"We Didn't Get Rid of the Quotas!" -or- David Swartling, Keeper of the Matrix

I spoke with Rev. Dee Pederson, Chair of the LIFT Task Force for a bit on Thursday evening before supper with my Synod, and mentioned in passing the Assembly votes to get rid of the quotas for Church Council membership. Her quick reply was "We didn't get rid of the quotas!" Thus began a slow re-education on my part on how Church Council members are chosen, and how it will probably work in the future. Here's what I've pieced together so far, as I know I'm not the only one who had the misconceptions I did about what LIFT was doing re: Council membership. Of course all distortions are my own.

[UPDATE 9/4/11, see end of post] Chapter 5 of the ELCA Constitution (pages 23-25 of this document) does spell out the specific demographic targets, unambiguously in the cases of representation by "persons of of color and/or persons whose primary language is other than English" (at least 10%) and lay membership (at least 60%). The targets for a 50/50 gender balance within units are to be achieved "as nearly as possible", and "where possible, the representation of ordained ministers shall be both female and male" (5.01f). There are similar targets established for synods, which are mandated to "establish processes" to ensure same (5.01g). [This is my uncorrected, wrong interpretation: The resolutions advocating demographic targets for Council (CWA, etc.) membership were always aspirational in nature, and depended on the commitment of the Council and Nominating Committee to achieve their stated aims (i.e., the quotas weren't as "hard" as I thought).]

The churchwide organization has taken the responsibility for meeting those demographic targets very seriously so far, and there is no reason to believe that that will change.

Until now, standard procedure when a vacancy came up was for David Swartling (the Secretary of the ELCA) to consult "The Matrix," which is a table of demographic and regional priorities (which may or may not require a direct brain interface or the Key of Rassilon to access). At that point, he'd call up (for example) the Southwestern Minnesota Synod, and ask them to produce a Female Clergy candidate for the open Church Council seat.

The LIFT changes affected the process in these ways:

• The category of non-voting Advisory Members, funded by the churchwide body, has been done away with (this is probably where the notion of getting rid of demographic quotas came from, since this step has decreased and in some cases eliminated representation by some minority concerns)
• Now more conditions (apart from demographic and regional concerns) can be placed on nominees to the Church Council, depending on the current needs of the council (so for example, they could now ask a given synod for a Lay Female candidate with a background in Finance).
  
• The Church Council can now have more or fewer members within a set range, depending on the needs of the Council (and in the documents detailing the changes, demographic diversity is listed first among those anticipated needs).

I hope that clears things up at least a bit: whatever "quotas" there were coming into this Assembly were not weakened, and a bigger Council will provide more opportunity to meet our demographic commitments for that body. I expect that among the first priorities of the new wave of recruitment for will be for Youth representation on Church Council. Yes, signing Youth members up for 6-year terms will be difficult (though not as difficult as predicting their contribution to regional diversity), but the strong Youth showing at this Assembly has established in many minds a theme I've heard quite a bit lately in Lutheran circles: that youth members are not merely the "future of the church", but the present as well. [UPDATE 9/04/11: The youth/young adult representational targets could more fairly be called "aspirational", as they are presented as goals in a continuing resolution, calling for the Church Council to come up with a plan for at least 10% voting representation by youth (younger than 18 at the time of election) and young adults (from 18 to 30 at the time of election) at churchwide units (6.02.A09).]

Coming soon: the exciting conclusion of the Lutheran Youth Organization floor motion!

[UPDATE 9/4/11: This update was too important to just leave this post stand and post a new one. I got notice fairly quickly that the demographic targets were in fact in the constitution but I was holding off on a correction until I could get a reference (I had done my own obviously inadequate check of the Constitution looking for the targets, but I was looking in the wrong places). Someone in Chicago was able to provide the reference however, and hopefully it's all straightened out with this update. Now to finally kick this flu so I can finish my report!]

