A Bolt of Lightening

I’ve been holding off on writing this posting, hoping that things would become more clear in my mind about just what happened last Wednesday. I’m watching the complete video of the debate and vote on the Social Statement on Human Sexuality to help me confirm, in my own mind, just what happened…..because the result of the vote seemed so incredible. I’ve come to realize that I’ll have to write and rewrite my observations of the Assembly,[ perhaps writing will help things become more clear in my thinking about just what happened.]“

The afternoon started with a charged atmosphere, figuratively and literally.

The fifth plenary began with an excellent Bible study, led by Dr. Diane Jacobson, a prime leader in the “Book of Faith” initiative and a seminar professor. She does a wonderful job–we enjoyed her presentations at our St. Paul Synod Assembly in late May.

Poor Diane! No sooner had she started her Bible study, then Bp. Mark Hanson broke in and told us a tornado had touched down at 15th and LaSalle–just a few blocks from the convention center.

Then sirens went off and PA announcements were heard throughout the convention center. “A tornado has damaged parts of the convention center. Please remain in the hall.”

Finally, we got the all-clear from the warnings, but our nerves were put on edge, right from the start.

Then, we moved into the Social Statement. There were a number of attempts to revise the Social Statement, but all of the major amendments were defeated. I was so impressed with the professionalism that was used to take each amendment, consider it, and then present it to the assembly. A special Reference and Counsel Committee was set up, just to vet the amendments to the Social Statements. Our electronic voting devices saved hours of time tabulating results. And, they were much more reliable than looking at colored cards or judging from a voice vote.

And, then, after all the amendments, we were at the cross roads. The big decision. It came very quickly. I think everyone was suddenly caught with the realization–”this is it. This is the decision-time.”

Then, we prayed. Bp. Hanson asked all of us to pray silently. What thoughts and feelings must have been going through the minds and hearts of all in the hall–voting members, visitors, staff.

So, we voted. Bp. Hanson always hesitated a few moments to announce votes, just to be sure he saw the results correctly. This time, it was different. He looked at his computer screen, where he could see the results, but we couldn’t. He looked somewhat shocked, but he kept his composure. He simply said, “Let me check the results.”

After a few moments of discussion with the technicians, he turned to us, and asked that the results be revealed.

Yes: 66.67%

No: 33.33%

So, by precisely the margin required by the ELCA constitution, the Social Statement was adopted. A change of one vote, from “yes” to “no” would have defeated the Social Statement.

There was silence, at first, in the hall. Then, gasps and small cheers in the back of the hall. It was like an electric charge–a bolt of lightening–went through the whole hall.

Bp. Hanson called for silence.

Then, he gave a beautiful message about the importance of understanding the feelings of all those who were in the hall and all those, all over the world,  watching our vote.

I would love to talk to many of my fellow voting members about why they voted the way they did. The initial rules votes showed a preliminary indication of a majority of support for the Social Statement. So, what happened? How did the vote count increase from the preliminary vote to the final vote?

Was it the Holy Spirit? Was it majority rule?

I talked to breakfast partners the next morning. One said, “The silent prayer before the Social Statement vote moved me to support the Social Statement.” Another breakfast partner, a bishop, said, “It was the bishops. They finally got behind the Social Statements [In 2005, some of the bishops spoke to turn down and delay the Social Statement.]“

As a voting member, I came to appreciate deeply the times of prayer and silence, before we cast our votes.

So, what do you think? Spirit? Political Power?

I’ll comment a bit later on the surface similarities between our assembly and a political convention.

Next entry: Implementing the Social Statement

Video and photos at the CWA

While I compose some thoughts on the momentous events of Tuesday afternoon during the CWA, I’ll post some links to photo galleries and videos from the CWA:

Photo Galleries from the CWA (there are lots of pictures of St. Paul Synod folks, since we were sitting in the front row-right under the speaker lecterns.)

Video highlights of CWA

Breakfast conversations

Our days are long at the CWA, so you’ll have to forgive me for my late posts to this blog. I’m going to try to get caught up through today, Thursday, in the next 24 hours. If you’ve been following the news and/or my Tweets

twitter.com/paulhardt

you’ll know it’s been an eventful CWA–in more ways than one.

One of the respites we have from our busy schedule of hearings, plenary sessions, quasi-committee of the whole sessions, etc. is our breakfasts and lunches.

Most of us meet in the ballrooms at the Minneapolis Convention Center,when breakfast and/or lunch is offered there. It’s very convenient, and we have some great meals.

