Day Five

Hello all, another day of General Conference is done. We are fully into the thing now. I realized mid-morning that yesterday was so full of activity and conversation, I completely forgot to play Wordle! Tragic.

The morning started with the joy of watching my friend Bishop Laura Merrill sit in the presiders chair. She was elected bishop in Nov 2022 and was sure they wouldn’t call on a rookie bishop to preside. Wrong! She did a beautiful job of course, pausing first to give greetings in Spanish to all those for whom that is their first language. Then she ably lead us through the first business of the morning. Our own Bishop Wilson will get the honor first thing tomorrow.

Bishop Laura Merrill leading General Conference

The morning was spent with the episcopal address, the young people’s address and then presentations about three major pieces of legislation. I was particularly proud of the group from the Standing Committee on Central Conference Mattes that presented about the need for Regionalization and a “General Book of Discipline.” They stressed how changing the structure of the church in this way would be a way to say: I trust you to do ministry in a way that fits your mission field, and I ask you to trust me to do the same in mine. Bishop Ruckert said, “are we willing to trust each other rather than control each other and impose our limited views on each other?” The answer in the past has been no, we had too many who only wanted to control others. I pray the answer has changed.

Leaders from Germany, South Africa, Philippines, USA, and Angola present about Worldwide Regionalization

I don’t want to be overly dramatic but I believe these governance changes—that would decentralize the United States and provide more flexibility and space between global regions of the church— are essential for a healthy United Methodist Church for the next 100 years. I am most nervous about this out of all legislation.

The “Daily Christian Advocate” (a very old school name for the publication of the previous day’s proceedings and other needed info) had the first consent calendars in it today. These are petitions that passed by overwhelming majority in committee. We will vote on them in a block. People can get things removed from the consent calendar if they want to debate them, but most items will be processed by the plenary floor in this way. Right now its full of petitions from the SCCCM’s work earlier in the week. We will vote on these calendars tomorrow morning, which will be the first pieces of legislation done!

After lunch we met in our legislative committees for the first time. Bishops were assigned to help elect officers and then they left us to our own devices. I was fortunate enough to be elected chair of General Administration. I appreciate my fellow delegates entrusting me with the role. We have a tremendous leadership team, lay and clergy, men and women, from the US and Congo. It will be great to work with them.

The Great Plains Annual Conference managed to get four of our delegates elected as chair person, and one as a secretary! There are only 14 legislative committees so this is quite a feat. I’m really proud of our conference and the caliber of our leaders.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at officer training and then strategizing with our crew about how we would organize our business. I believe we are ready for tomorrow.

Speaking of which, one of the gifts of being a chairperson is an early morning meeting with the calendar committee. 7am all this week. I do not do a good job of going to be early at General Conference. If my substacks get progressively less coherent as the days go on, you will know why.

Night all!