It’s a Mad Mission… Sign Me Up

This morning and afternoon was a marathon of worships and addresses. Opening worship flowed right into the Episcopal Address which was marvelous. Sharon Brown Christopher gave a wonderful message of hope innovatively integrated with the communion liturgy. It was probably the most powerful message of the day.

The Young People’s address was good. I guess all the hype about it had built my hopes up a little too high. Six young people took turns speaking alone and in unison from different parts of the arena with some drumming intermixed. Parts of it felt flat, while another time I found myself yelling, “there you go!”. I was hoping that there would be more of a challenge to the church to become the kind of place that values the gifts of young people. I’m not sure that the address challenged the audience at all. That may not have been the aim, but that was my hope.

Lyn Powell did a nice job with the laity address, challenging lay people to live out their own calls to ministry, rather than thinking about ministry as something that only clergy do.

I spoke from the floor today, so I guess that means I can go home now. I rose to make an amendment to one of the rules proposed by the rules committee. It ended up being fairly controversial, only passing 54% to 46%. The rule was related to the election of committee leadership and said something like “attention should be paid to inclusiveness in age, gender, race, clergy or lay, and young people”. The last “young people” was redundant and so I stood up and said so. I said something to the effect of “it already says ‘age’ and that encompasses young, old, and anything in between”. I got some applause for that comment and the bishop had to remind the body not to applaud. Another young person rose to speak against my motion, saying that it was good the way it was emphasizing young people, and it only barely passed. Afterward Eduardo texted me: “Way to go Luke. You just split the General conference!” ha

We started legislative committees tonight. I’m in the discipleship committee which handles legislation related to local and connectional youth and young adult ministry, lay ministry, the General Board of Discipleship, Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century, and the hymnal study, among others. My amendment didn’t hurt young people (or me) too much because I was elected vice chair of the committee. Another young person (I think he’s 25ish) is chairing the “Conferences” committee and Becca Farnum who was part of the young peoples address is the secretary. I was trained in the intricacies of the legislation reporting process very rapidly over an exceedingly mediocre boxed dinner. The computer program and paper system that is used to manage all of the legislation changes is pretty remarkable. I worked with the chair to organize the committee into subcommittees, which was kind of stressful. The subcommittees did finally get under way after electing their leadership and things calmed down a little. Tomorrow I ought to be able to participate in a subcommittee some. I have to help coordinate who is going to present legislation on to the plenary next week and will probably be up front a bit myself presenting legislation from the discipleship committee.

That all took my through 11:30. We met as a delegation, talked about what we had seen today, judicial council election, and when to wear our national championship t-shirts. Now it is just after 1:30 am and I’m ready to go to bed.

Peace,

Luke