Annual Conference 2013 Day 4 journal
This is the fourth of four journal entries from the Annual Conference Session 2013 by Nick Strobel. Those interested in the results of the legislative resolutions can skip to the day 3 journal. Consider this a sort of personal journal of my thoughts and experiences at the ACS with a separate journal report for each day.
The morning’s devotional was on Psalm 137, a good one that is especially for those pastors that are moving away from their homes to a new church and for the laity who are losing a pastor friend. How do we sing our song in a foreign land? Well, God is present with us wherever we may be.
We found out that the churches in the Annual Conference had raised more than $30,000 for the missional offering “Building a Bridge to Angola”. At the district dinners, $3647.23 was raised for bed nets in the Imagine No Malaria campaign. Annual Conferences across the nation have campaigns going on to raise money for Imagine No Malaria for the next two years. The California-Nevada Annual Conference’s goal is to raise $2 million for Imagine No Malaria (see http://www.calnevimagine.org). There’s even a friendly competition going on between some of them as to who can raise the most amount. See this news item about the competition between the Illinois Great Rivers and Western Pennsylvania Annual Conferences.
In the picture above, Rose Farhat, describes her experience with suffering from malaria growing up in Liberia. Malaria attacks more than just the physical body. Although, the death rate has been cut in half because of the new effort by the UMC, it is still quite high: one person every 60 seconds dies from malaria. Because of our multi-year work in this particular ministry, we now know that fighting malaria effectively takes more than just preventative measures such as distributing bed nets. Eradicating malaria also takes culturally-appropriate education, communication, and treatment---all of which takes trust-filled relationships that take time to develop. In the picture below, one of our former pastors, Pam Fine, describes the ingenuity of one of her church's youth in raising thousands of dollars for the Imagine No Malaria campaign (see page 5 of the June 2013 Aptos UMC newsletter for the article by Austin Eaton).
Holy Currencies: Currency of Gracious Leadership
Eric Law gave his final session on the Holy Currencies. He talked about the Currency of Gracious Leadership that enables truth to be spoken and relationships to be built and strengthened. He introduced the idea of creating a “grace margin” between a group’s comfort or safe zone and their fear zone (p. 19 of the Holy Currencies document).
The first step is to negotiate for time and then clearly set the parameters of what you will do and what you will not do with the time agreed upon. Participants will agree at every gathering to uphold an agreed upon guidelines for respectful communication. Leaders at the gatherings will include a diversity of God images through prayers, Bible study, songs, and the liturgical framing of each gathering.
Eric Law gave several examples of Jesus gracious leadership style. Jesus’ leadership created a time and a place for people to:
- Reflect and re-evaluate their values and beliefs. For example, with the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11, Jesus did not answer the accusers right away but Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.
- Listen to the experiences of the poor, powerless and excluded. Jesus honored the woman of very limited finances who anointed his head with expensive perfume in Matthew 26:6-13.
- Share and live the abundance (feeding the 5000 found in all of the gospels).
- Share authority as he did with the disciples, calling them friends in John 15:15 and sending them out two by two in Mark 6:7.
Law contrasted the usual way we conduct meetings to make decisions with a decision-making meeting based on creating a grace margin. The conventional meeting with Roberts Rules of Order is an incomplete and partial process, there’s debate with persuasion to a particular group’s or individual’s truth, either-or attitude, premature judgment, acquiescence to the powerful, mono-perspective, and a putting down of differences that all lead to a divisive solution. A grace margin sort of meeting is a holistic truth-seeking process, there’s dialogue with mutual understanding of each group’s truth, both-and attitude, clarification before judgment, listening to the powerless first, multi-perspective, and an acceptance of differences that lead to a shared solution. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) used the grace margin sort of meeting to come to a decision on the ordination of LGBT clergy several years ago to avoid the rancorous contention of previous years and for both sides to gain an understanding of the other’s perspective. Now that those who are in favor of LGBT ordination have prevailed, they need to remember to listen to the minority who disagree. The ELCA ultimately saved time by allowing the truth to be told and heard over what they would have had if they had followed the usual sort of debate as they had at previous meetings.
The Annual Conference needs gracious leadership development activities for church leaders, for church members to use outside of the church (e.g., in their places of work and leisure), and for people in the neighborhood (this last one is what churches usually forget!)
In the remaining time, Eric Law went through the currencies of wellness and time & place more quickly. He had us reflect on what are the signs of personal wellness, signs of community wellness, signs of personal UNwellness, and signs of community unwellness. He noted the requirement of the rhythm of work and rest and every so often starting over again given in the scriptures. Consider the biblical texts of Sabbath (so slaves and owners may both rest; Deut 5:12-15), every seventh year of letting the land rest (Exodus 23:10-11) and canceling of debts (to start money flowing again; Deut 15:1-2), and every 50th year holding a year of jubilee where all prisoners are returned their families and land is returned to the original owners (Leviticus 25:8-12). How would those biblical texts affect your community? [My own question: Would we have such a wide gap between the rich ruling class and the poor today, the environmental crises, the angry divisiveness in our politics, and poisonous distrust of our government today?]
Finally, he described the currency of time & place. This primarily deals with volunteer time and the space of the church building or in members’ homes as well as public parks, etc. He briefly described the work of the Chinese-American artist Lily Yeh to bring healing of communities devastated by poverty and/or war in north Philadelphia and the villages of Rwanda. She transformed spaces of bleakness and despair into a nurturing space full of light, transparency, clarity and ease. See http://barefootartistmovie.com/video/ for a film of her work.
To close his time with us, Eric Law shared a new song he wrote (based on Ezekiel 36:26):
A new heart I'll give to you
A new spirit I will put within you
And I'll take out of your flesh
The heart of stone
And give you
A heart of flesh
Last Recommendation Item for the entire body
Resolution 13 (Item 13) is about stronger gun control legislation. There were some minor amendments in the morning plenary session for this resolution and it passed without any debate between gun rights and gun control people. Most of the discussion was about the funding of mental health for those affected by gun-related violence (would be it prevention funding for youth suffering from mental illness, would be for prevention funding for all suffering from mental illness, would it be for victims, etc.) The rest of the resolutions (23 in number) were on the consent calendar all recommending approval. They all passed.
Fulfilling their pledge to sing a song to the Bishop for every $300 raised at the district dinner last night, the Central Valley District youth sing an acapella praise rap song at the closing of the Annual Conference Session 2013. Pastor Karen and I were not able to stay for the ordination service in the afternoon but you can see pictures from it on the Cal-Nev Annual Conference facebook page.
