It’s a Mad Mission… Sign Me Up

General Conference is such a strange place.

Pretty much each morning I get up, shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast in the cafe on the bottom floor of the hotel. After that I walk the four blocks to the convention center. Starting a block away I begin to walk a gauntlet of people who are handing out fliers and newsletters trying to influence my vote. Some advocate for small and rural churches, for the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church, for a streamlined process into ordained ministry, or for certain judicial council candidates or a slate of candidates. Once I get inside the convention center the active deluge of paper ceases and my name-tag which is marked “Delegate” gets me through one of three “Delegates only” entrances. When I get to my desk about 27″ of space on a narrow table, there is a copy of that day’s “Daily Christian Advocate” which contains the agenda, reports from the previous day, and transcripts of plenary sessions. Each day there has been a free book from the publishing house including Bishop Rueben Job’s Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living the other day. I am also the proud owner of a gilded faux-leather bound reprint of Wesley’s Primitive Physick. On the floor we are in the bottom of a bowl. The plenary is in a large arena. There are a thousand delegates on the floor and another couple thousand in the seats. At the opening worship there were 6500 people total.

One thing that still feels pretty remarkable is the way in which the entire process is geared towards helping the delegates do the work of the church. There are pages whose job it is to carry messages or paperwork for the delegates. I was vice chair of the Discipleship legislative committee and the pages would go and get the officers water bottles. It is pretty remarkable that this whole business works. Nobody is in charge. There is a business manager, a secretary, some volunteer coordinators, and committees that coordinate worship, schedules, and presiding officers. Clearly people have worked hard to see that everything will happen, but as much as some people might think they are, no one really controls what is going to happen.

I’m a United Methodist nerd and haven’t outgrown a sense of awe about some things. All of the UM “dignitaries” are here in a community of several thousand: bishops, general secretaries, prominent pastors and academics. The brightest lights in Methodism are here. I found myself the other day suddenly in a circle with a couple prominent pastors, a bishop, and a seminary president and felt like I had to leave for slightly less rarefied air.

The schedule really contributes to the surrealism and unreality of it all. We are scheduled from 8 in the morning to eleven at night. When we are on break delegates share what we’ve been hearing or seeing and strategize. Every waking moment is related to General Conference and 18 hours a day is a long time.

One of the sad things is the lack of interaction between US and non-US delegates for the most part. Nearly 1/4 of the delegates are African and I haven’t had much of a conversation with any of them. I’m not the exception either. I’ve talked briefly with a few Europeans and I worked with a Filipino woman, but the connections that spiderweb among US United Methodists don’t reach overseas in the same way that they do across the country.

Sorry for not writing yesterday. It was a particularly long day. My first meeting started at 7 am and my last one ended at 12:15 am. I was pretty drained and very frustrated after my legislative committee. I have an unfortunate tendency to personalize things that aren’t personal and that didn’t help me much.

Bedtime soon. I have to churn out a little blurb on my experiences for Newscope here in a bit. I may post it too.

-Luke