Lutheran CORE

"Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) is a community of confessing Lutheran seeking to mobilize Lutherans for evangelical renewal." There's a lot of unpacking to do with that little statement, and the brochure which provides a fuller explanation of their principles is too long to reproduce or condense here. To give you a brief idea, they were on the opposite legislative side as Goodsoil-LC/NA at the 2009 CWA.

Curiosity got the better of me as I saw a Lutheran CORE event scheduled on the event board next to all the ELCA and Goodsoil events, from 7pm to 9pm in one of the smaller meeting rooms on the other side of the hotel. I believe that was the only Lutheran CORE "event" scheduled that week, and sparsely populated: there was one representative from the organization when I was there, and as I was coming in, only one other person was there (clearly only there for informational purposes), and as I was leaving, one other person came in. This gave me a chance to have a more in-depth chat with the representative, which was good. In session the next day, Bishop Hanson mentioned that the CORE room had been vandalized, admonishing those responsible.

The CORE representative I spoke with was Pr. Dick Mathisen, who is on the Steering Committee. On the basis of that conversation, it seemed as though CORE most wanted to make clear at this Assembly that it was not a separatist organization among Lutherans ("People think that because we started our own denomination last year"): Pr. Mathisen is at an ELCA church and intends to remain, and whenever he mentioned someone else in Lutheran CORE by name, he was quick to emphasize that that person was in the ELCA. Regarding the new denomination (NALC), he did acknowlege that there was some friction within CORE on that point, and that the new denomination was begun at the insistence of the minority of ELCA CORE members who found remaining in the denomination intolerable, and some will challenge anyone who claims to subscribe to their traditionalist view while remaining in the ELCA. But the general advice given by CORE to people in congregations contemplating a vote for disaffiliation is to not take that vote, unless you're certain of an overwhelming majority (90% was the figure he gave) in favor of disaffiliation. The newsletter I took from the CORE room has what seems to be a very pastoral and reasonable "Frequently Asked Questions" (pages 6-7) warning against "stirring the pot" and how "never-ending discernment and dialogue can permanently cripple your congregation‘s overall ministry."

Pr. Mathison said that CORE's presence at the assembly was the result of four decisions they had recently taken:

• To have a presence at the Assembly
  
• To present (if only on their website), a response to proposed constitutional provisions related to disaffiliation which clearly explains CORE's position on disaffiliation (he made clear that there was no organizational push to effect legislation this assembly, and they had no one on the floor counting votes, which they did do in 2009).
  
• To present alternative prayers (written by Pr. Steve Shipman) to those found in Sundays and Seasons*, and
  
• To open a line of communication to every ELCA congregation.

All in all, Lutheran CORE had what could fairly be called a token presence at the assembly, but the symbolism was important: they wanted to be clear that although they disagreed with recent actions of the denominations, they weren't "writing off" the ELCA, and would continue to try to engage traditionalists within the denomination.

*I scoured the website pretty well for these, but am not finding anything. If anyone finds something, let me know and I'll update this post with a link.

Goodsoil (LC/NA)

OK, CWA has now been over for nearly a week, and it's time for me to wrap up. There will be a bit of narrative in the posts I have planned, but also some posts addressing broader themes of the week. This is one of the latter.

Goodsoil is "A collaboration of allies working for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families in the full ministerial and sacramental life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Goodsoil is comprised entirely of lay and clergy members of the ELCA. Lutherans Concerned/North America is the fiscal agent for Goodsoil."

Though there was less on the agenda this Assembly in Goodsoil's wheelhouse than, say, the 2009 assembly, they seemed omnipresent at the Assembly, demonstrating their skills at fundraising and organization.

As to fundraising, people were handing out professionally printed 2-color 20-page letter size booklets* with full color covers, and seemed to have ample copies for everyone (that's the source of the thumbnail description of Goodsoil at the top of the post). They also had a suite on the 17th floor in the hotel open all day which served as a meeting place and anchor for all the other activities they'd been planning, where you could also buy several pins or buttons to identify yourself with them (a fun side note: I also heard the suite gave a distant, dim view of the EPCOT fireworks at night). Unfortunately, the one time I tried to go up to the suite was the worst possible time for the week, about an hour before the Goodsoil worship service that was happening in one of the ballrooms. I didn't make it to that service (because I was writing to you, dear reader).

