It’s over. I think it
will be a few days before I can process all that happened at our General
Conference over 11 days. However, for
now I will share about the last day.
Once again Sarah and I were lucky to get a ride to the
convention center. This time we made it
in time for the beginning of the worship service. The music was wonderful, as usual. Bishop Elaine Stanovsky reminded us that the
church is not God. “The good news is that
God is better than the church. . . God’s grace, God’s judgment and forgiveness,
God’s welcome and blessing are not controlled by General Conference.” She talked about prostrating ourselves before
God and asked us to stand, to bow our heads and then to bend over. The bishop asked if we had talked to others
with different perspectives. She invited
us to follow Jesus and to leave the tomb.
I think this was the perfect message for the last day.
After worship the plenary session began. All of the calendar items were on the
schedule and delegates were told it was up to them to get through them
all. One of the items was about the
Board of Pensions and divestment from fossil fuels. There was a lot of discussion on that
one. At break time we headed up the
stairs for our own little service. We sang, read scripture, and shared “Communion”
(candy and bandaids).
When we returned to plenary, there was a discussion on
budget issues. It was rather hard to
follow: points of order, motions to refer, translation problems, technical
problems, amendments and more. It was a
painfully slow process. Finally the
budget passed and we all went to lunch.
A young man named Ken joined us at our table. We learned that he is gay, attended seminary,
and is one of the gay clergy who walked into plenary the other day. He would like to be ordained a deacon in our
church but because he is gay. . .
As we were heading back to the plenary session after lunch
we encountered some of our group gathering at the Martin Luther King
statue. We began singing. After a bit of practice, we moved through security
and sang just inside the door. Slowly we
descended the stairs, still singing and entered the hall, forming a circle in a
back corner. When the session reconvened
we stopped singing. Signs were handed
out. When the time was right, we walked
single file along the back bar and finally stopped and faced in. We had enough people to spread out the entire
length. After 20 minutes of a silent
vigil, we filed back out singing “Remember Me.”
We wanted to be sure that they knew that we hadn’t gone away.
We all returned to the session to watch until the end. They had an incredible amount of legislation
to still vote on. Things began moving
much faster with far fewer points of order.
It was obvious that they were anxious to leave. The session stopped at 5:45 p.m. Unfinished business was simply dropped. We heard about the location for GC 2020—Minneapolis. The final worship service began shortly
afterwards.
Once the General Conference was officially declared over,
Love Your Neighbor Coalition people rushed to the Communion Table. There was singing, talking, and sharing. We did another Communion of rainbow candy and
bandaids. It was quite emotional. Will spoke and acknowledged that when we
leave, some people will be leaving forever because of the abuse by the
church. Others declared that they would
stay and work to change the church. We
hold hope for a change to a more inclusive United Methodist Church, one that
welcomes everybody into full participation in the life of the church.
Written on 5/20/2016
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