Annual Conference 2013 Day 3 journal
This is the third of four journal entries from the Annual Conference Session 2013 by Nick Strobel. Consider this a sort of personal journal of my thoughts and experiences at the ACS with a separate journal report for each day.
Our day opened with an energetic medley of "This is the Day", "Enter His Gates With Praise", and "What a Mighty God We Serve". It got our physical and spiritual juices flowing! Then we slowed things down with an oldie but a goodie, "In the Garden” (#314 in the UMC Hymnal) and a reflection on Psalm 91 by worship leader Dr. Allen.
Rev. Karen Stoffers-Pugh was officially re-appointed to Wesley UMC in the morning, shortly before 9 AM. Praise God! Next to her is Pastor Gabriela Perla who was re-appointed to Trinity UMC. Church appointments are read in blocks by district (called "fixing of the appointments") at various times during the Annual Conference Session. As each church appointment is read by the district superintendent and the Bishop, the pastor for that church stands up. The Central Valley district's fixing of the appointments was on Friday morning. After all of a district's appointments are read, we blessed each pastor with a laying on of hands.
Two Bishop's Awards were given in the morning. The first award was to a couple from Oakhurst, Ken + Debbie Gudger of New Community UMC (above) for their work in starting a new church, their ecumenical faith studies called “Justice Matters” in their community and their work at the conference and district levels. |
The second award was to someone in our district, district lay leader Ruby Bago for leadership at the local church, district, Annual Conference and General Conference levels, including the national Filipino caucus. |
Eric Law talked about the Currency of Truth. He started off with the Chinese character for truth that is a combination of the character for the number 10 on top, a symbol for eyes in the middle, and the character for a table on the bottom. It takes ten eyes on the table (subject of discussion/idea) to know or confirm the truth. |
The Hebrew word for truth consists of three letters: the first letter is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, the middle letter is the middle letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and the last letter is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet. He related this to the Jesus saying in John, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life". Truth is intentionally in between "the Way" and "Life". |
There are four kinds of truth: Factual Truth (literal, physical sensory truth), Interpreted Truth (how you interpret the facts), Experienced Truth (how we experience the event or situation based on our past experiences + background), and Divine Truth (God's truth that is ever-present, ever consistent throughout the ages). In Hebrew, uses the same word for Divine Truth, sustain and support. God's pattern is predictable in that it is always pointed toward love and justice all throughout the Bible.
The features of the divine truth are as follows. The divine truth challenges the truth as propagated by the historically dominant group. Law used the story of the woman washing Jesus' feet at the house of the Pharisee Simon Peter to illustrate this. Simon Peter had one version of the truth of the woman's behavior and Jesus had another version. Jesus' approach to revealing the truth begins with raising the self-esteem of the powerless (e.g., the woman who washed Jesus' feet)
We don't have the whole truth unless we listen to the stories of the powerless first. The powerful will do everything to drown out the voice of the powerless. We need to listen to the powerless first to put what the powerful say in perspective. Example: last night we listened to Rev. Tinker's description of the situation of the native Americans today and what caused their plight first before we went to Q/A. This principle is also demonstrated by Desmond Tutu's work in the truth commissions in South Africa. Tutu had the victims of the crime speak first, then the perpetrators would speak. Sometimes reconciliation didn't happen but healing always did (e.g., a woman's son was not brought back to life but she forgave the perpetrator and the perpetrator repented—changed his life, so he would not act that way again).
The divine truth is a global truth. The divine truth exposes the system of oppression. We discover that in our society, there is a consistency that disadvantages a group of people. When the oppressive system is exposed (people acknowledge it), the divine truth then becomes a divine judgment. We discover that we have to change the pattern of the system. Ultimately, the divine truth restores the community of Christ.
Law shared an example of a church where three congregations worshipped: an Anglo/white congregation that had founded that church, a growing middle-class Korean congregation that had worshipped there for several years, and a growing poor Hispanic congregation that had worshipped there for only a few years. The church was running into a financial pinch and the proposal had been made by the admin council/trustees to sell the building in order to pay the bills. However, the ones on the admin council/trustees were just from the Anglo/white congregation so the Korean and Hispanic congregations were understandably upset by the proposal. Dr. Law was brought in to facilitate a discussion among all three groups to what should be done with the building.
