A Future With Hope

There is a reason to celebrate today as we took small but important steps toward making the church an inclusive place. For the moment, I am thrilled to let you all know that the Legislative Committee to which the Human Sexuality Sub-Committee had to report chose to accept all of our proposals across the board. We have re-written a version of para. 161.G of the Discipline which discusses human sexuality. (If you would like to read it, it's popping up all over the internet. I'd suggest generalconference2008.org for starters.) We also rejected all of the trans-phobic legislation that was brought before us. Finally, we held the line on resolution 33 (being in ministry with all persons), reaffirmed our support of sexual-minority teens at risk of suicide and broadened our support for human and civil rights (para. 162.H). The best part about it was that we built a coalition and did a new thing. Instead of doing the same old technique of arguing about the "incompatibility clause"or trying to insert "we are not of one mind on this issue", we perfected a document that has grace and rhythm and truth. I've made more than enough speeches in the last forty-hours, but I have to say that I think everyone would be proud of this faithful work. My heart was changed in the process of the conferencing. As many of you know, I arrived in Fort Worth committed to removing the prohibitory language from the Discipline, period. But instead we have moved with the Spirit which blows where it may. This all means that the committee will bring forward a suggestion to the entire Conference that we adopt our perfected language as the appropriate paragraph. But for the moment, party with the angels.
Our committee has very unfortunately not completed its work. The goal was to complete everything by tonight so that we could move to plenary tomorrow morning. Now I'm not sure what we'll do. We meet as a committee at 2:00 pm tomorrow. In the morning we'll receive some reports from committees who have completed their work in plenary... I think.
Again, I have not been able to track other legislation. Check out umc.org if you care to.
In the morning: Judicial Council elections!
Finally, Reconciling hosted our worship service today. I couldn't attend because we were busy passing faithful petitions through the legislative process. But check out the photos at generalconfrence2008.org. As Bishop Hutchinson preached the other day, "they prayed us through."