General Conference – Jericho March

The committee work is done. This week is mostly plenary sessions. Rev. Stephen Wende made a motion to say General Conference should clear its schedule of all the extra presentations and focus solely on making sure the plenary session gets through all the petitions that came out of committee. He said that in 2012 the petitions from the Local Church Committee never came before the plenary and actions at the local church are the most important. Those presentations can be given at the end of GC.

The motion was passed and sent to the Committee on Agenda and Calendar over lunch. They responded by saying the schedule will not be changed. Many people have come a long distance to give those presentations and cannot reschedule. Many presentations are appropriate for issues coming up for a vote.

I'm uncomfortable with Wende's motion. I admit I don't know him and don't know where he stands on the conservative-progressive spectrum. Even so, in 2012 it was important to LGBTQ people and our allies that we not get through all those petitions. We didn't want more harm heaped on us.



At a press conference this morning the Reconciling Ministries Network and the Love Your Neighbor Coalition presented a letter of support of LGBTQI pastors. It was signed by over 1500 United Methodist pastors. In it they spell out what that support means. That includes:

*If a clergy person is removed from their charge for being LGBTQI, we will refuse to fill their pulpit, serve in their stead or accept an appointment to said charge so as to demand that the charge continue to be filled by our colleague.

*If serving on the Board of Ordained Ministry, we will examine all candidates for ministry and make decisions of their process regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.

*If a complaint is filed against a colleague for being LGBTQI, we will not support any action to place our colleague on leave of absence as some bishops have sought.

They also called for the church to elevate an LGBTQI pastor into the role of bishop (though this is done at the Jurisdictional Conferences that take place this summer).

This is a significant act of defiance. We'll see how GC responds to it.

After the press conference came a Jericho March around the convention center, with calls to "Tear the Walls Down Now!" I had wondered where Ed Rowe is this week. Since he is retired I knew he wasn't a delegate. No worries. The photo with this post shows he's at the front of the march.

Later a large Black Lives Matter demonstration took over the plenary floor for20 minutes.



The Judicial Council acts as the Supreme Court of the United Methodist Church. The 9 members of the JC are elected by GC and serve 8 year terms. Five seats were filled this time. Four seats are for clergy and five are for laity. This year two clergy and three laity seats were filled. One pastor new to JC is from Norway, the other was born in Vietnam, grew up in Switzerland, and is serving in California. One lay person is from Manila and is a retired justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, another is from Kansas, and the third from Mozambique.

As for whether they are for us or against us, I can only go by a tweet from the Wesley Putnam Ministries, who wrote, "The good news is that the conservatives swept the election – both lay and clergy. This is significant!" This is good news – for him. Not for me. I agree it is significant.