Law held four truth events with all three congregations in attendance. At each event, he had the Hispanic congregation begin first. The first event was history work—each group described how they came to be in that group. The second event was a description of how the congregation is operating now. The third event was about how the proposal would impact the congregations or perceived value of each congregation or ministry. The fourth event was then finally what were each congregation was going to do to meet the finance gap. The Korean and Hispanic congregations were able to raise the needed money in their own particular way.
The steps for creating a truth event/program is given on page 14 of the Holy Currencies document.
On Friday I went to the Missions luncheon for all those churches that have a covenant relationship with one of the UMC missionaries. Our covenant relationship is with Katherine Parker who will be leaving Cambodia to go work in Nepal. Here I am with Bishop Warner Brown after I received the Missionary Support certificate at the Missions luncheon. Our certificate is shown at right. |
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Missionary Janet Lahr Lewis works in the Jerusalem area with the Palestinian Christians who have been displaced from their lands by the militarily-powerful Israelis. Yes, there are Christians in Palestine---they were the first Christians since this is the land where Jesus, the apostles, and other disciples were from. What is happening to the Palestinians in Israel are very similar to what happened to Native Americans in the United States in the 1800s and first half of the 1900s. |
The organizations we partner with to run the Methodist Liaison Office in Jerusalem. If you are going to the Holy Land, please contact the Methodist Liaison Office or Janet Lahr Lewis directly so she can show you areas where the people of Christ are at work off the usual tourist path. |
The Francis Asbury Award for Campus Ministry honors those who have done significant work for campus ministry in of the Annual Conference. This year's winner was Jerry Fox at right who has served on the Annual Conference's campus ministry committee/board for many years and is now retiring from San Jose UMC. Jerry will be leaving the conference committee in July. Standing next to him in the middle is the chair of the conference campus ministry committee, Mike Harrell, and Jay Pierce at left has been secretary of the conference campus ministry committee for several years. Both of them are also leaving the conference committee in July. Other changes in the campus ministry work of the conference are in the works as well. Jennifer Goto was the campus minister at UC Merced a year ago is now moving to San Jose UMC to replace Jerry Fox. One of her duties will be to work with the fledgling Wesley Foundation started by Jerry.
Kristin Stoneking, reporting above for the Compassion & Justice ministry area of the Annual Conference, will be leaving her position of 14 years as the Director and Campus Minister of CA House of UC Davis to become the Executive Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
One more Bishop's Award winner: Belinda Robinson for her community work in San Francisco.
Gayle Shearman, Conference Co-Lay Leader gave the first part of the laity address. |
Burt Yin, Conference Co-Lay Leader gave the second part of the laity address. |
We had our missional offering "Building a Bridge to Angola" in the afternoon that was for building a medical clinic in Angola and sending teams to Angola to work at the medical clinic. Wesley UMC raised $187 for this ministry. We also had raised several hundred more dollars for bed nets and malaria medicine. Other local churches were also generous and over $30,000 was raised across the Annual Conference. We celebrated the missional offering with the children of those attending the Annual Conference Session (see the picture above).
Recommendation Items for the entire body
In addition to the budget, there were just five resolutions that were discussed by the entire Annual Conference delegation. The rest of the resolutions (23 in number) were on the consent calendar all recommending approval.
Resolution 2 (Item 2) was doing away with the apportionment with its complicated formula based on what the churches actually spend on themselves and have the churches give 10% of their ordinary income to ministries beyond the local church—the Tithing Proposal. The resolution was amended to subtract any parsonage rental income up to the amount of the pastor’s housing allowance(s) from the ordinary income figure. That amendment came back to haunt us when we discussed the budget later that evening. The removal of the parsonage rental income from the 10% tithe calculation resulted in a reduction of the Annual Conference budget of $100,821. The resolution passed.
Resolution 7 (Item 7) was about the protest of expenditures by our Annual Conference that supports the discrimination against GLBTQi people, including money sent to national UMC ministries that lead to this discrimination. The original resolution was ruled as out of order by the Bishop as it would have been against the Discipline (withholding apportionments from the general church) and a revised resolution was crafted that made the protest public while apportioned funds would still be sent to national church programs. The resolution passed.
Resolution 8 (Item 8) was about local churches, district ministries, and Annual Conference ministries contracting with businesses that had unionized labor whenever possible. The resolution was amended to enable ministries to contract with non-union local businesses that treated their employees in a manner consistent with our denomination values. The resolution passed.
Resolution 27 (Item 27) was about the closure of the Shattuck Ave. UMC in Oakland. The resolution passed.
