, mainly directing financial resources back into their jurisdictions.

Then during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the first women bishops were elected. Women became the agency executive secretaries. As everyone else was busy with their agendas and efforts to influence, the women had become very effective in electing delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences and getting women elected to the episcopacy. The new powerhouse actively changed the face of the leadership of the denomination. They countered the "good ol' boy" networks.

Further into the 1990s, again as these "small groups" were doing their things, a new small group entered the playing field. Because transportation and communication became so much easier in the US, bishops found more time to work together in the Council of Bishops. Where the General Conference had before prevented bishops from speaking on the floor, presenting legislation, or voting on it, thus keeping the legislative and executive branches of the denomination separate, now there was a developing new caucus that found ways to exert its interests.

Two things happened. First, the General Conference passed legislation that gave bishops the authority to supervise boards and agencies because of alleged turf wars and other questionable practices. Bishops became the presidents of each program and administrative body of the denomination and had four or more fellow bishops added to their respective governing boards. Second, to get around the sanctions against bishops petitioning General Conference, they worked closely with the bodies under their leadership to get petitions favorable to the Council of Bishops' interests.

It appeared to become more urgent that those petitions be on the top of the pile that was referred to the legislative committees to be dealt with first. Under the rules of General Conference, once a particular paragraph had been changed by the legislative committee, all the other petitions related to that passage were put on the consent calendar as items for non-concurrence. Individuals' and annual conference's petitions quietly disappeared. Even those referred to a board or agency for consideration and report back to the following General Conference often disappeared as well.

Reading the current rules of procedure for General Conference show that all those dynamics can persist to this day with one addition I hadn't noticed before: Rule 25, which says that if the legislation has not been dealt with, it remains unfinished. While much of the conference's tempo and effectiveness is in the hands of the presiders, the possibility of leaving "certain" reports and petitions unfinished has to be a great temptation.

The bishops not only preside in the legislative body of General Conference, they have become parliamentarians for legislative committees, and even now openly sign petitions to General Conference on behalf of assorted committees and agencies they chair. Their standing as the most powerful interest group was unchallenged until this year.

Into these competing small groups have come a surge of delegates from Africa and the Philippines. The Africans were courted by Good News quite successfully so that by 2008, their tendency to align theologically with Good News on social issues helped them legislatively. Free meals and free cell phones for the Africans paid off.

Coming into 2012, two other small groups took shape and entered the fray of competing lobbies. One, a coalition for mega-church pastors joined the bishops in providing support for a series of down-sizing proposals called the "Call to Action." Boards and agencies under the presidency of the bishops were seen to be overlapping, ineffective, and expensive. Entrepreneurial pastors were to be encouraged by the removal of the guaranteed appointment. And a new "set-aside" bishop was to be established to help coordinate things.

Their proposal may have been a Trojan horse because savvy observers saw a reaction to it would occupy the minds of the delegates.

That may have succeeded in damping the emergence of the second major caucus that began in earnest at this General Conference, the Africans. Just months before Tampa, the electronic infrastructure in Africa was upgraded considerably because of the economic conditions in the peaceful areas of the continent. Had that occurred four years ago, there is no telling how much more influential they could have been this year. As it is, they elected two members to the Judicial Council, elected one to the University Senate, impacted votes on social issues, and came out swinging against the Call to Action.

The interactions of these various caucuses has been both alarming and fascinating to watch. As each competes and becomes more sophisticated, the counter-moves will most likely continue to direct denominational resources upward. The needs of local churches are drifting further and further from the concerns of General Conference. Maybe the experience of the emerging conferences in Africa and other parts of the third world may remind us all that we are the servants of the people in the pews.

Maybe the fruits of the efforts will be seen in whose perks and pensions are preserved rather than in whose souls have been touched by Jesus Christ.

May 2 - Israel/Palestine Conflict

After lunch on Wednesday, I returned to the plenary and caught part of the discussion on the conflict in the Middle East. I described it in the following paper. I didn’t include the result of the discussion which sadly was a watered down version from which divesting was removed.

An African Perspective on Divestment and the Middle East Conflict

(Written May 2 and submitted to UM-Insight but not published yet)

The Israel/Palestine conflict is the core problem, internationally speaking. Resolve it and a large number of problems go away. It has driven America's foreign policy since the mid 1970s. The United Methodist Church has passed resolutions about it at almost every General Conference since. This year's conference has been no exception. The legislative committee report came out with a firm decrying of the tragedy there. It was not gently stated. The report went on to move that our church divest itself of those corporations' stock holdings. However, a minority report was offered as an alternative. It included listing only three major U. S. corporations whose products were being used by Israel to further Israel's occupation.

That whole matter will be detailed in other places. I was watching with some interest because I spent a lot of time researching the Middle East history a few years back and had a grasp of the graveness and complexity of the situation.

When a delegate got up to carefully state that the rumor was false that divesting would impact financing African schools and seminaries, my ears perked up. Had there been such rumors? Did they influence the delegates from Africa? Was that why the vote on two separate motions went against divesting? Had one or another of the lobbying groups tried to influence those delegates?

Inquiring minds want to know so I spent a little time with an African delegate I met last week. He did with me as he did last week, turn the conversation around to pick my brain for information that might help him understand the conflict better.

Before he turned the conversation, I did offer my questions. I knew that asking him to give me his impression of the African delegates was like asking a guy from Rhode Island to tell me what people from the rest of the country thought.

But he resolved that dilemma quickly. He said most everybody he knew listened to what was said on the floor of the plenary and weighed it against very little working knowledge of the situation. The rumor had no impact on what he voted. It apparently had circulated in several forms and so it was probably ineffective. The real problem was that there really was very little awareness of the conflict amongst those he knew, himself included. He did make one further observation that I really enjoyed.

"You know that older gentleman who read from the Bible? He left out the rest of that covenant," he said.

"That Israel was to be a blessing to the nations," I responded.

He nodded.

Then he really pressed me for what I knew. What a thrill to be with someone seeking knowledge like that.

May 2 - Ecumenicity

I briefly discuss ecumenicity in other places in this blog. I heard that Central Conferences have ecumenical officers and programs. Everyone I asked said they had good relations with Islamic groups in their country.

There was one exception. The African country of this former student of Chomee’s is relatively small and new. When I asked him about Islam there, he told me it had a very small presence, one which was not conducive to normal ecumenical interaction. There seemed to be no meeting place or leader.

What was happening, he said, was that men came to work in his country, took wives there, and when the children were old enough, they were sent back for schooling to the country of origin of the men.

The movement had started only in the last ten years or so. The children had not returned yet so how their schooling would affect them, he didn’t know.

The group is not outgoing, is not organized in such a way as to be engaged in activities with Christians in joint ventures, and keeps to themselves. Hence, he said, they are not yet recognized as a religion in his country.

“Your government has not shown hesitance about any other religious body, right?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “Our constitution is very open and tolerant in that regard. The problem is that this group has shown none of the characteristics of a religion in the traditional sense and they have not applied for recognition. So we all watch, wait, and try to make friendly contact which so far has been rebuffed.”

I described this movement to an Islamic friend here in the States and he has never heard of such an Islamic sect and will research it for me.

This was an extraordinary exception to everything else I’d heard about United Methodists in other parts of the world in crossing religious lines.