Among my other accomplishments at Annual Conference this year, I managed to get Rex to go to not one, but two vegetarian restaurants, as well as a Japanese restaurant. I wasn't with him the night he went out for wings, however, so no fault of mine there.
Be sure to check out my good friend Keith's new blog, Philosophy and Hoops - you can find a link on the left side of this page.
Finally, feel free to render feedback about the new template/style. I keep messing with things in hopes of being more inspiring - perhaps better content would be more to the point?
19 June 2007
16 June 2007
The last day
First, you’ll be glad to know that the clergy finally finished up their voting, so Rex will indeed be in church on Sunday. They appear to have elected a somewhat more diverse delegation than we laity did (no big surprise there).
We adopted the $25 million budget on Friday with one amendment, adding back in about $600,000 that had previously been taken out of the Church Development item. That’s the fund that helps pay for new churches, mostly out in the suburbs and exurbs. The rationale for this funding is that the growing suburban areas need more churches to serve the growing populations. I suppose that’s all well and good, but I would prefer to see a bit more money spent on the intown churches that have suffered declines over the past few decades due to the changing demographics, but are now starting to rebound because of the influx of gentrification (e.g., Druid Hills UMC). I’m a little tired of sending our money out to the exurbs and not seeing much funding flow back to us in return. As you might guess, I voted against the amendment.
We also passed a motion from the floor to form a task force to study the delegate election procedures. The proponents of the resolution complained about the overt campaigning, particularly the aggressive tactics of the “Vision Team”. Naturally, the conservatives opposed this measure, but surprisingly it passed with a comfortable majority. I suppose that’s a hopeful sign for future conferences. At least now there will be a committee in place to which I can submit my ten-page election analysis and recommendations for future procedural changes. The paper is still in the formative stages – i.e., in my head – but I will put together something, because I really do believe that the current process allows an organized majority to control nearly all of the delegate slots, while effectively shutting out any reasonable representation from a minority bloc.
More comments will follow after further reflection (and rest!). Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to feed the blogger with comments!
We adopted the $25 million budget on Friday with one amendment, adding back in about $600,000 that had previously been taken out of the Church Development item. That’s the fund that helps pay for new churches, mostly out in the suburbs and exurbs. The rationale for this funding is that the growing suburban areas need more churches to serve the growing populations. I suppose that’s all well and good, but I would prefer to see a bit more money spent on the intown churches that have suffered declines over the past few decades due to the changing demographics, but are now starting to rebound because of the influx of gentrification (e.g., Druid Hills UMC). I’m a little tired of sending our money out to the exurbs and not seeing much funding flow back to us in return. As you might guess, I voted against the amendment.
We also passed a motion from the floor to form a task force to study the delegate election procedures. The proponents of the resolution complained about the overt campaigning, particularly the aggressive tactics of the “Vision Team”. Naturally, the conservatives opposed this measure, but surprisingly it passed with a comfortable majority. I suppose that’s a hopeful sign for future conferences. At least now there will be a committee in place to which I can submit my ten-page election analysis and recommendations for future procedural changes. The paper is still in the formative stages – i.e., in my head – but I will put together something, because I really do believe that the current process allows an organized majority to control nearly all of the delegate slots, while effectively shutting out any reasonable representation from a minority bloc.
More comments will follow after further reflection (and rest!). Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to feed the blogger with comments!
14 June 2007
The good, the bad, and…
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. The laity election has concluded, and all but one of the conservative “Vision Team” managed to get elected (I have to imagine the one guy who didn’t make it feels pretty bad). After the 12th ballot I asked my supporters to direct their support elsewhere, in an effort to focus the votes on one or two particular progressive candidates that I thought might have a shot at getting at least an alternate delegate slot (this wasn’t an original idea of mine, in case you’re wondering). Unfortunately, that didn’t help matters quite enough, although it was kind of encouraging to still receive 30+ votes even after I asked my voters to go elsewhere. Either that, or the people voting for me were just hard of hearing…
The clergy delegation continues to struggle with their choices, although they at least have moved on to the Jurisdictional votes. I can’t really comment on the makeup of their delegation, because I don’t know enough of the clergy who are on it so far. I’ll check in with Rex and have him give me some feedback – or maybe he should just make a guest appearance on my blog?
