A Future with Hope

General Conference 2008 began last night with a great worship service. The music reflected the variety of our traditions and really added a lot to the worship experience. Mark Miller is simply great leading the music. Bishop Huie's sermon was very good, basically about strong hope versus wimpy hope. And we shared communion. At points the worship was very moving emotionally.

Then we had a business session to organize the conference and adopt the governing rules of GC. That took some time. I closed my eyes as I sat in my chair, so tired, but then was jolted alert when I heard my daughter Kelsey's voice over the speaker system. She was at the mike to raise a question about the rules and make a correction. That's my girl - no hesitation to get up in front of everyone and speak up. Don't know why I every worry about either of them.

Then we had a presentation for sensitivity training. I don't know why since we had just as a body agreed to use expressions like "did not pass" or "was not approved" instead of the word "defeated" when a motion failed. Why? Because "defeated" has too much of a sense of military conquest associated with it. We are more sensitive than a Gillette super shaver.

Anyway, the real work had gotten underway today, with the Bishop's address, followed by the Young People's address, and so forth. The wheels are rolling and I just pray we don't let them come off! Keep us in prayers.

Taylor Trama and Travels to GC

WE MADE IT, but not without some adventure. Lauren, Kelsey and I left out once Kelsey got out of school, drove for 13 hours and finally crashed for a few hours in a hotel in Shreveport, LA. The next morning Lauren drove while I made phone calls to check on our room, etc. Good thing I did. They had given our room away at the Embassy! So here we were 3 hours outside of Fort Worth with no where to stay and several thousand people flooding into the city! Thank goodness for cell phones and Lauren's blackberry.

We called and called - every hotel booked. We finally secured a room 14 miles out of town. And then I kept trying the majors. One final call to the Worthington Renaissance downtown paid off and "Ernest" gave me a confirmation number. Ernest is my new superhero. The Worthington is where GC is housing all the bishops and international guests, and vagabonds like us.

We arrived about 12:30, but they wouldn't let us check in until 2:30. Afraid that the room would "disappear" I just sat in the lobby until the rooms were ready. Talk about a feeling of relief when the young lady put those room keys in my hand!

Kelsey and I actually made it to our 3:00 meetings. She went to the orientation for delegates under the age of 30. There were about 100 people in the room. But she said when they had the youth stand (those under age 18) there were only a dozen.

The convention center is just 7 blocks down the street from our hotel and is very spacious. So looks like we are set for the next 10 days.

Save us a place at GC

Delegates are descending on Fort Worth and I hope my hotel holds my room for me. Because my daughter has missed so much school this semester with sickness, I decided I would let her attend today and leave immediately once school is out. That means a 13 hour drive in basically 23 hours if we are to arrive in the time for the Youth Delegate Orientation on Wednesday. Let's just hope Interstate 20 traffic moves smoothly the whole way.

With all the talk about being more inclusive of youth at this GC, it is still tough to take them out of school for 9 days. Fortunately Kesley has an understanding principal who won't count the days as official absences, if she keeps her classwork up. Then she has to come right back and take the SATs and her History AP test. Ask her and she'll tell you she wants what we do in Fort Worth to be significant for our church.

Everyone needs a place at the table, and great efforts have gone into this Gen Conf to see that everyone does have a place. But the primary issues awaiting us aren't really about having places at the table, but being able to control what happens at the table.

Will we spend most of our time debating and maneuvering to determine who gets to control what? (Rather than fighting over who gets to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus when he comes into his kingdom, we prefer to fight over who gets to sit in his seat until he comes back).

Seems to me that the first business of being a disciple is learning to follow. Can we demonstrate to the world that we can be the kind of disciples of Jesus Christ who are so intend on following him faithfully that we deal with our differences with respect, humility, and charity? We have to learn to be good disciples if we ever intend to really make disciples for Christ. I pray for God's Spirit for these days, for myself and all of us. And I pray for safety on the road.

General conference Prognostications

After a week of blog silence, I’ve decided to venture from my burrow and make predictions about General Conference. I warn you that in the March Madness Bracketology I only got 36 of 63 correct, and that that event portends to be mild compared to 992 delegates and guests having their say in Fort Worth. So here’s some of the news out of Forth Worth over the next two weeks.

Global Church and Regionalism.
The charismatic leadership of Scott Jones will convince the delegates that the Council on Bishops should be trusted with this pig in a poke and approve the Constitutional changes which might/could/should lead to Regional Conferences. Both liberals and conservatives will expect this major restructuring to aid their cause and so will combine forces for its passage, especially after the specter is raised by the Robbins and Wulf petitions of more radical implementation. A quadrennial commission will be created with each jurisdiction appointing 4 members (inclusive of all ethnic groups), the Council on Bishops appointing 3 members and selecting one of their own as the chair, and each of the Boards and Commissions and official Caucuses, along with the Connectional Table sending two members.