We don’t have any assigned seats, so we just sit where ever we want. I don’t think I’ve ever sat at a table where there was another St. Paul Synod voting member, so we have a great opportunity to meet folks from all over the country.

During one of my first meals in the banquet style, I met Pastor Duane Miller, an “Intentional Interim Pastor” from West Des Moines, Iowa, soon to serve a church in the Southwest Synod of Minnesota. Duane is a really interesting person. He got his undergrad degree in Public Administration from Michigan State. What a great degree for the ministry! The more I see of the pastoring “business” the more I value the administrative skills pastors must have. Duane is also a certified parliamentarian, so we compared notes on a few of the parliamentary questions that would be coming before the assembly.

The best parliamentary procedure demonstrations I’ve seen in a long time (and I’ve been to a lot of political conventions and other events where parliamentary procedure is used) is seen at church assemblies. In the Lutheran Church, we’re very serious about it.

Another lunch mate from another lunch was Pastor Jon Rhodes from Rockford, MN. I met him in the concourse outside our assembly hall, when he was talking to our Pastor Cassie Nault, a seminary acquaintance of Pastor Rhodes. Jon and I had a very nice conversation about his work in an exurban community. It seems that Rockford is very much like Farmington, where Char and I lived for seven years. Rockford is experiencing some of the same challenges Farmington faced around growth and holding on the the old.

At lunch today, Pastor Pablo Obregon, Willmar, MN, gave me a lesson in “don’t assume.” I was sitting down at our lunch table, and Pastor Obregon sat down along side me. We started chatting about where we were from, and he told me he was from Willmar. I knew there were a lot of Latino immigrants in that area, so I asked, “Are you doing a lot of work with the immigrants in western Minnesota?” He said, with a straight face, “Yes, I am…the Norwegian and Swedish immigrants at the nursing home in Willmar. I’m the chaplain there.” We all had a good laugh…fortunately, he has a good sense of humor.

There’s is tremendous diversity in the people who are working with the Lutheran church in so many communities in the US. It’s great to meet so many of them.

Tomorrow–A Bolt of Lightning

First day at Churchwide Assembly

I’ll try to be keeping up a daily log of happenings at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly (CWA), and this is my first entry. I’m also Twittering at:

twitter.com/paulhardt

I’m able to Twitter pretty regularly, even though there is no internet access on the assembly floor. There is an internet cafe they’ve set up for us (thanks Luther Seminary!).

After a very effortless registration process, we started the assembly with an orientation for new voting members. We’re called “voting members”  because, strictly speaking, we don’t represent our congregations or synods. We vote our consciences.

The whole CWA is being broadcasted on the web, and we opened with a very impressive worship service. Here’s a link:

Monday Video Clip page

Bishop Mark Hanson had a strong message of “unity,” a very timely message considering all the expectations for this assembly to be divisive. Bp.Hanson’s message was most timely, “The message of this Assembly has not been written, yet, despite all the expectations…” (I’m paraphrasing).

I think that was a great message–we don’t have to follow the expectations that have been set up for this Assembly.

The main administrative news was the debate about the rules. In democracies, and the ELCA is very democratic, it all starts with the rules.

The biggest issue was “what will be the required vote for passing social statements and related policies?” The ELCA constitution is quite clear about social statements–they require a 2/3 majority to be adopted. Policies, on the other hand, have only required a simple majority (50% plus 1) to pass.

A motion to admend the rules to require an extraordinary majority for policy adoption (2/3 majority) was proposed and debated vigorously. However, the assembly voted to maintain the present practice of requiring 0nly a simple majority for policy decisions.

This rules vote was an early test of the strength of the pro- and anti- Human Sexuality Statement forces. The anti-Human Sexuality statement folks wanted the extra0rdinary majority to adopt policies, to make it tougher to adopt any of the implementing policies of the statement, including the ministerial policies. The prposed change in the rules failed on a 59% to 41% vote (approximate).

So, preliminarily, it looks like the pro-Human Sexuality statement folks have about 59% of the votes of the assembly and the anti-statment folks have about 41% of the vote.

While minds certainly can change, and there has been some good debate on the statement today (Tuesday), this early test of the strength of the two camps seems to indicate that the statement will not be adopted. As Bp. Hanson said, “We decide our own witness this week,” so nothing is in stone, yet. We’ll see what happens between Monday evening and later in the week.