This morning’s opening music was big fun, though – Latin/Hispanic songs, done all the way through in Spanish, and then repeated in English. They were very up-tempo, with good work on the congas. I skipped out on the laity service – the speaker was some assistant athletic director at UGA, and I figured there would be one too many metaphors comparing the Kingdom of God and spiritual battles to gridiron contests. The “praise band” music that I did hear was not exactly overwhelming. There’s only so many ways you can make a couple of guitars, keyboard and drum kit play verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, repeat chorus to BIG FINISH!
Good news – the day began (for some of us) at the annual MFSA (Methodist Federation for Social Action) breakfast. As I noted yesterday, this year’s speaker was Katy Hinman of Georgia Interfaith Power & Light. It was good to hear her, and to be with a group of folks who didn’t need convincing about prioritizing environmental stewardship.
Other good news – after much debate, attempts at unfriendly amendments, and opposing speeches, we still managed to pass a good resolution on comprehensive immigration reform, calling for a path to citizenship, protection for workers, and the reuniting of families, along with reasonable security measures. I tend to think the opponents of that resolution actually shot themselves in the foot, as the opposing speakers came off sounding stubbornly nativist. The vote was 703 in favor to 372 opposed.
One other thing I’ve been struck by this week is the number of good women clergy who seem to be leaving the ordained ministry. One that I already knew about has shifted to the UCC, and two others are leaving associate church positions this year to spend time discerning where their call should lead them. I think it’s incredibly unfortunate, to say nothing of shortsighted, that these clergywomen are not receiving more support and encouragement from the denomination, and that conditions are such that they’re leaving in increasing numbers.
Well, that’s all for now from Athens. We’ll vote on the budget tomorrow, and watch the clergy continue to vote for their delegation – it’s entirely possible that I’ll get out of here way before Rex does, so be nice to him when you see him on Sunday.
The clergy delegation continues to struggle with their choices, although they at least have moved on to the Jurisdictional votes. I can’t really comment on the makeup of their delegation, because I don’t know enough of the clergy who are on it so far. I’ll check in with Rex and have him give me some feedback – or maybe he should just make a guest appearance on my blog?
This morning’s opening music was big fun, though – Latin/Hispanic songs, done all the way through in Spanish, and then repeated in English. They were very up-tempo, with good work on the congas. I skipped out on the laity service – the speaker was some assistant athletic director at UGA, and I figured there would be one too many metaphors comparing the Kingdom of God and spiritual battles to gridiron contests. The “praise band” music that I did hear was not exactly overwhelming. There’s only so many ways you can make a couple of guitars, keyboard and drum kit play verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, repeat chorus to BIG FINISH!
Good news – the day began (for some of us) at the annual MFSA (Methodist Federation for Social Action) breakfast. As I noted yesterday, this year’s speaker was Katy Hinman of Georgia Interfaith Power & Light. It was good to hear her, and to be with a group of folks who didn’t need convincing about prioritizing environmental stewardship.
Other good news – after much debate, attempts at unfriendly amendments, and opposing speeches, we still managed to pass a good resolution on comprehensive immigration reform, calling for a path to citizenship, protection for workers, and the reuniting of families, along with reasonable security measures. I tend to think the opponents of that resolution actually shot themselves in the foot, as the opposing speakers came off sounding stubbornly nativist. The vote was 703 in favor to 372 opposed.
One other thing I’ve been struck by this week is the number of good women clergy who seem to be leaving the ordained ministry. One that I already knew about has shifted to the UCC, and two others are leaving associate church positions this year to spend time discerning where their call should lead them. I think it’s incredibly unfortunate, to say nothing of shortsighted, that these clergywomen are not receiving more support and encouragement from the denomination, and that conditions are such that they’re leaving in increasing numbers.
Well, that’s all for now from Athens. We’ll vote on the budget tomorrow, and watch the clergy continue to vote for their delegation – it’s entirely possible that I’ll get out of here way before Rex does, so be nice to him when you see him on Sunday.
13 June 2007
Frodo has failed (mostly)
After several additional ballots today, the laity elected their 14-member delegation to General Conference. Only one of the 14 was not on the so-called “Vision Team”, the innocuously named group of hard-line conservatives. This process took ten ballots in total. On the first ballot for Jurisdictional Conference, however, the laity elected all 14 delegates at once! Remarkable? Yes, somewhat. However, we were choosing from a much smaller overall pool of candidates. And just to cut through any potential suspense, no, I was not chosen for either delegation. The conservatives filled 9 of the 14 Jurisdictional delegate slots as well.