Judicial Council Elections.
Despite an organized effort, the Confessing Movement will fail in its attempt to have Keith Boyette and Mary Daffin re-elected. Too much fall out from JC Decision 1032 (pastor’s authority in determining church membership). However, the CM will succeed in placing three new conservative faces on the council (of five total elected), most likely Jon Enns, Gloria Brooks and Raymond Mutombo.

Homosexuality.
Progressives will feel confident of victory as the report out of the legislative committee includes the statement “we confess we are of divided minds (as opposed to open minds?) on the subject of homosexuality...” However, in the general session the statement is struck and the stances on homosexuality, same-sex unions, and self-avowed practicing ministers essentially remains the same, but with a slightly wider margin of passage 64 -36%. An orchestrated demonstration will disrupt proceedings and unfortunately turn bitter. No arrests like Cleveland, but Conference will have to recess for decorum to be restored.

Ministry Study
Although the Majority Report of the Study Commission called for four more years, four more years, four more years…., the minority will succeed in getting several issues to the floor this year. Never ready to postpone what we can add to the present confusion, the following non-systematic changes will be made.
A) Full Deacons will be given sacramental rights, whether they want them or not. B) Sacramental privilege for Local Pastors will be limited to pastors who have completed Basic Course of Study or completed a two day worshop on the Sacraments (as part of or in additional to Licensing School). C) Moving ordination early in the process (at completion of seminary, for instance) and separating it from conference membership, will be defeated. D) Residency will change from three years back to two years. E) Full time Local Pastors will receive voting rights for General conference elections after completion of Basic Course of Study plus two years of additional service. F) "Guaranteed appointments" will be changed by making the requirement to prove "appointability" a responsibility of the pastor. And G) another Study commission will be approved for four more years.

Mission Statement.
The addition will pass, regrettably, after being truncated to “Our mission is to make disciples for the transformation of the world.”

Budget
The shocker. Organized efforts to limit the budget increase of General Boards and Agencies has an effect, and while there are no real reductions in their budgets, all additional funding requests are denied.

Book of Resolutions
We will pass resolutions on everything from the ethical treatment of chickens used in Grandma’s Chicken soup to the support of recycling copies of the 2000 and 2004 Book of Resolutions. However, this time the “whereas’s will not be printed.

General.
The worship and singing will be great. The seats will be uncomfortable. The food will become tedious. The new friends will be a blessing. And the blogging will be uncontrollable!

Should we change Ordination?

One of the proposals before Gen. Conf. is to separate ordination from conference membership and to move it to the point where we now commission persons for ministry. The Study committee has asked for four more years to study this, but I believe that many of the things in their report will be dealt with at this GC.

The underlying desire for this and several other proposals is to streamline our process. It is the most cumbersome of any denomination, including the Roman Catholic (according to comments by some members of the Study Commission). Lovett Weems and Ann Michel report in their book, The Crisis of Younger Clergy, (2008) that the number of Elders under age 35 dropped from about 3200 to about 85o during the past 20 years. We must do something to reverse this.

So, help me out - what do you think? Some have asked, "If we ordain early, and then the person does not attain conf. membership for whatever reason, how do we 'un-ordain' them? Are we ready for a different understanding of ordination? Are there parallels to the way the Baptists ordain very early in local churches, leaving employment open ended?

I entered the UMC back in the days of the two ordination process, ordained first as a Deacon, then 2 years later as an Elder. We can't return to that process, but I do know that leaving seminary and going into my first full-time church apppointment as an ordained minister meant a lot to me, at a time when I was still uncertain whether I should be in parish ministry.

Any opinions or suggestions before the motions and votes start flying around at General Conference?

Daughter update

A couple of people have emailed me asking about my daughter. I remember I offered to give an update and haven't done so. She is better, but we don't know why. The joint pain does not seem to be continuous and she doesn't have the extended bouts of fatigue. She's been back in school. So all that is good.

We saw the specialist for JRA (Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis). Dr. Ruth says there is a strong possibility it isn't JRA (which is good), but she can't say for sure yet. So more blood tests have been run and it's back to the opthamalogist since the condition of the iris is a strong indicator. (Strange, isn't it?).

Dr. Ruth said Kelsey does have another condition I've never heard of, hypermobility of the joints. It can cause joint pain like she is having and could be the cause or part of the cause of what she's been dealing with.

So we continue to pray for healing. Friends who have been down this road have told us there are no quick and easy answers with JRA and similar conditions. Friends have also encouraged us with their love and prayers. And for that we are most grateful.

UM Mission Confusion?

The mission of the United Methodist Church is “to make disciples of Jesus Christ.” GC08 will consider changing that to add “for the transformation of the world” (¶120). While it has a nice sound to it, I’m not sure it is an improvement on what we have.

Some might argue that the addition changes “making disciples” from being our primary purpose to being a “means” or method by which we transform the world. In other words, it says our real goal is to transform our world, and that the reason to become a disciple of Jesus Christ is so that we can achieve that goal.