We had a great district dinner with a Hawaiian theme at Capitol Park just south of the convention center. After the district dinner we took up the budget for 2014. Pictures from the district dinner are shown below.
Pastor Karen is sitting at the far left table in the image. |
Our District Superintendent, Mariellen Yoshino, trying to be heard as she gives answers to the quiz. An open air park doesn't have the greatest of acoustics. |
Blessing of new ordinand, new lay minister, and new clergy to the Annual Conference coming into our district. |
Our district's youth delegation ham it up as we celebrate the over $600 raised for the missional offering of "Building a Bridge to Angola". They said that they would sing a song to the Bishop for every $300 raised. With the dinner's collection, they got to sing two songs; one in the evening session and the second at the very end of the Annual Conference plenary on Saturday morning. |
Holy Currencies Friday evening session
In the evening session, Eric Law talked about the currency of money and money’s proper role. Money has no value until we exchange it for something of value. We assign value to money (and not the other way around).
All of the currencies he has talked about are supposed to flow like water. What happens when water doesn’t flow? It stagnates, evaporates, things rot, etc. What happens when money doesn’t flow? That isn’t healthy either. Money is supposed to help people, to enable good things to happen. We need to recall money back to its original calling.
Law practices GracEconomics (see his June 18, 2013 blog entry and July 31, 2012 blog entry), to “take money out of the equation” in relationships with people. An example of GracEconomics would be to let people know of a price for an item or service but ask them to pay what they can and if they can’t pay the full amount, to let them know another service you need that they could provide for you in place of paying for the item or service you are providing them.
In our dealings with money, we need to ask ourselves, “How do we exchange our money for blessings?” See page 5 and 25 of the Holy Currencies document for more on the currency of money.
2014 Budget Debate
The budget for 2014 had to be amended to take into account the exclusion of the parsonage rental income from the income tithe that amounted to a reduction of $100,812. The amendments were in the funding of our program area (four ministry focus areas) as other places had more fixed costs like contracts, salaries, utilities, General church apportionments. Do realize that the budget tells us what we would spend IF all of the churches paid the 10% tithe (or the apportionments in previous years). Historically, collections on our apportionments have usually been about $1 million less than the approved budgets (i.e., many churches have not paid their apportionments in full). We have cut program ministries and staff payments so that we did not spend more than what was collected in apportionments. Conference ministries have always known that they had less money to spend than what was approved for the budget by the previous year’s Annual Conference Session. Therefore, cuts in the program line items of the budget still leave the program line items with MORE budgeted money than we have actually collected from local church apportionments in the past. The amended budget for 2014 passed a bit after 10 PM. I will say that Bishop Brown was very patient and gracious to all those with questions and tried to make sure everyone had a chance to speak at least once (much more patient than I would have been)!
Gun Control Resolution
Still for tomorrow’s discussion is Resolution 13 about stronger gun control legislation. What fun! A recent article in Newsweek (June 5th issue) highlighted the difference between how rural areas and metropolitan areas view gun control. One paragraph of the article in particular especially shows how the rural people and the metropolitan people are often talking past one another in the gun control debate.
“In big cities across the country, gun control doesn’t hurt gun owners, other gun owners do, especially if they are people of color. Recent Pew surveys show that 82 percent of the nation’s gun owners are white, and most are outside metropolitan areas, but 72 percent of gun-homicide victims are black or Hispanic, and live—and die—in the cities. In fact, the seemingly irreconcilable divide in opinion about the nation’s 300 million guns is really as much a question of geography and demographics as of politics or ideology. People who live in rural areas and in small towns, or for that matter small cities with small police forces, often feel more secure with a pistol in the house, or in the glove compartment, or on their belt. Sure, they use rifles and shotguns for hunting, skeet shooting, target practice. But many more gun owners say they have firearms for protection than for any other reason, according to a Pew survey earlier this year. In rural America, 59 percent of the households own guns, and the local cops mostly don’t mind. In a survey of 15,000 law-enforcement officers throughout the United States, conducted by PoliceOne.com, most of the cops favored less gun control, not more, and more gun carrying, not less.”
In urban areas, 28% of the households own guns and in suburban areas the percentage is 36%. In urban areas a majority of people favor gun control while an even larger majority of people in rural areas favor protection of the right to own guns. Does this urban/rural divide exist in our Annual Conference too?