For inclusivity reporting purposes, the GC delegation has two African-American women, three white women, and nine white men. Why does this not look to me like the average church attendance? The JC delegation is a little better, with two AA women, two AA men, five white women, four white men, and one Korean man. The very last person elected is a woman about whom I feel very good as a representative, but she is woefully outnumbered.
Ironically enough, the Conference passed a resolution tonight calling on General Conference to consider, in their elections and appointments, “members with differing Christian theological perspectives and to perfecting the representation of gender and racial and ethnic groups, taking into account membership elected by the jurisdictions and general conference.”
As for the clergy side, they managed to elect a few more folks to GC, but they have a long way to go. We laity still have to elect five additional reserve delegates, and there’s a chance we can get another progressive or moderate person in that contingent; however, there are exactly five members of the “Vision Team” remaining, so it’s possible that their supporters might simply bloc vote all of them in.
Is there anything good going on in Athens? Well, yes. Today was our Great Day of Service, although that was cut short by the need to return for voting and business sessions. I spent a few hours out at Roots, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm featuring locally grown, organic, sustainable-farmed produce raised in a co-op structure. Although we didn’t have time to do much work, we did learn a bit about the operations of the farm, and as a lot of the volunteers there were young adults, I think they gained some insights into the nature of our agricultural practices and how those relate to environmental stewardship and creation care.
Speaking of environmental stewardship, tomorrow’s MFSA (Methodist Federal for Social Action) breakfast speaker will be Georgia Interfaith Power & Light’s Director, Katy Hinman. Somehow I’ll manage to get up for a 7:00 a.m. breakfast in order to hear her.
I’ll close with one other positive note: Rex presented the Eleanor Richardson Award for Social Justice today, which is given each year to honor a recipient who has worked for social justice causes in the NGUMC. This year’s posthumous recipient was Rev. Sally Daniel, former pastor of Grant Park UMC and former Conference director of ministry to persons with AIDS. In presenting the award, Rex got to say to the whole Conference that one of Rev. Daniel’s accomplishments was pastoring Grant Park as it became one of the first churches in the Conference to fully welcome and include gays and lesbians. So now there have been two positive references to the inclusion of the LBGT community at AC: one by me in my candidate’s speech, and one by Rex today. We’re not the only ones in the Conference who feel this way, though – despite my mediocre showing in the balloting, I continue to have people come up to me and tell me they thought my speech was great, and that they support my candidacy, and most importantly that they believe in the things I said and hope the Church continues to move in that more positive, inclusive direction. So Frodo may have lost the ring for now, but we must continue to believe and hope and work and strive for the day when love and justice will triumph over fear.
For inclusivity reporting purposes, the GC delegation has two African-American women, three white women, and nine white men. Why does this not look to me like the average church attendance? The JC delegation is a little better, with two AA women, two AA men, five white women, four white men, and one Korean man. The very last person elected is a woman about whom I feel very good as a representative, but she is woefully outnumbered.
Ironically enough, the Conference passed a resolution tonight calling on General Conference to consider, in their elections and appointments, “members with differing Christian theological perspectives and to perfecting the representation of gender and racial and ethnic groups, taking into account membership elected by the jurisdictions and general conference.”
As for the clergy side, they managed to elect a few more folks to GC, but they have a long way to go. We laity still have to elect five additional reserve delegates, and there’s a chance we can get another progressive or moderate person in that contingent; however, there are exactly five members of the “Vision Team” remaining, so it’s possible that their supporters might simply bloc vote all of them in.
Is there anything good going on in Athens? Well, yes. Today was our Great Day of Service, although that was cut short by the need to return for voting and business sessions. I spent a few hours out at Roots, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm featuring locally grown, organic, sustainable-farmed produce raised in a co-op structure. Although we didn’t have time to do much work, we did learn a bit about the operations of the farm, and as a lot of the volunteers there were young adults, I think they gained some insights into the nature of our agricultural practices and how those relate to environmental stewardship and creation care.
Speaking of environmental stewardship, tomorrow’s MFSA (Methodist Federal for Social Action) breakfast speaker will be Georgia Interfaith Power & Light’s Director, Katy Hinman. Somehow I’ll manage to get up for a 7:00 a.m. breakfast in order to hear her.
