Nashville Diary Day 3

Security, Global Relationships and Social Witness

by

Friday Jan. 24, 6:51 p.m.

The 48-hour intensive preparation for General Conference 2020 has ended after a day of trying to make up for past discrepancies and build relationships past barriers of race, culture, language, distance, age and gender.

After an investigation last summer that documented instances of voter fraud at the special called 2019 General Conference, the commission that organizes and operates the worldwide legislative assembly has gone to great lengths to tighten up security for the 2020 session.

General Conference secretary Gary Graves and business manager Sara Hotchkiss described at length new, stricter procedures for delegates, staff, media and observers to gain credentials in Minneapolis (see accompanying story for details). In a separate session, church media were reassured that 1) media wouldn’t be restricted to a section six stories above the floor of General Conference as in St. Louis last year, and 2) United Methodist Communications and the General Conference Commission were working together to assure church-related media have sufficient access to both legislative and plenary sessions, another major obstacle from St. Louis.

One could almost hear the sighs of relief in the communicators’ breakout – or maybe that was my own mental tally. St. Louis was a horror from start to finish, and it seems everyone is working to avoid another such nightmare in Minneapolis.

Even with the limited amount of time allotted for each topic on the agenda, it felt as though the lunchtime program about the various racial and ethnic initiatives got short shrift.

Imagine trying to tell your community’s story while your audience was having its lunch and moving about the room? Perhaps that’s why many listeners got up to greet and talk with the presenters when the session ended.

Whatever growth is happening in the U.S. UMC is occurring among faith communities served by the United Methodist racial-ethnic initiatives, and it’s happening there at double-digit rates. As the Rev. Chebon Kernell, new executive director of the Native American Ministries Plan said in his presentation, there’s a lot that our racial-ethnic initiatives have to share with the mostly white main body of the U.S. church.

Surely they deserve more than having to compete with lunch.

Want to really challenge your congregation? Ask the members about the United Methodist Social Principles.

If they don't know what the Social Principles are – or if they reply that they're only about homosexualitty – send them to the website containing the revised global Social Principles. These new expressions of worldwide social justice were eight years in the making by a committee of representatives from all parts of the UMC. The document may be the single most inclusive, most equally representative statement that will come before the 2020 General Conference.

I've only begun to read the 2020 Social Principles, but already I'm hoping delegates will have the good sense to adopt it in its entirety without mucking about. It's a masterful expression of the social heart of global Methodism that replaces the current, American-colonialist version now in the Book of Discipline.

At my first General Conference in 1988, electronic voting was so new and unreliable that the business manager at one point held up a spreadsheet with a large picture of a cockroach on it, saying they’d found “the bug in the system.” For the 2020 session, processes are so digitized that anyone who can’t handle a computer is going to be seriously disadvantaged.

For starters, the heads of delegations will be issued ChromeBooks. These devices will be used to keep delegates updated on rapid changes to legislation, schedules and procedures. Unfortunately, they’ll have to turn in their ChromeBooks at the conference’s conclusion because they’ve been rented for seven years, said business manager Sara Hotchkiss.

Gone, too, are the days when three giant compendia of printed legislation weighed down delegate tables. The Daily Christian Advocate will be published primarily in digital form. Anyone wanting a paper copy will have to subscribe at Cokesbury.com.

Electronic voting will take place in both legislative and plenary sessions. Rev. Gary Graves said technicians are working to secure against “digital bleed” in which delegates’ electronic votes could be perceived by others. Some African delegates reportedly were “hacked” in St. Louis, and returned home to find they’d lost jobs or appointments because someone disapproved of their votes.

Delegates and observers will be updated via two websites: https://gc2020welcome.org/ and https://www.resourceumc.org/churchwide/general-conference-2020 Legislation will once again be tracked using the CALMS system, but that site isn’t active yet. Both new and veteran delegates will be required at attend orientation once in Minneapolis because so many procedures have changed.