As to organization, that was clear at the Assembly by the number of events advertised on monitors throughout the common areas of the hotel, sometimes (usually?) dwarfing the number attributed to "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America". These included planning meetings for their own events and legislative actions, the aforementioned church service they put on (with attendant choir rehearsals, etc.), and general open hours for their suite. Even overlooking the amount of time and effort undoubtedly necessary to put on this kind of program parallel to the assembly, their main legislative priority (an anti-bullying statement) was probably the biggest feature of the Memorials portion of the Assembly. 38 synods passed anti-bullying memorials to the Assembly, which is no small feat of coordination no matter how uncontroversial the stance is. Furthermore, when the initial recommendation of the Memorials committee wasn't specific enough for them (the original recommendation was just a couple of short paragraphs, directing the Assembly to refer the memorials to a list of churchwide offices, and to ask for a report to the 2012 meeting of the Church Council), they had a plan to fix it. Sometime between then and the vote, that recommendation was expanded by nearly a half-column of text, including references to forming partnerships with many non-churchwide organizations (including LC/NA specifically), as well as a bulleted list of specific points to be addressed by such partnerships. They certainly knew what they were doing, and weren't messing around.

By omnipresence generally, I'm mainly referring to the pins and buttons I mentioned earlier, which could be seen on a big portion of the Voting Members and other attendees. Any time there were a few of us badged Lutherans anywhere in the hotel, there were invariably some with rainbow buttons on. With that and the placards and event notices advertising various Goodsoil events, it often seemed as though there were two conventions going on.

*Yes, I found it curious that the booklet was not available on the sparse goodsoil.org site; at first glance it seems that Goodsoil is merely the face that LC/NA presents to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, and if I find out anything interesting about why that might be, I'll post it, but I assume it's something to do with tax/nonprofit rules. But otherwise, if you're looking for any content related to Goodsoil, you'd probably be better served searching on lcna.org.

Genetics

This will be my only post of the night; I need to sleep. I probably won't post tomorrow as I'll be travelling home and then have to rejoin my family at my parents' house because apparently my house has been occupied by a bat. Hopefully starting with Saturday I'll be able to piece together some other reports of what happened here.

Of course the big news for the day was the passage of the Genetics statement, and I spoke briefly against it. Here's a rough transcription of my notes for the speech:

---

Michael Cumings, Southwestern Minnesota Synod; I brought notes this time.

I'm on the fence with this statement, leaning against, and hopefully in explaining myself I can give you an example and illuminate for you what my Bishop, Jon Anderson, was talking about in our discussion of Social Statements, and how people were being too glib in declaring how wonderful they are.

I had two problems with the statement originally, one dealing with the immediate relevance of the document, which was swept away after having seen the excellent introduction to the statement on Tuesday--I want to thank Per Anderson, Linden Olson from my synod, and everyone else who participated; it convinced me that there is a wider benefit to speaking as a church about these issues.

My other problem is this. In the debate about inserting the word "evolution" into this document, there was an instructive comment: we as a church don't endorse scientific paradigms because scientific paradigms are perishable. Well at least in our Western context, ethical paradigms are even more perishable: the Roman Catholic Magisterium has had a pretty good run with Natural Law, but that's the exception. This report represents a tremendous amount of work, and the references reveal deep roots throughout our other Social Statements; the values represented are truly ELCA Lutheran values.

But ours is an evolving position, with evolving principles, and the science is evolving even more rapidly. Again, I'm convinced this document speaks to the current context. But what about 10 years into the future?

I'm afraid this document will be well obsolete by then, and since with rare exceptions, social statements tend to be overwhelmingly approved and then go through a one-way trap door to the cellar, to be ignored long afterward by everyone except by those crafting future statements. Even if we were inclined to review social statements, I question whether the possibility of a legislative review once in three years could provide the flexibility we'd need to speak in a relevant way about this topic.

