General Conference 2008: Fort Worth Yee Haw

Ive been wandering the halls getting my bearings here in the convention center. Mostly I’ve been killing time by walking around talking to old friends and colleagues, its great to reconnect. I’ve seen Bill Medford – who is an Asbury Grad working at Church and Society (Yes and Pigs are not flying – nor is hell freezing over) We had a great talk about how to bring together evangelicals and liberals around common concerns. I saw a ton of my old friends from UMCOM – Danny Mai, Lane Denson, Sherri Thiel, Sheila Mayfield, Sean McAtee, and a host of others. Nothing big has happened yet – people are just settling in, but I can say that it seems that things are a little less contentious already – Just a different spirit in the air.  I plan to grab some video of the committee sessions if i don’t get the boot.  If i do ill get it up on youtube or somewhere for others to see.

Key issues I think this Gen Con revolve around restructuring the church (Proposals to make the US into a regional body along with others that could have long term implications on how we decide doctrinal issues)  and the question of whether we reduce the number of delegates – which would give severely unbalance representation to the Western and European delegations.  There is also the question of membership standards and whether a pastor will retain the historic role of making decisions on peoples qualification for membership.  In essence there are a number of proposals that would basically render of membership as a concept meaningless.  Finally, there are the Judicial Council Elections.  There are those that, having failed to advance a particular agenda through the legislative process – would like to find ways to circumvent the process by essentially legislating from the courts.  This is the thing I am spending the most time praying about.  Namely that we get very strong “Strict Constructionist” adjudicators who will not choose to overturn the will of the denomination “By order of the court”.  Judicial Elections are on Monday.

You might wonder why I don’t say that Homosexuality is one of the big issues.  While there will likely be lots of smoke and some fire around the issue, it has been debated and voted on for years with a consistent result 70-30 for retaining the denominations prohibitions against homosexual marriages, clergy, etc.  The matter is settled as far as I can see – and has been for years.  If anything margins may become greater.  I predict that we are likely to see a 75 – 25 margin this year as a result of the surge of African delegates into the process.  The only reason this wouldn’t happen would be if there are a significant number of Africans who could not obtain visas.  I would guess that in 12 years this issue – if current demographic trends continue – will be completely off the table.  So basically – its a non issue.  But ya I like others will be drawn to the fire and smoke and will likely sit in on the committee to hear it all hit the fan.  We all love a good train wreck I guess.