There are 14 legislative committees this year to comply with a rule enacted by GC2016 that all legislation must be dealt with in committee and plenary, reported the Rev. Abby Parker-Herrera, petitions secretary. Previously the practice was that any legislation left over when the General Conference adjourned was left undecided.

There are 747 petitions contained in the Advance Daily Christian Advocate, available for download here in the four official languages of General Conference: English, French, Kiswahili, and Portuguese.

The committees are:

  • Church & Society 1, 2, and 3 (3 committees)
  • Conferences
  • Discipleship
  • Financial Administration
  • Faith & Order
  • General Administration
  • Global Ministries
  • Independent Commissions
  • Judicial Administration
  • Local Church
  • Higher Education/Superintendency
  • Ordained Ministry

Committee workloads range from lows of 23 petitions for Central Conference Matters (handled by the Standing Committee on Central Conferences) and 29 for Global Ministries to highs of 103 petitions for Conferences and 110 for Ordained Ministry. Committees that finish their consideration early may be asked to help with other workloads. Some identical petitions have been "bundled" into a single petition, said Rev. Parker-Herrera.

In addition, an Advance Legislation Committee comprised mostly of annual conference chancellors (legal advisers) has reviewed petitions for their compliance with the UMC constitution. Rev. Parker-Herrera, a church-start specialist from Rio Texas Annual Conference, said her efforts at assessing and assigning petitions to legislative committees will be reviewed by the Reference Committee before General Conference starts.

Our penchant for committee work reminds me of a comedy skit from the 1992 General Conference in Louisville, Ky.: "We elect 'em, and appoint 'em. Sometimes we just anoint 'em. But we never make a move without their say."

GC2020 also will be more family-friendly, thanks to the advocacy of several women delegates with infants and young children. Strollers will be allowed on the General Conference floor, and caregivers will be issued special access badges that will let them bring children to their delegate parents when needed. Business manager Sara Hotchkiss said she’s also looking into provisions for nursing mothers, anticipating that some delegates will give birth before General Conference begins. All good improvements.

General Conference is a grueling 10-day marathon that strains even the fittest persons. Delegates and observers alike were repeatedly cautioned about self-care, including time for prayer and meditation. Well-fitting, sturdy shoes, good refillable water bottles and fitness preparation – especially walking – were all counseled by veteran GC participants.

As for the weather, the host committee said it could be very nice springlike weather in May – or there could be a snowstorm.

Finally, the question on everyone’s mind: Will the delegates choose one of the proposed separation plans for the United Methodist Church? To most people’s chagrin, the answer is still: We don’t know.

And we won’t know until the last days of General Conference after the various plans and their enabling legislation have been reviewed, revised, thrown out, brought back, fought over, and possibly all discarded. The Pre-General Conference Briefing has made it abundantly clear that the worldwide United Methodist Church has become a far more complicated entity than many people – even longtime observers such as this writer – understood until now.

A undercurrent of suspicion and resentment has simmered – and sometimes boiled over (see Nashville Diary Day 2) – regarding the fact that, with the exception of a strong proposal from the Philippines, all the “future” plans for separating the UMC are U.S.-centric plans. Not only are they U.S-centric, from a practical standpoint they are predominantly institutional, white, heterosexual, male proposals despite protestations to the contrary. One only had to listen to perspectives from three Central Conference representatives on Thursday and a half a dozen racial-ethnic leaders today to see that those who weren’t involved in the plans’ development have been drastically disenfranchised. As Senator Elizabeth Warren has said, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

The biggest task now facing United Methodist delegates won’t be to choose a future path by means of a mound of legislation. No, General Conference 2020 will need to prove through its deliberations that it truly lives into its aspiration to be a global community of faith that governs itself with equal participation from all quarters. That’s going to take some mighty effort.

Pray for General Conference 2020. It brings a golden opportunity, after the debacle of the 2019 special conclave, to prove that the gospel of Jesus Christ genuinely is able to change heart, minds and souls. By so doing, GC2020 could bring hope to a world that sorely needs some right now.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011. Associate Editor John Astle contributed to this report.