If I vote in favor, it will be in the hope that our review of the way we do social statements will address the problem of making sure that our social statements are read and remain relevant over time.

---

I had problems with content too, but there was enough good in it to be valuable in the current context, so eventually I did vote for it (along with 90+% of the assembly). I figured that if it develops fatal flaws of obsolescence over time, that that's probably not today's problem, since there was a promise of review included with the document (which I was skeptical of, but I decided to believe those responsible for implementation this time. LIFT has made me more charitable toward the organization that way).

More LIFT--Heroes of the Day

There are some other things I want to cover (which I hope I'll get to later), but before I turn in for the night, there's one more story I wanted to highlight, concerning the heroes for the day. One of the LIFT provisions considered for amendments was the one where hard demographic and regional quotas were removed with respect to candidates for the Church Council. As I mentioned, each of the amendments so far were grouped by the relevant committee (here the Reference and Counsel Committee), the committee invariably has some recommendation short of adopting any part of it, and depending on how motivated the source of the original amendment was, he/she would try to defeat the motion of the committee's recommendation.

There were three amendments grouped together speaking to this constitutional change, and two were primarily directed at youth representation (the amendments were stated more broadly than that, but the intent became clear once debate started). They pointed out (as has been pointed out several times since the Assembly started, that a goal of having 10% youth members of the Church Council is in the constitution, and that that had not happened. The previous removal of advisory members of the Council by LIFT had stripped the council of all (even non-voting) membership by youth (there are only 2 "young adult" members currently, which I think means age 20-30). One of the amendments tried to make that 10% a hard quota, and the other added into the resolution the kind of demographics to be taken into consideration in choosing members (age, ethnic background, and varying abilities). Since the Reference and Counsel Committee did not recommend these amendments, I expected a fight, but something different happened.

The first person speaking in favor of accepting the Reference and Counsel Committee's recommendation was the one who proposed the second amendment: Dianha Ortega-Ehreth, a youth Voting Member. She said she was satisfied with the committee's assurances that a process would be developed to meet the church's stated commitments to inclusivity. I read the Reference and Counsel committee's recommendation more closely, and it was very thorough, listing every constitutional provision relating to "inclusivity and representation" in both the constitution and the LIFT report. It also made some specific promises about finding a way to make good on those promises.

When the next speaker spoke in favor of the recommendation, it started to become clear how that recommendation got to be so thorough. He was the author of the other amendment, another youth VM by the name of Peter C Aldrich. He approached the microphone with his thin laptop open to read his speech, looking very serious and intentional, one of the few people in the room wearing a tie. He explained how he had checked with the relevant committees and had found out that if his amendment went through, it would count as a "first reading", meaning that the change could not be adopted until the 2013 CWA, and so would not take effect until the Council elections during the 2016 CWA. They did not want to wait that long for a change, and the Reference and Counsel Committee had made a serious recommendation, so he was speaking in favor of that recommendation. During the speech, someone in the row behind me at the assembly whispered "that's the future of the Church, right there."

I was really impressed at the dedication to their cause, their willingness to navigate the bureaucracy, and to build relationships with church leaders to achieve their goals. I'd leave it at that, an inspiring story, perhaps contained in my great LIFT narrative about people becoming willing to trust people rather than structures and legislation, if they'd left it at that.

Apparently the spot I chose to sit to compose my blog posts tonight was an LYO (Lutheran Youth Organization) nexus, because I met a few of them and have been talking for a while. One of those is my third hero of the day, Matt Wertman, president of the LYO and a Voting Member from my sister synod in Virginia, who explained to me at great length a motion he was proposing to boost youth representation on Church Council and protect the LYO (which he sees as threatened). Furthermore, if it's worded as he's so clearly explained it, I'll vote for it too.

No, I haven't given up the LIFT ethos, but you'll have to stay tuned before I regale you with the full details, as I don't want to tip his hand.

Also I want to go to bed.

