48 Hours and 2 Worlds Apart

Although I know that I will be processing General Conference (both the feel of it and the outcome of it) for some time, I did promise to post some reflections after arriving home. The return from Fort Worth was without incident. There were a number of us sitting in the airport waiting for the same flight to/through Minneapolis: Bishop Dyck, one of the bishops from the Philippines and his wife, Mary jo Dahlberg, David Bard, Otis Anderson, Becky Sechrist, Dwain & Carol Peterson, Lynn Scott from Wisconsin, Sandra Brands headed to Albany, NY via MSP, and myself. Here’s what I got out of our conversations and my further reflection after the conversations.

The tone of General Conference was much better. People worked very hard to remain civil and polite, however, this should not be mistaken for Holy Conferencing. Tom Albin (Dean of the Upper Room Chapel) and I had occasion to talk about this on Friday. There was not enough time for silence and prayer and possibly conversation without legislation. The conversations that took place during the last 72 hours of General Conference between the bishops and representatives of the GBLTQ community will continue. It is important that the bishops participating in that conversation represent the theological spectrum, not just a part of it. There is a thought already circulating that General Conference 2012 might well use the model that we did in 2007 of holy conferencing without immediate legislation. There is the distinct possibility that the conversation would be followed the next day by voting on these petitions without individual debate on each one. They could be grouped so that apples and oranges aren’t put into the same vote. I think this is very promising.

There is an increased recognition that the global nature of our denomination requires us to be structured somewhat differently although there is no commonality as to what that structure should look like. The next General Conference will have almost 1/3 of the delegates from the Central Conferences – this year it was approximately ¼. Because of the increased cost of General Conference, serious attention needs to be paid at how we do it. I believe the gathering needs to be smaller and shorter. This will take a lot of work and convincing of many people, but it is important. Several times we were reminded about how many malaria bed nets could be purchased with the price tag for a variety of other items.

As we were winding down on Friday night with about an hour of work left, we took a fifteen minute break. I commented to an old friend who had just told me he didn’t think he’d be back to another general conference, that I was becoming more and more convinced that if we just didn’t meet the next time, the world would not notice. There is a growing understanding on the part of many who are delegates at General Conference that the real work of the church takes place where the people are – in local settings across the world – not in large gatherings of leaders. That is not to say that important things don’t happen in those gatherings, but they cannot be the focus of our ministry.

The cynic in me says probably more persons lose their faith while attending general conference than are brought to Christ! Yet, I can point to a number of times during General Conference when my faith was deepened and strengthened. Sometimes it happened as we heard some great preachers. Sometimes it happened while we watched wonderful videos of the presence of the Church around the world, including Hubbard UMC and Recovery Church here in Minnesota. Sometimes it happened in brief but important conversations around the edges. OK, maybe I’m a General Conference junkie! I will probably be retired by the time United Methodists gather in 2012 in Tampa, FL, but I’m already thinking about what I might do as a volunteer to help it work better. I guess it’s that way when it’s the Church you love and have given most of your life to. As a friend of mine has said more than once when we have gotten a little critical of the Church, “Remember the Church is like your mother, kick her very gently!”