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A live report from the 2005 US National Conference and General Conference. Wednesday MorningJune 22 8:35 am Bishop Hirschy called the meeting to order, and turned things over to Preeminance, the Huntington Coll....University singing group. They led us in "How Great is Our God" and "How Great Thou Art," and right now they're doing a song I've never heard before. How dare them. Now Lester Smith has been invited to come lead the devotional. Lester is pastor of the Hillsdale UB church in Hillsdale, Mich., one of the fastest-growing UB churches and most probably the most evangelistic. They've been having conversions nearly every week for years. Around 110 conversions last year alone. Lester's a good guy, one of my favorite UB ministers, if that's allowed. Even if he is a cousin to Brian Magnus.  But at the moment, Lester is irritating me, because he's exalting the Detroit Pistons, who won last night to tie-up the NBA finals and send it to a seventh game. I guess he's entitled to gloat a little. But just a little. A lot of shade-tree conversations have been underway. How exactly are these clusters supposed to work, and why can't we implement them within our current structure? What style of leadership do we want, and do we need? What is the rationale for (fill in the blank). "Aren't we moving through things awfully fast, without getting to issues of purpose and rationale?" "Since we're not electing Education Leadership Team members anymore, will the college gain control over who the church's representatives are on the board of trustees?" A group met last night to hammer out compromise solutions regarding the chapter on Clusters, and from what I hear, it was successful. Anthony Blair, Luke Fetters, Tom Brodbeck, Tom Datema, Ted Doolittle, Craig Burkholder, maybe someone else I'm missing--they hashed things out and came to agreements. It would have been helpful if small group discussions like that had occurred prior to National Conference on a wide range of issues. Aren't you impressed with the extraordinary lengths to which I'll go to be totally impartial and objective? "A church will never grow beyond its ability to meet human needs," Lester is saying. He's talking a lot about meeting the needs of people in your community, and demonstrating the love of Christ. It's kind of a prophetic devotional, good stuff. I relate, since my church is in a low-income urban neighborhood. Most of us UBs realize we need a bit more of a social conscience, particularly regarding the poor. "We may have the 'loving God' part down pat, but the other half is to love your neighbor as yourself," Lester says. Wow, he stopped right at the 20-minute mark. 9:05 pm Paul Hirschy is asking for a special time of prayer. A member of the family of Francisco Raudales, the Honduras superintendent, was killed in an accident, and the family is grieving deeply. Luke Fetters was asked to come pray on behalf of the Raudales family. Francisco and Maira are trying to determine whether they should stay here for the General Conference, or return home. Lee Rhodes presents the Most Boring Committee Report of the Day: the Committee to Edit Minutes. Except that in Michigan Conference, it's the most exciting report, and people make sure they come early to hear it. They make a big production out of that report. Lee's from Michigan, but kept his report lower-key than he's accustomed to in Michigan. I'm bored just typing this paragraph. Bishop Hirschy apologized for going perhaps a big too quickly last night. He said he heard things--that people were tiring out, but he was still going full-speed. He apologized, said he wants to make sure there is time for questions and discussion, but said he does want to keep us moving. 9:15 pm A new chapter was distributed, called "Connections." It's taking the place, or being proposed to take the place, of the former chapter on "Clusters." Since all I have is hard copy, let's see how fast I can type to get it before your eager eyes. Tom Brodbeck is reading the thing. I'll type.
Let me stop while discussion begins. Luke Fetters says there's not a whole lot of new stuff. However, one major thing was to divide the idea of clusters and associations. "We wanted to offer enough definition of clusters to be able to describe them well to ourselves or to someone who might ask, because if we're fuzzy about the definition, it will be incomprehensible to" someone else who might ask what it's all about. He said they also tried to reduce the demand on the cluster leader, including the idea of holding an annual audit. He said if clusters are envisioned as smaller groups of 7 or so churches, they are presuming that accountability is happening within that group. He said the idea of a pastor meeting one-on-one in an audit with the superintendent is a "relic" of the old system. Now we'll let the group be more of the accountability structure. He said he'll let Anthony Blair talk more about that. Why the term "cluster coach" instead of "cluster leader"? He said they wanted to escape the notion of a superintendent. This person is to come alongside, coach, encourage. In regard to the stationing committee, the previous idea was that the bishop, cluster leader, and church Personnel Relations Commission would work with pastoral stationing, but they figured the bulk of it would fall on the locally-present cluster leader (with the bishop participating from afar). 9:27 am Sorry. I just noticed that I lost my connection at 9:05. So play catch-up real quick. Luke talked some more, then sat down. He was fully involved with the guys who worked late last night on this. Paul Michelson is asking a variety of "what about" and "what if" questions. Pat Jones, who probably earned A's in History classes, and served with Michelson on the ELT, stood and showed just a tad of impatience by saying, "We're making this too complicated. We can't foresee every situation. We need to get this on the road." Michelson, undeterred, continued asking more questions. Having lived in Romania during the revolution, he may be trying to anticipate all situations which might lead to a revolution of the UB proletariat and an overthrow of the UB bourgeoisie. He's wondering about pastors who move to a different cluster--maybe there's a mismatch, whatever. "People are not locked in," says Bishop Hirschy. He says we need freedom to make adjustments. Oh boy, he's on what he promises to be his final question. He asks about the possibility of laypersons being cluster leaders. That idea actually was mentioned as an idea in Ron Ramsey's vision statement as a candidate for bishop. Tom Datema says, "Unfortunately, I think Paul is right on something here." And he proposes an amendment on something I haven't gotten typed yet. It involves the duties of the Cluster Coach. Point d says, "The cluster coach will act as a liaison between the US Bishop and the pastors and churches involved in the cluster." He wants to amend it to add the words in bold above. Lee Rhodes is speaking. He's from Michigan. He says he needs to be accountable to his peers, but doesn't see that happening in an "association," as he sees it in the document. He doesn't see his church being involved in a cluster. He's involved in one evidently, but says the document doesn't match the practice. That's the general idea, I'm pretty sure, of what he said. His amendment passed. Now Tom Datema wants to amend the next point, E, as follows: "The cluster coach or his designate will serve on the stationing committee for United Brethren churches in the cluster." This would apply to clusters that have non-UB churches in the cluster, a key desire of many of the cluster proponents, especially of the UBHope persuasion. Bob Eberly, Mid-Atlantic, wonders if a cluster could include someone from a United Methodist Church, because our Constitution prevents us from having a connection with secret societies. Luke Fetters rambled a little bit, but summed it up by saying, "I don't agree with Bob." Anthony Blair says he's having supper tonight with a United Methodist minister, and he hopes he's not committing a violation of the Discipline. Interestingly, in 1949, when the UB church was considering joining the National Association of Evangelicals, there was opposition on the basis that we would be participating with other denominations that do allow masons to be members, and therefore we would be creating an unconstitutional connection with secret societies. That's kind of the turtle-in-the-shell separationist approach to Kingdom life.
Denny Miller gave another "impatience" argument, that we can't anticipate every situation. He moved that we give the ELT latitude to work on this over the next two years. Lee Rhodes moved to amend the document so that wherever the word "cluster" is mentioned, you change it to "cluster/association." Didn't fly. They voted, and the new "Connections" chapter was adopted, close to unanimously. Everyone applauded. A really really major new thing was done. 10:00 am. Break time. |