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Blog the Fourth

By Jean Etsinger

I had hoped to write this last commentary on Sunday evening at the home of friends I stayed with in the Daytona Beach area before heading back to Florida’s west coast on Monday. Instead, we talked and drove around and talked and ate and talked some more.

So I thought I would do it Monday night at home. Instead, a 7 p.m. gathering with members of the Islamic community at my church, scheduled to end at 8, went until nearly 10 as we talked and listened and talked and ate and talked some more.

Then I thought I would do it Tuesday night, when there was nothing on my calendar. But as a county poll worker, I had to report for duty at 6 a.m. for referenda balloting, and I was beyond blogging, by the time I got home.

So here it is, Wednesday afternoon.

Several people have asked “how was assembly?” and I’ve answered “great!” And that’s really all many people want to know. As within other organizational hierarchies, many church members at the grassroots level happily entrust those higher up – their elected representatives, after all – to do the right thing by God and for the good of the body.

That doesn’t work well for me, a willing prisoner of my journalist genes. I was uncomfortable voting at assembly for candidates about whom in most cases I knew nothing except for what appeared on the biographical sheets distributed at the plenaries.

On Sunday morning, at the third plenary, we were presented with 13 candidates for one position, synod female at-large delegate to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly. Ten had been nominated from the floor the previous day, with bio sheets available just shortly before the election. The two getting the most votes via electronic keypad moved to a run-off.

A pastor complained after the initial vote that he and others from his congregation had not had time to review the bio materials before the voting was closed. He was told that unfortunately nothing could be done after the fact.

I suspect many others had the same problem. I certainly did. And I have to wonder how many cast ballots based on knowledge or conviction, either in the initial vote or in the run-off. And yet, that election, if you believe that one vote can make a difference, was an incredibly important one. Each of those candidates represented an opportunity to have one vote at the 2009 ELCA gathering, where there is going to be a lot of voting on matters that mean a great deal to most members of the church.

Synod Vice President Bill Horne noted that about two-thirds of the voting members at the 2007 Churchwide Assembly had not been at the preceding one. Such may well be the scenario again at the 2009 assembly in Minneapolis. I hope that those just elected to be a part of that deliberative body – especially the lay members – will immerse themselves in study, discussion, prayer and openness to the Holy Spirit over the next 15 months.

Like it or not, the Statement on Human Sexuality and resolutions relating to the rostering of gay persons in committed relationships and the blessing of such unions will dominate floor debate. It happened in 2005, it happened again in 2007, and it will happen in 2009, when the statement is to be voted upon.

Are you familiar with the Lutheran Coalition for Reform (CORE)? Lutherans Concerned North America (LCNA)? The Word Alone Network? The Reconciling In Christ (RIC) movement? If you are, enter the dialog and pray for discernment. If you are not, find your place on the learning curve and start the process of educating yourself, again praying for discernment. Partisans of these organizations and movements will be seeking your vote in Minneapolis. Don’t wait until you get there to find out what perspectives they represent.

Eighty hearings have been scheduled throughout the ELCA’s 65 synods this summer and fall on the Draft Statement. At the only one for Florida-Bahamas, at our assembly, the room was full, but it wasn’t a very big room – about 160 seats. Attendees had been asked to affirm that they had read the whole statement before coming to the hearing, and among those who spoke, it appeared that most had done so.

Having listened in at plenaries of the last two Churchwide Assemblies, I was amazed how little resolution business there was at Daytona Beach. Two items were on the schedule – on becoming a “Book of Faith” synod and on the proposed synod spending plan for the next two years. Both passed overwhelmingly without debate.

One unscheduled resolution was submitted, accepted, presented to the body at the Sunday plenary and, again, near-unanimously approved. It calls on the ELCA’s World Hunger program “to make Haiti a priority in addressing the current food crisis, helping develop long-term local solutions toward sustainability, and persistent advocacy.”

The resolution noted that Haiti is a companion synod of Florida-Bahamas and that “visible support” by World Hunger “is currently lacking in the country of Haiti, offering disproportionate assistance to a country with substantial need.”

I had been asked to submit that resolution by a fellow attendee of the Friday evening workshop on advocacy. I declined, saying that I supported the petition but was not knowledgeable enough about the World Hunger program to speak to it with assurance – and I felt appropriately guilty afterward. I am glad that someone less hesitant was willing to act and that the assembly was so strongly in agreement.

At that same plenary, Cynthia Halvorson, representing the ELCA at the assembly, reported that the World Hunger appeal exceeded its 2007 goal by $2.5 million.

This year’s Synod Assembly was the first at which youth voting members were seated. Eighteen young people took part. However, no time or place was designated for them to get to know one another, network or caucus on matters that might be brought before the body. Last summer in Chicago a gathering of youth took place concurrently with Churchwide Assembly, and youth delegates were highly visible introducing and speaking to resolutions at plenary sessions. (Not that adults need to pave the way; my congregation sent a youth delegate to Daytona Beach, and he soon bonded with two others he met there and they hung out for the remainder of the assembly.)

I was tickled to learn that the 2011 Churchwide Assembly will in Florida, at the same Marriott property in Orlando where the 2005 one was held. I’ll be there – if not as a delegate, then as a volunteer!