Lord, We Need Your Help

Today, our District Superintendent Ginger Bassford presented at a lunch for authors of the Adaptive Leadership Series published by Abingdon Press. Her book is called, Lord, I love the Church and We Need Help. It seems an apt title to describe my feelings after our first day of plenary.

The work of General Conference is, as I've mentioned, messy. (My friend Clay Andrew compares crafting legislation to sausage-making here.) Petitions are earnestly written, often after years of discussion, debate and despair. Every four years, our Book of Discipline "opens up" for change. And individuals, churches, boards, agencies, seminary professors, clergy, laity, students and others submit their petitions in hopes that the church will adopt a new way of being.

These petitions are far too unwieldy for the entire body of the General Conference to deal with. So they are assigned to committees. These bodies, too, are too large. So each committee is divided into sub-committees. These small groups each take a portion of the petitions and discern how they should be handled. (In my committee, Ministry & Higher Ed, this work was done in sub-sub-committees.) Some petitions are deemed "no brainers" for acceptance or rejection. A list is made. Others are a group of similar petitions that all deal with the same paragraph of the Discipline. These are considered together, and usually one is chosen in favor of the others, which are rejected. Perhaps pieces of the rejected petitions are amended into the surviving petition. Or perhaps a substitute petition is offered in favor of the others. Other petitions are referred to a different committee. And so it goes. As I've said, it's tedious work. Since our first level of scrutiny occurred at the sub-sub level, we then met as a sub-committee to present and approve/reject our petitions.

After the sub-committees have vetted the petitions, the committee meets as a plenary group to review the petitions. The sub-committee chair presents the ones that were recommended for approval. If these receive unanimous approval of the committee, they are immediately sent to the consent calendar for consideration by the plenary on the floor of Conference. If the petition is approved, but the vote is not unanimous, the petition goes in a different section of the Daily Christian Advocate for consideration on the floor. It is noted how many voted for and against the petition.

If a petition is rejected, this is also noted in the DCA (with the number of votes). And if the committee ran out of time before they could consider the petition (even if it had been considered by the sub-sub and sub-committees) - well, it just dies. It is noted on the DCA that the petition was not reviewed and no action is taken.

From here, a number of things can happen. If a petition is voted down or does not make it out of committee, you can resurrect it on the floor of Conference if you get 20 voting delegates to sign a petition requesting that the petition come to the floor. We've seen a bit of that today.

If the committee makes a decision for or against a petition and you are on the committee and you voted the opposite direction from the committee's decision, you can file a minority report. This requires fewer signatures, and I believe they all have to be from members of the committee who also voted in the opposite direction.

CTC Delegates Ed Komandosky (lay), Carolyn Stephens (lay),
Kim Simpson (lay) and Debra Crumpton (clergy)
participate in Holy Conferencing to discuss
the future of our denomination.

Exhausted yet? We haven't even made it to plenary!

Until today.

Today, on the floor of Conference, we went through the grueling process described in my previous post. We spent precious minutes debating and deliberating petitions that have already made it through at least two levels of legislative bodies (in the case of my committee, three levels). It can be disheartening work. At best, we work to perfect a petition that needs some tweaking. At worst, we argue and debate and try to spin our speeches to get our way.

We had a lot of "worst" moments on the floor today. I'm far too tired to try to relate them all here, but I will ask for your prayers.

Remember the Call to Action Report? How about Plan B? Both of these (plus a third plan proposed by the Methodist Federation for Social Action - MFSA) could not gain enough support to make it out of the General Administration committee. Our Rules (remember The Rules?) require us to end our work at 9:30 p.m. each night, so debating into the wee hours is not an option. And so, in a difficult and dramatic evening Saturday night, all plans for restructuring our church came off the table - none made it out of committee.

So Sunday was spent by some regrouping and coming up with a plan that can (hopefully) pass. Only this time, it won't be one committee hashing it out - it will be all 988 of us. And, if today is any indication, it won't be pretty.

The new plan that is getting a lot of buzz is "Plan UMC." I have no idea what it holds, but I pray we can see a way through. (I am encouraged by the leadership of Rev. Don Underwood of the North Texas Conference, so am hopeful that this plan will work.)

The truth is, the UMC must change if we are to continue to be an effective, missional denomination. And we want to be an effective, missional denomination. My attention has been so taken up with Ministry & Higher Education matters that I really can't say what this new plan should hold. But I know we need one.

A highlight of the day was a performance by
the Africa University Choir. Amen!

And I know that we do not seem to be a very united church as we vote on the floor. Clear divisions based on fierce protection of doctrinal standards (that cannot simply be reduced to debates over homosexuality) and - dare I say - distrust and fear are causing delegates to draw lines in the sand.

In some subcommittees, it was evident that some of our Central Conference (international) delegates were taking their cues from other (U.S.) delegates in the room. There seems little doubt that there is a lot of politicking going on. And I'm not sure that the will that is sought in all of this is truly God's will.

We may discuss Plan UMC tomorrow. Or we might spend another day getting caught up in the minutiae of debating, amending and trying to reject too few petitions that have already passed committee.

We only have four days left. And then it's over. The Discipline will "close" and we'll live for another four years with the decisions that have been made. We will also have to live without whatever decisions are left on the floor.

Lord, I love the church and we need help. I invite and encourage your prayers for the UMC. We have a vital mission, we have a heart for mission and social justice and a voice that needs to be heard in this world today. Lives are changed and saved, in every sense, through the ministries of this denomination. I pray we will find a way to move forward.

May God's will be done