The day started once again with the calendar committee, 7am. I was doing a great job of paying 25% attention to things that didn’t concern me when all of a sudden the conversation shifted to how Bishop Greg Palmer was slated to preside over part of the morning plenary session, the part when several more petitions from the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters were to be presented. Bishop Palmer chaired the task force that created those petitions and obviously couldn’t preside and present at the same time. Meaning the task of presenting them suddenly fell to the secretary of the task force. The secretary being, you guessed it, me. (side note: I became the secretary because I was the only native English speaker who showed up to the first meeting in 2017 with a computer. Lesson learned.)
I did not plan to be on stage this morning at General Conference! I ran back to the hotel to draw on eyebrows because I have discovered that is helpful when a pale, white human with light colored hair, such as myself, is on video. During opening worship I hurriedly wrote notes about what remarks I would make about the petitions.
Then worship went long. Then everything else went long and our petitions were not dealt with before the plenary was over. This is how General Conference goes.
Since he is done presiding, Bishop Palmer can present the petitions tomorrow and I can just be his back up. I will arrive with eyebrows already in place.
Bishop Hector Burgos Núñez also presided this morning and brought a tiny Jesus along. Which made me very happy because my staff recently hid about 15 of these tiny Jesus’ in my office. They are slowing migrating all over Wichita First. Tiny Jesus now helps preside at General Conference. No doubt actual Jesus is helping a lot too.
The bulk of the day was spent in legislative committees. There are good reports coming from all over the conference about the work being done there. The spirit of cooperation and respect remains high and the votes for our 3R priorities are amazingly strong. I keep saying this, but the mood and energy are so very different than the past. Yesterday a friend said, I think this is what it feels like when we actually want to be a church, together.
My committee made very good progress, doing our work carefully and well. We wrestled with some hard things. A few decisions were difficult, most especially a petition that wanted to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” in the constitution as a protected class. It passed in sub-committee but failed in the whole committee. There were tears by some delegates, rightly so. The goal of most moderates and progressives at the conference is to get the Book of Discipline to “neutral” on sexual orientation because that is what we can agree to as a worldwide church. That’s good political strategy. But it comes at a cost for our queer friends who don’t need neutral after decades of harm. They need a church that affirms and celebrates them for who they are. I pray that day will come so very soon. But, at least in our committee, that day was not today.
The parliamentary high water mark came when we amended one petition four or five times including an amendment or two to an amendment. After all that work, the petition failed to gain a majority of votes. At the last of the day, someone who voted against the petition (the winning side), moved to reconsider, which passed. We will try one more time to get the language right tomorrow. This is how General Conference goes.
Before we adjourned for the day, my friend, Anna Detjen, agreed to read the closing devotional. She translated the prepared text on the fly into German and sent us out to our rest in a beautiful way.
Tomorrow we will reconvene and finish our work, hopefully long before the 9pm adjournment deadline.
One lingering parliamentary question from the day…when someone moves to amend by offering a substitute amendment, and the motion to substitute is accepted, then the committee perfects the substitute amendment and then REJECTS the substitute amendment, should the chair go back to act on the original amendment that was voted down in favor of the substitute? I did not do this. An observer came up later and told me I should have. Because this is how General Conference goes.
Tonight I stayed out too late with friends. The 7am calendar meeting will be a challenge!
Thanks for reading. The action should start picking up in the next few days as we get more done in Plenary session. I hope!
You are the BEST Amy! Eyebrows…I get it. Glad mini (& actual) Jesus made it to GC! Hang in there…
I like this line" ...This how General Conference goes..."