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March 13, 2012

Do you like this?

Young Adult

Photo Courtesy of Hacking Christianity

An image from a famous Apple commercial depicts an athletic young woman smashing a video screen broadcasting messages that keep people locked into oppressive systems.

The best term to describe the Call To Action right now is, in a word, blowback. There’s tons of organized opposition to some of the plan’s particulars right up to the entire thing itself. Pretty epic. The church hasn’t seen anything like this before. Heck, I’m closing in on 20 blog posts on the Call To Action myself, so this is pretty bad.

  1. The Methodist Federation for Social Action has a plan. This is the most substantial one and the only one submitted as actual legislation. And I’m biased because I was on the team that wrote it.
  2. The Western Jurisdiction Bishops and constituencies have a plan. Theirs is not just criticism but is a major tweak of the CTA plan.
  3. The Plan B website has a plan. There’s no spokesperson, but a WHOIS search indicates it is owned by Joe Whittmore, former North Georgia Lay Leader. He also opposed the Constitutional Amendments in 2008 and the marriage-covenant signers in 2011. Doesn’t get my hopes up about the beliefs behind the project even as I agree with some of their conclusions and recommendations.
  4. The Wisconsin Delegation has refuted the Call To Action and called for more vague changes. More criticism than alternative proposals.
  5. Heck, even the Connectional Table had to revise a proposal and then it failed in their own committee. Amazing.

But all the blowback and opposition caused me to wonder about what alternative past we might have had.

A reader made a comment on the previous post about the Western Bishops’ response to the Call To Action that really struck my imagination. Here’s part of Anne’s comment:

I’m wondering why the Call to Action (when finished) was not shared with the bishops who could then do this type of session to discuss the pluses and minuses and offer revisions before the CtA ever came out to the UM public. The findings from the meetings of every jurisdiction could then be passed on to the CtA team who could then make some revisions and then release the CtA in a more constructive manner. I honestly think we would be in a better position of knowing what might be best for the church if these things had happened.

Anne’s comment caused me to start thinking about how the Call To Action could have been done as a more grassroots initiative much like an open-source software project.

In the computer world, there’s a conflict between closed-source and open-source software.  While there are many differences, closed source and open source have different processes of creation that are helpful to this conversation:

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March 13, 2012

Comments (5)

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Good to hear, Tim

Tim, good to hear. Glad that Andy is reaching out and that does seem like that fits with the requests from the article.

Jeremy Smith more than 1 years ago

Restructure

The first thing I saw was the CtA proposal. It fairly horrified me, for a lot of reasons already cited,and also because it gives such huge power to those who control Budget and Finance. They SHOUD NOT also control Communications or Archives and History as a general principle. The press needs to be a free as it can possibly be, and I don't want the bean counters to be controlling the history and records, either.

I did like the MFSA proposal much better, because it is more open, includes a more representative number of people and is much more flexible We won't get it all right the first time, and we need to be able to tinker gently rather than tear everything up all over again.

Let's move toward it, making such changes as we deem necessary.

Another issue. While I dislike conference calls a lot, they are a lot less costly than plane tickets, visas, hotels and meals. We need to get the best equipment, and the best IT person(s) and learn to use calls and video calls effectively and powerfully. It will be rough to start, but we can do this.

Anne Ewing more than 1 years ago

open source

Jeremy,

Don't underestimate the amount of pre-GC conversation that is already going on among delegates on General Administration. It may not be happening in one formal public meeting (which would be near impossible for the international delegates to attend) but I believe it is happening.

I appreciate your call to open-source the project and find it interesting to think about how they could have started the whole process differently. But I have also heard many people involved say they know it won't come out of GC unchanged and that's fine. It is in the hands of the delegates now.

I think what you term "blowback" is actually the conversation we need to be having and it will result in a better restructure emerging. All is not gloomy, it may not be pretty but perhaps this is actually what "holy conferencing" looks like.

Amy more than 1 years ago

In Defense of Wisconsin critique

As a loyal follower of Dan Dick's blog, I see his hand in the writing of this critique. What I have come to appreciate most about him is that he points out shortcomings/weaknesses in the hopes of initiating discussion on a broader scale. Although he will occassionally throw out his own soultions, he very much wants discussion on a broad scale; the more input and discussion the better. That is what this article is proposing.

Betsy more than 1 years ago

One step towards open-sourcing

Maybe someone's listening? Several members of the Connectional Table deputized Andy Langford to initiate an email conversation with General Administration committee members. That's one of your suggestions for making this an open-source project (but the committee, as you pointed out, isn't very representative of the whole church).

Tim Riss more than 1 years ago

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