I’ll close with one other positive note: Rex presented the Eleanor Richardson Award for Social Justice today, which is given each year to honor a recipient who has worked for social justice causes in the NGUMC. This year’s posthumous recipient was Rev. Sally Daniel, former pastor of Grant Park UMC and former Conference director of ministry to persons with AIDS. In presenting the award, Rex got to say to the whole Conference that one of Rev. Daniel’s accomplishments was pastoring Grant Park as it became one of the first churches in the Conference to fully welcome and include gays and lesbians. So now there have been two positive references to the inclusion of the LBGT community at AC: one by me in my candidate’s speech, and one by Rex today. We’re not the only ones in the Conference who feel this way, though – despite my mediocre showing in the balloting, I continue to have people come up to me and tell me they thought my speech was great, and that they support my candidacy, and most importantly that they believe in the things I said and hope the Church continues to move in that more positive, inclusive direction. So Frodo may have lost the ring for now, but we must continue to believe and hope and work and strive for the day when love and justice will triumph over fear.
12 June 2007
Selection snafus, etc.
The voting for delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences has begun in earnest, and as this is my first election year at AC, I am seeing for the first time how the election process truly dominates all other business. Anytime there is a result to be announced, proceedings are interrupted, the winners are announced, and the next vote is taken immediately.
The election mechanism is a bit tricky, but I’ll try to explain it again here. First, we choose 14 delegates to General Conference. The laity have 43 candidates, so on the first ballot we voted for 14 out of 43. Any candidate receiving a majority of votes cast is elected, so on the first ballot we elected six delegates. That left us with eight more to elect, so on the next ballot we voted for eight out of the remaining 37 candidates (subtracting those already elected). It’s sort of an iterative process, I suppose. The main point is that a candidate must get a majority of votes cast on any given ballot to be elected, so it’s possible to have no delegates elected on a particular ballot. In fact, the second, third and fourth laity ballots had only one delegate each elected, so now we’ve elected a total of 9 (out of 14) General Conference delegates, and in our last ballot of the day we voted for 5 out of the remaining 34.
Got that? That’s the easy side. The clergy, who don’t allow for declared candidates, started with all 1,000 or so eligible clergy on the ballot. However, technical problems with the electronic voting software were so severe that 15% to 20% of the clergy ballots were invalidated. Apparently the software couldn’t handle the large number of candidates. The clergy re-voted their “first” ballot again this morning after being assured that the software bugs were fixed. Alas, that was not to be the case, as the second “first” clergy ballot was also rife with errors. The Bishop took the extraordinary step of asking for some clergy (30 or so) to voluntarily remove their names from the ballot, hoping that would allow the software to function properly. Nearly 150 volunteered, so with that reduced number, they took their third “first” ballot, which finally came out valid. Of course, given the huge number of potential candidates, no single clergy received a majority of votes cast. What they’ll do from here is begin to focus on the top vote-getters as having the most reasonable chance of being elected, and vote accordingly.
The results on the laity side have been pretty predictable, as each of the nine elected delegates so far was on the list of preferred candidates of the conservative bloc. Yours truly is lingering toward the lower part of the order; however, I can take heart in the fact that I’m not anywhere near dead last. I wound up 35th out of 43 on the first ballot, 24/37 on the second, 24/36 on the third, and 22/35 on the fourth. My total votes have been steady in the last couple of rounds, which I tend to interpret as showing a handful of hard-core supporters, since on each successive ballot the voters are allowed to vote for fewer and fewer candidates. In other words, the small numbers of people who are voting for me have me right at the top of their list. If I were to try to extrapolate this into some general insights into the NGUMC, I’d say that there’s a significant progressive element out there, and while it’s clearly in the minority, it’s a solid element.
Another thing I’ve pondered on today is the whole voting structure – i.e., why is it set up for successive ballots of fewer and fewer candidates? If I’m remembering my election law and democracy and governance classes right, I believe that this structure ensures that the majority can control most, if not all, of the elected delegates. Were we just to say that the top candidates are elected regardless of whether they receive a majority, the large number of conservative candidates might cancel each other out, while a small number of liberal candidates could get all the votes of the small liberal bloc, thus electing at least a couple of them. As it is, once one conservative candidate is elected, their votes can get switched over to another conservative candidate on the next ballot, and so on.