It’s definitely a “Methodist” statement, which means it is sufficiently ambiguous. It leaves wide open for interpretation “how” we are going to transform the world and what such transformation would look like. That’s the perfect scenario for any cause group to argue that their issue deserves priority attention since it is part of our “mission.”

My hunch is that our boards and agencies will see the two parts of the statement as having equal leverage and then choose which one to emphasize. And since the preponderance of the evidence so far indicates we either aren’t comfortable with “making disciples” (or don’t know how), then we’ll see more and more material on how we good Methodists can and should be transforming the world.

You would think that with all the extensive talk about our declining membership, everyone would want to be clearly focused on making disciples of Jesus Christ. Of course, we don’t work to make disciples just to grow the church, but if we are making disciples, the church will end up growing. And if people become actual disciples of Jesus Christ and aren’t just names added to the rolls, then (as Paul beautifully says in Romans 12) they will be transformed, becoming people who transform the world.

Transformation of our sinful, broken, wayward world is important. Note that even in the Great Commission (Matthew 28) that after Jesus says “Go and make disciples of all nations,” he then says “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.” If you get into the Word and apply his teachings, you will work to transform the world. That’s always been the Methodist way: warmed heart, accountability group immersed in scripture, and living the faith by “doing no harm, doing good, and attending all the ordinances of God.” (General Rules, ¶103)

The world transforming aspect of our mission is already expressed in the Discipline in ¶124: Our Mission in the World – God’s self-revelation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ summons the church to ministry in the world through witness by word and deed in light of the church’s mission…As servants of Christ we are sent into the world to engage in the struggle for justice and reconciliation. We seek to reveal the love of God for men, women, and children of all ethnic, racial, cultural, and national backgrounds and to demonstrate the healing power of the gospel with those who suffer.

The new statement sounds more politically correct and is already being used by many of our church leaders, but will it serve us well?

No More Resolutions

Since there is a desire to hold down the cost of General Conference, why don't we eliminate the Book of Resolutions? No more resolutions on everything under the sun to take time to debate, and then print. I realize that a suggestion like this can bring charges of Methodist heresy upon me, but I wonder, would the BOR's absence make any difference in fulfilling our mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ?

Note: I realize astute Methodist readers will say, "Isn't our mission to "make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?" Although I've been hearing the new mission statement for several months now, officially, as in, according to the Book of Discipline, we have not yet changed it with the "transformation" addition. It is one of the petitions we will probably approve in Fort Worth. More on that later.

I know resolutions are important to express the "mind of the body." But the world doesn't pay any attention to what we are thinking, and honestly, neither do we. When some social issue is addressed, do you hear our Bishops and leaders quoting the BOR, or expressing their own opinion?

The 2004 Task Force on the BOR recommends to this GC that we print only the "call to action" or "statement of position" of a resolution and that that be limited to 200 words. The rational material would be part of the GC proceedings, but not published. That could reduce the size of the BOR and that concerns me.

My 2004 BOR has been very useful for me. For the first year it just sat on my shelf. Then I got a new computer monitor that needed to be raised about two inches for a proper viewing angle. The BOR fit perfectly under the base of the monitor. If we must produce a new one, could I request that the new one be required to remain the exact same thickness as the present one?

Revealing Clergy Appointments

Applause to Bishop Willimon. He had the clergy appointments of the North Alabama Conference posted on the conference web site just a couple of days after the cabinet finished making the appointments. You can see it here.

Rumors abound during the appointment season. Since pastors and churches are instructed, "Don't tell anyone" it becomes a game of "tell but don't tell." Pastors naturally want to know where their colleagues are moving, and with the guessing, a lot of mis-information gets passed around. I have to believe Willimon's move to put the list out there can only help to cut down the speculations and talk.

Leadership involves standing in public by your decisions. And to me, this shows leadership. What do you think?

Prayers for Zimbabwe

Today the election results are to be announced in Zimbabwe and the initial reports are that President Mugabe will be forced into a run-off. Who knows what might happen, since police have already raided the headquarters of Mugabe's opponent and western journalists have been taken into custody. I seriously doubt he will allow another vote. Pray for the people of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is a beautiful country, with wonderful friendly people. At least that was my experience of it during an UMVIM trip in 2001. At that time the "redistribution" of the large farm lands was taking place and people were nervous, but the economy hadn't yet fallen into serious trouble.

Now the world knows of the unlimited corruption, inflation, unemployment, and despair that the country faces. This once stable and prosperous country needs help, but since there are no oil reserves there, the interest of the US will probably be fleeting.

Lord, have mercy upon Mateus, Analdina, Shadreck, Winnet, Lovejoy, Philip, Shepherd, Mishack, and Lucia, upon their families, and their country men and women. May your righteousness and peace prevail over the greed and violence at hand. Restore their hope and heal their land. Amen.