{"id":12721,"date":"2016-05-14T00:50:41","date_gmt":"2016-05-14T07:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=12721"},"modified":"2016-05-14T00:50:41","modified_gmt":"2016-05-14T07:50:41","slug":"bumpy-start-for-gc2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/bumpy-start-for-gc2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Bumpy start for GC2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sam Hodges<\/strong><\/p>\n

May 13, 2016 | PORTLAND, Oregon (UMNS)<\/h4>\n

Three days into General Conference 2016<\/a>, delegates continued to debate whether they should be tapping on iPads or waving old-fashioned placards to get the presiding bishop\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

For the Rev. Matt Gaston, a first-time visitor to General Conference from North Texas, prolonged debate about floor rules and procedures undercut the \u201cwonderful Pentecost experience\u201d of seeing United Methodists gathered from cultures all over the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just saddens my heart that it could take us 10 to 12 hours to figure out how we\u2019re even going to talk to each other about the issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Rebekah Miles is a four-time General Conference delegate who came to her first such legislative gathering of The United Methodist Church as a child in 1976, here in Portland, Oregon.<\/p>\n

But the veteran Miles, a Perkins School of Theology professor, agreed with the rookie Gaston in sizing up the early going of this General Conference as choppy, with no smooth sailing in sight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to me that we trust each other even less than we did in (General Conference) 2012, and that\u2019s saying something,\u201d Miles said.<\/p>\n

Struggle with iPads<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The third day of General Conference saw an effort to revisit a rule that had passed with difficulty the day before. It ditches placards in favor of an iPad for getting the presiding bishop\u2019s attention in plenary sessions.<\/p>\n

African delegates had complained going in that many of them were not accustomed to tablet computers<\/a> and might \u2013 under time pressure \u2013 struggle to tap in their delegate I.D. numbers and check off the boxes necessary to get in the computer queue of those requesting to speak on the floor.<\/p>\n

That worry has come true, said the Rev. Alfred Njau, a delegate from the Tanzania Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take the statistics of the people who are speaking, it\u2019s very few Africans,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bishop John Innis of the Liberia Conference agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey needed more training,\u201d he said of the African delegates. \u201cTechnology is good. \u2026 But people need to be taught to use it very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rev. Bob Zilhaver, a Western Pennsylvania Conference delegate, raised the issue in the May 13 morning plenary session. He asked that the Committee on Presiding Officers do a quick study of delegates\u2019 and bishops\u2019 thoughts about iPads vs. placards, and make a recommendation on which to use for the rest of this General Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have watched my brothers and sisters from our central conferences, often with language barriers, be frustrated with the tablets and want to use placards,\u201d Zilhaver said from the floor.<\/p>\n

The motion failed, but fairly narrowly. Some delegates continued to complain of a transparency problem because requests to speak as registered by iPad go into a computer queue that the presiding bishop can see \u2013 but not delegates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would ask people to trust (the iPads) and give them a chance,\u201d said the Rev. L. Fitzgerald \u201cGere\u201d Reist II, secretary of the General Conference. \u201cI would be happy to explain to people what we\u2019re seeing up front.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reist acknowledged glitches with the iPad system the first couple of days, but said those had been worked out. He said the combination of the lighting and size of the Oregon Convention Center main hall made placards a bad choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re sitting on that platform and you look back in a corner, you can\u2019t see a thing,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t see the placards at all. You can\u2019t see whether [someone is] standing up or sitting down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Global church difficulties<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Miles and others pointed to the defeat of Rule 44<\/a> \u2013 an effort by the Commission on General Conference to have the option of a small-group discernment process in deciding contentious issues \u2013 as another notable, thorny development occurring early in General Conference 2016.<\/p>\n

Though Miles had her doubts about whether such a process could resolve deep divides over human sexuality issues, she sized up its defeat as adding even more tension to this gathering.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the people who were supporting it were really upset,\u201d Miles said. \u201cThey took it very personally, and some were even angry at the people who opposed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mountain Sky Area Bishop Elaine J.W. Stanovsky agreed that the Rule 44 debate and struggle over iPads vs. placards indicated a bigger challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a surprise to me that it\u2019s difficult to be a global church, and this is more of a global event in terms of representation from around the world,\u201d Stanovsky said.<\/p>\n

Stanovsky noted that among her African bishop colleagues, terrorism is a crucial issue, while her Filipino colleagues are preoccupied with global warming and the rights of native peoples. Meanwhile, U.S. bishops are grappling with rebellion in the clergy ranks over church law related to homosexuality.<\/p>\n

To her, General Conference reflects those same \u201cdisparate passions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou put it all in a room, and we don\u2019t how to work together,\u201d Stanovsky said. \u201cI appreciate the impatience and frustration of everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that General Conference 2016, if it proves as frustrating as the early going suggests, might add impetus to efforts to reorganize the denomination and let regions of the church do more of their own decision-making.<\/a><\/p>\n

That is something the bishop welcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a certain amount we can do all together, and there\u2019s some stuff we\u2019re going to have to do separately,\u201d Stanovsky said. \u201cUntil then, it\u2019s going to be pretty chaotic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hodges, a United Methodist News Service writer, lives in Dallas. Contact him at (615) 742-5470 or\u00a0<\/em>newsdesk@umcom.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sam Hodges May 13, 2016 | PORTLAND, Oregon (UMNS) Three days into General Conference 2016, delegates continued to debate whether they should be tapping on iPads or waving old-fashioned placards to get the presiding bishop\u2019s attention. For the Rev. Matt Gaston, a first-time visitor to General Conference from North Texas, prolonged debate about floor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":12733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[449,3],"tags":[12,483],"class_list":{"0":"post-12721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-general-conference","8":"category-umns","9":"tag-umc","10":"tag-umcgc"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/ipad-debate.jpg?fit=1100%2C574&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-3jb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12721"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12735,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12721\/revisions\/12735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}