LIFT--It's starting to sink in

One of the most high-profile changes in LIFT was the change in schedule to have Churchwide Assemblies every three years rather than every two years. There were some people saying that we needed to be able to react quickly (these didn't gain traction), but most of the negative reaction seemed to be based on the social aspect--if we don't meet every two years, we'll lose networking opportunities, we won't see everyone, we won't be able to talk about mission with all of these far-flung Lutherans, etc. Lots of people praising the non-legislative aspects of CWA, at least a couple self-proclaimed procedure nerds confessing that they didn't think a biannual legislative gathering was strictly necessary, and LIFT representatives saying that there are other whole church meetings going on regularly (Youth Gathering and WELCA), and part of the point is to create some room for people to come together in non-legislative gatherings without the denomination pushing them together.

There was doubt for a while whether the change would pass (it needed 2/3), but it did handily, 783-185. I think this new way of thinking about church really has a shot at taking hold. People who hadn't questioned their own assumptions substituting legislative language for reality are beginning to take a chance on the project. It's a definite risk, but I for one would rather put my trust in people rather than bureaucratic structures.

It figures...

It figures that my first (perhaps only) trip to the floor to speak at this assembly would be a counterproductive waste of time, broadcast worldwide. Here's what happened, hopefully you'll get some amusement out of it.

This was after a few votes on LIFT proposals, which (as I may have mentioned), I'm following pretty closely. I was upset at this point, because the first successful amendment to a LIFT Implementing Resolution had gone through. Someone had inserted some innocuous but superfluous language into one of the resolutions, and I was scared. The LIFT project as I saw it was based around breaking the notion that if something was not included in legislative language, or had a bureaucratic institution nominally protecting it, that it wasn't a priority. As my bishop put it, "a lot of people here think that if if anything is going to happen, there has to be someone behind a desk in Chicago to make it happen." This change was pretty inoffensive on its own, but I was afraid it would open the floodgates, and once one special interest had been name-checked in a resolution, that would invite charges of neglect for every interest not specifically mentioned, and we'd be back to the norm of Christmas-tree legislation, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria...you get the point.

Another proposed amendment was under consideration, reading (with proposed changes in bold) "To request congregations be invited to take up to two years to examine the changing religious environment of their communities in order that, in collaboration with synods to begin, develop, review or redefine their unique mission plans by the end of 2013 [changed from 2012], so that..." this was sold as an extension of time, as it takes a lot of time to get things going in some congregations, and LIFT itself had two years, etc. I was indifferent to the date change, but that bit about "the changing religious environment" got to me. Once you include one criterion, you're inviting every priority one might want to consider in a mission plan to be added to the recommendation! And why did he have to delete the bit about synods to screw it up further? The recommendation must be kept inviolate!

Anyhow, after a bit more debate about the extension of the mission plan deadline (the other side: the "end of 2012" is certainly a reasonable deadline for any congregation to "begin" their unique mission plan, and by the way, aren't they supposed to have a mission plan already?), one clever Voting Member decided to amend the amendment by cutting out "to examine the changing religious environment of their communities", since "we seem to be debating the time extension, and this way we can just vote on that." Everyone seemed to go along with it, and Bishop Hanson was ready to move on when I had got up from my seat to explain that no, that amendment wouldn't put it right, that bit about synods was still gone from the original recommendations! But he looked away and was setting up the vote, so I went back to my seat, but some people waved me on, trying to get the Bishop's attention and telling me to get to the microphone. I did eventually, and it's a good thing I probably made no sense to anyone at the microphone, because once I got back I saw that no, he hadn't taken out that bit about synods. It was right there in the text, as obvious for me as it is for you reading this post. So I'd gotten up to speak against an amendment to an inconsequential amendment (the full amendment was voted down) which would have helped my cause, about which I was obviously and provably wrong. As I said, at least I couldn't put together a sentence in English to let everyone know I was wrong.

It's probably a coincidence, but after that I noticed most everybody using notes/written speeches when they approached the microphones.