Opening Night at GC

Opening worship was well lets just say it wasn’t well produced – however Bishop Huie’s sermon was great.  Its clear that the theme from the Council of Bishops is a push towards the center.  The communion table was set up in the center of the delegates, and repeatedly they phrase “Turn toward the Center” was uttered.  In my opinion this is a vast improvement from previous General Conferences – especially from the Bishops.

The first order of business was to establish the rules – it actually went pretty smoothly and was done early if you can believe that.  I do sense that there is a spirit of consensus here that may not have been around in years past.

After that we got two lectures that dragged on from folks up front.  The first was a lecture about why we should reduce the number of delegates to GC to 600.  There were a number of red hearing arguments thrown up about the cost of having so many delegates, the importance of “holy conferencing” needing smaller numbers etc.  But there is no question this is aimed at reducing the impact of the Southeast, South Central, and African delegations – and giving more power to the Western, North Central, and Northeastern Jurisdictions.  I’m to tired to get into it here but basically the proposed formula for making the change would radically over-represent small annual conferences, and would be punative to large ones.  So basically – if you are successful in making disciples – you lose proportional representation.  To that I say – “No taxation without representation”  The amazing thing is that they were allowed to make speeches lecturing us on why this should be passed without any counter from those opposed to the idea.

The second lecture was from The Commission on the Status and Role of Women given by Garlinda Burton and some other person I did not know.  It was a patronizing lecture on how white men should basically sit down and shut up.  The interesting thing was that the whole focus was on inclusion and inclusiveness – yet they used 20 minutes of “The Office” video clips (I am sure in massive and clear violation of all known copyright rules) to talk about diversity.  Only thing is 35 or so percent of the Delegates are from Africa and likely have never seen an episode of the office, and many of the American delegates are not of the generation that is addicted to the Office as I am.  So they used a video that nobody understand, which alienated 80 percent of the conference, to talk about the importance of inclusion, diversity, and hearing peoples voices.  Good one guys – big flop.

One motion stood out.  It was a proposal to ban petitions that personally attack an individual.  There is a petition this GC that is basically a brutal diatribe against one of the most Godly people I personally know.  You can read it here.  I hope this one gets passed – General Conference legislation is no place to Slander people under the cover of a political process.  It would be great if the person or persons who submitted it were actually brought up on charges themselves in my mind.

Ok going to bed – it was a long day. You can watch the video of the worship/first plenary here (Cant find it yet)
And you can read the petition regarding Jim Holsinger here.