For all the talk of wanting to have a “diverse” representation on our delegation, so far the elected delegates are 100% white, and are mostly men. There are a handful of African-American candidates running, and some of them have a decent chance of eventually getting elected. There are also a couple of Asian candidates, one of whom has a shot. Unless I’ve missed someone, however, there are exactly zero Hispanic candidates. This is in spite of the fact that the Conference has been touting its growing Hispanic outreach and ministry. We’ve had Korean, Hispanic, and Indian pastors offer prayers so far this week, but none of them are yet represented on the delegation.
One other note: When the Bishop called for us to consider electing an “inclusive” delegation, the characteristics he noted include gender, race, and age, but funny enough, he didn’t mention anything about being theologically inclusive. So far, at least, there certainly hasn’t been any inclusivity from a theological perspective.
The election mechanism is a bit tricky, but I’ll try to explain it again here. First, we choose 14 delegates to General Conference. The laity have 43 candidates, so on the first ballot we voted for 14 out of 43. Any candidate receiving a majority of votes cast is elected, so on the first ballot we elected six delegates. That left us with eight more to elect, so on the next ballot we voted for eight out of the remaining 37 candidates (subtracting those already elected). It’s sort of an iterative process, I suppose. The main point is that a candidate must get a majority of votes cast on any given ballot to be elected, so it’s possible to have no delegates elected on a particular ballot. In fact, the second, third and fourth laity ballots had only one delegate each elected, so now we’ve elected a total of 9 (out of 14) General Conference delegates, and in our last ballot of the day we voted for 5 out of the remaining 34.
Got that? That’s the easy side. The clergy, who don’t allow for declared candidates, started with all 1,000 or so eligible clergy on the ballot. However, technical problems with the electronic voting software were so severe that 15% to 20% of the clergy ballots were invalidated. Apparently the software couldn’t handle the large number of candidates. The clergy re-voted their “first” ballot again this morning after being assured that the software bugs were fixed. Alas, that was not to be the case, as the second “first” clergy ballot was also rife with errors. The Bishop took the extraordinary step of asking for some clergy (30 or so) to voluntarily remove their names from the ballot, hoping that would allow the software to function properly. Nearly 150 volunteered, so with that reduced number, they took their third “first” ballot, which finally came out valid. Of course, given the huge number of potential candidates, no single clergy received a majority of votes cast. What they’ll do from here is begin to focus on the top vote-getters as having the most reasonable chance of being elected, and vote accordingly.
The results on the laity side have been pretty predictable, as each of the nine elected delegates so far was on the list of preferred candidates of the conservative bloc. Yours truly is lingering toward the lower part of the order; however, I can take heart in the fact that I’m not anywhere near dead last. I wound up 35th out of 43 on the first ballot, 24/37 on the second, 24/36 on the third, and 22/35 on the fourth. My total votes have been steady in the last couple of rounds, which I tend to interpret as showing a handful of hard-core supporters, since on each successive ballot the voters are allowed to vote for fewer and fewer candidates. In other words, the small numbers of people who are voting for me have me right at the top of their list. If I were to try to extrapolate this into some general insights into the NGUMC, I’d say that there’s a significant progressive element out there, and while it’s clearly in the minority, it’s a solid element.
Another thing I’ve pondered on today is the whole voting structure – i.e., why is it set up for successive ballots of fewer and fewer candidates? If I’m remembering my election law and democracy and governance classes right, I believe that this structure ensures that the majority can control most, if not all, of the elected delegates. Were we just to say that the top candidates are elected regardless of whether they receive a majority, the large number of conservative candidates might cancel each other out, while a small number of liberal candidates could get all the votes of the small liberal bloc, thus electing at least a couple of them. As it is, once one conservative candidate is elected, their votes can get switched over to another conservative candidate on the next ballot, and so on.
For all the talk of wanting to have a “diverse” representation on our delegation, so far the elected delegates are 100% white, and are mostly men. There are a handful of African-American candidates running, and some of them have a decent chance of eventually getting elected. There are also a couple of Asian candidates, one of whom has a shot. Unless I’ve missed someone, however, there are exactly zero Hispanic candidates. This is in spite of the fact that the Conference has been touting its growing Hispanic outreach and ministry. We’ve had Korean, Hispanic, and Indian pastors offer prayers so far this week, but none of them are yet represented on the delegation.
One other note: When the Bishop called for us to consider electing an “inclusive” delegation, the characteristics he noted include gender, race, and age, but funny enough, he didn’t mention anything about being theologically inclusive. So far, at least, there certainly hasn’t been any inclusivity from a theological perspective.
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