More Greetings

Greetings on April 24 from the United Methodist General Conference. This message is from your reporters on the street, Louise Mendius and Kelly Brooks. We are having an interesting time here at the Conference.

Yesterday, we all arrived at 8 am to get registered. Three of us—Louise, Charles, and Jon—had to wait for our credentials to be vetted and ran around the conference without nametags for a while. We finally got the credentials taken care of and got our nametags and were finally official at 2:30 p.m. At 10:00 a.m., the group got together to discuss our plan of action. Those of us that did not have our credentials yet were told to wait until after lunch to see if they were taken care of.

While waiting, Louise attended the Women Delegates orientation and met several delegates from the African Conferences. They were great women and spoke mostly French. Louise got to practice her French, which the ladies said was quite good. However, they said that she spoke French a little strangely because her accent was too bright. This reporter knew that her ability with the Italian language and accent were showing, again!

This reporter learned during the orientation and luncheon that most of the women delegates are here for the first time. The presenters went through the processes of General Conference and many questions were asked. There are 13 legislative committees that make changes to the Discipline of the church. There were also many petitions that were discussed that were of interest to women in the Methodist Church. After the luncheon, the group broke up into small groups for each of the legislative committees. At that point, this reporter had to leave to go get her credentials, which is a saga in itself.

After getting my credentials, this reporter wandered through the Exhibit Hall with Rev. Jon Moore. We found a great little exhibit with plenty of international products. Many of these objects came from Africa and South America. Regretfully, we had to leave to go to dinner.

The Conference officially began at 6:00 p.m. with Opening Worship and Holy Communion. This service was spectacular with processions, liturgical dance, three choirs, an orchestra, and great music from the General Conference Music Director and his coterie of musicians. Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, President of the College of Bishops, spoke on “Celebrating God’s Promise of Hope.” Her speech was inspiring and delineated the theme of the conference. The dancing was really spectacular. Many of the delegates wore traditional dress from their country, which added a lot of color to the ceremony. Many of the African women wore beautiful traditional costumes incolors of bright greens, yellows, browns, golds, oranges, and the like. The patterns on the clothing were beautiful and this reporter wished that her camera had been available so that she could take pictures. The African dress is flowing and follows the line of the body in a way that Americans cannot copy. These costumes added to the pageantry of the service. The service was extremely moving and this reporter felt blessed to be with this great and interesting group of people.

The business of the Conference did not start until slightly after 8:00 p.m. The bar of the Conference was set and the body began to work on the Rules of the Conference. First, however, the delegates had to learn how to use the voting machines. The machines were explained and test votes were taken. The first vote had 21% that were invalid votes. Apparently the voting machines are a little hard to use.

Many changes were proposed for the rules of the Conference. During one of the motions, Presiding Bishop Huie had made a decision. This decision did not sit well with one of the delegates and that delegate spoke up to protest the ruling, stating that the decision did not quite match up with the rules of order. It was interesting to see how Bishops worked. Bishop Huie basically said that the decision had been made and that challenges to the chair when a decision had been made were out of order. It was fascinating to see the process at work. It will be interesting to see how each of the changes to the rules play out.

During the session, a tremendous rainstorm arrived. There was a great deal of rain and thunder, and you could hear the thunder right in the auditorium.

A movie was played that was about the 40th Anniversary of the United Methodist Church (started on April 23, 1968). After several more motions and much discussion on referring certain petitions to the Judicial Council, the meeting was adjourned at 10:53 p.m. This reporter got back to her room at the hotel after 11:00 at night. She gratefully fell into bed because she had to get up at 5:00 a.m. the next day.

The next day arrived really early. Breakfast was actually quite good at the hotel. It consisted of fruit, yogurt, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, potatoes, cereal, orange juice, apple juice, grape juice, coffee, and more. Several of the group ate breakfast together. Three of the group actually are staying at the Hilton downtown and were not able to be with the group for breakfast. The rest of the group is staying at the Trinity Inn and Suites. We got out of the hotel and on the road to downtown Fort Worth at 7:30 a.m. With several cars in the group, it is easy to catch a ride to the Conference.

Conference started this morning with choral music from a Korean choir. Their voices were beautiful and the music was haunting! Another great worship serviced ensued. Dancers, blended praise and traditional music, traditional hymns sung to new tunes…all of these elements created a memorable worship service. The sermon was given by Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher. Her message basically stated the three simple rules that Methodists should live by—Do no harm; Do good; Stay in love with God.

We then moved on to several really professional presentations. It was wonderful to see the Church moving in the direction of using technology and having presentations that were multi-media productions. This use of technology made these normally boring presentations interesting. The first two talks dealt with the four areas that the church is focusing on for this Quadrennia. These areas are 1) poverty, 2) health and wholeness, 3) creating new churches and renewing old churches, and 4) developing leaders for the global church. The most interesting part of these talks was when a little 7-year-old girl, Catherine, was brought before the assembly. She has raised $40,000 for mosquito nets for African children. These nets are used to combat malaria in Africa. This reporter intends to find out more about this program and how it is funded.

The most interesting talk of the day, however, was the first-ever young people’s message. A great group of youth and young adults got up to speak about their hopes, dreams, and changes that need to be made. Each of the group gave a message that showed a diverse range of thoughts and backgrounds. Several of the youth and young adults had some very hard truths to tell the assembly, all of which must be addressed. These young people are doers and leaders. If we allow these young people to assist in the direction of the church, we will make changes that will last several lifetimes! This reporter has never seen such a dynamic group of young people. One of them was a young lady from Russia and she spoke of the persecution of Methodists in Russia and how the church needs to be aware of persecution around the world. Street Reporter Kelly will have some observations on this group as well.

We also had the Lay address to the conference. General Conference Lay Leader Llyn Powell gave an inspiring talk. Her message essentially dealt with the responsibilities of the lay person in ministry. But more of that later.

One thing that this reporter found annoying was the dismissal process of the body. During each session, songs were sung and each session seemed to be closing with prayer. The delegates and observers would begin to leave only to be told to return because the session was not adjourned. When that happened you could hear the groans from the plenary floor. It was comical how people would scramble back to their seats.

One thing that we reserve delegates are grateful for are the comfortable seats that we have. Jeff and Daniel have folding chairs with some padding on them. These seats look entirely uncomfortable from where all of the reserves sit.

In all, these past two days have been exciting. We’ve even been under a tornado watch both days! We’ve been told that if we hear a siren to immediately take cover in the hallways! So you can see that General Conference can be a blend of excitement, boredom, and absolute fascination with the interesting people that you meet.

Until next time……this is your Street Report Louise Mendius signing off. Good night and good luck!