If you want to see the official website and schedule and all that, you can see it here. If you just want my thoughts on the first evening, continue reading!

The first part of the evening was this “Community Cafe”, which was basically a chance to mingle informally, with a couple of interruptions for spoken word pieces. There was food set up on tables around the outside of the room, as well as “vendor tables” which advertised different parts of the ELCA, such as Young Adult Global Mission and Lutheran Volunteer Corp. The interesting part was really mingling and seeing who I might know — there were a couple girls who I had met at Churchwide Assembly, which was cool. The guy at the ELCA Multicultural Ministries table knew my grandpa. (Everyone seems to know my family. I’m getting used to it.) The funniest meeting was the table where I walked up and a woman said to another guy at the table, “Oh, here’s the person you were looking for!” and the guy turned to me and said, “I know you don’t know who I am, but I know who you are,” which, yeah, was really weird at first. It turned out that he was my mom’s sponsor at her ordination, and once I heard that and read his name tag, it turned out I did remember him. Well, at least hearing stories about him. So yeah, that was fun. And even if I am slightly awkward at meeting people, I am an extrovert and I do enjoy it, and I got to meet new people.

There was an evening worship service, and then all the students gathered in the back to go on a photo scavenger hunt in Chicago, which was pretty fun. We were kind of split up by regions, except that there were only two of us from New England and only three from the Northeast (one from NJ), so we got put with some of the WI/IL people, because there were lots of them. We ended up getting photos of 12/15 things, which was pretty good. (We missed the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel (because it was too far to get to in 1.5 hours), a street performer (because we had no money to tip them), and a horse-drawn carriage (because we didn’t see one).) Getting to Millenium Park (the Bean and the Crown Fountain), the Chicago River, and the Art Institute were fairly easy; harder and more fun were a couple of specific restaurants (another girl used her cell phone to use Google to find the addresses) and the statue of the president of Mexico. I, uh, texted my mom to find that one; I’m assuming she used the internet. And then we all met up again for pizza! Deep dish pizza is very yummy, and I almost never eat it, because it just feels like a Chicago thing that I should eat in Chicago, and I’m not in Chicago very often.

That said, it’s almost 1am, and the Lutheran Student Movement is having a meeting tomorrow morning. LSM is not actually very active in New England, possibly because it’s a program to bring together campus ministries regionally and nationally, and, well, there aren’t that many Lutherans in New England, as I understand it. That said, LEM has recently talked about how we wish we were more connected to the synod (as we have a strong relationship with the diocese), so I figure it will be interesting to attend. And it turns out I know people who are involved a lot, so that’s cool. But yes, time for me to go upstairs and go to sleep. (Because the hotel is annoying and internet is free if I am sitting in the lobby but costs $15 if I want to sit in my room. So I am sitting in the lobby.)

A belated introduction: here’s the group of voting members from the New England Synod! FThis grouprom left to right, starting with the back row: Ron, Nancy, me, Joanne, Elaine, Nathan, John, Steve, Linda, and Lloyd. Front row: Brad, Carmen, Margaret (Bishop Payne), Gladys, Mark, and Sister Virginia. We’re holding up our hands to echo the theme: God’s work, our hands.

This group was just fantastic. We hadn’t really met before, besides the pastors and the bishop, of course; I knew the bishop through my mom, but that was about it. Many of us met at Synod Assembly in May, but I, at least, hadn’t really talked to any of them until we met at the Synod House the Saturday before Churchwide Assembly.

There are now photos up online. Sister V will put them on the New England Synod site at some point, but for now, you can see them here.

Bishop Payne has organized some regional meetings to discuss what happened at Churchwide. These will be:

• Oct. 18 (Sunday), 3-5 p.m. at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Meriden, Conn
• Oct. 24 (Saturday), 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Holden, Mass
• Oct. 25 (Sunday), 3-5 p.m. at Gethsemane Lutheran Church, Manchester, N.H.

I’ll be at the one on Oct 18th; unfortunately, I’m busy the next weekend, but there will be other voting members from New England there. I also got a chance to speak at UniLu a few weeks ago and am speaking at LEM (the MIT Lutheran-Episcopal Ministry) tonight. I realize that I perhaps should have mentioned this sooner so that any of you in the area could come, but oh well. Life has been busy.

• a stuffed lobster which she named Rocky, to pick up and hug and stroke when you felt stressed
• a light up fan, passed along with a note saying “for use during hot debates”
• a little wind-up car that had some sort of sensor to avoid falling off the edge of the table

The last one was really great, because I wasn’t expecting it at all, but I heard a little whirring noise and looked over to see this little wind-up car coming towards me along the table, on a rather curvy path on account of ricocheting between the edge of the table and someone’s binder.

In addition to just liking these, it’s really important to have breaks of laughter and light-heartedness among the very serious debates. Bishop Hanson definitely gifted us with a few jokes that helped the assembly not get too bogged down with its own weightiness, and I hope that others from New England had the same reaction I did to Rocky and the fan and the car. (Though the car was late yesterday, and I may just be easily amused by children’s toys.)

(Also, this post is written with the utmost respect for Bishop Payne, but bringing these was truly an unexpected gift, beyond what I had previously witnessed in her preaching and leadership at Synod Assembly, and I thought others might also appreciate it.)

Earlier today, I wrote: As I sit in the Minneapolis airport, waiting for my plane, I am both saddened by the end of Churchwide Assembly and eagerly anticipating returning to MIT, seeing friends, and reentering “the real world.” CWA reminds me, in a way, of summer camp: an intense, short period of time where you spend all your time with the same people, meeting new friends, slightly isolated from the way the world moves around while you’re there. The important difference, however, is that we are /not/ isolated, but as we say (and have the committee to remind us) we are a church in society. No, we do not let culture lead us, but we cannot ignore it. We are called to serve society, as in our programs like LWR, LSA, LMI, and our slogan for Churchwide: “God’s work. Our hands.”

I somehow forgot that MIT (and possibly other colleges too) tend not to reflect “the real world” but are their own little bubble. I thought about how the decisions of Churchwide Assembly would affect our ecumenical partnerships, and I was amazed and inspired by the work the ELCA does in America and globally, but even though I thought about how the decisions would affect my churches here (UniLu and LEM), I somehow failed to think about how I would transition back to life as a regular college student where normal conversation revolves around science, not God. (Though some would argue that it’s hard to have a conversation that doesn’t somehow include or relate to God, especially in science, but..) I do have a number of religious friends at MIT, and, in fact, have used Churchwide Assembly to start some good conversations with religious and non-religious friends about differences between different religions and my understanding of being Lutheran, but it’s still weird. Then again, I guess everything would be weird in relation to Churchwide, so I think it’s more that I wasn’t expecting it.

I am still processing things, but thoughts will be rather out of order now that I’m not thinking about things in the order in which they come up in debate. I have some half-written thoughts from the plane ride that I need to continue thinking about, plus general thoughts on the assembly and random things I noticed, plus the entry I promised on how awesome worship was. (The regrettable thing, as another voting member put it, is that it’s very hard to describe it such that you aren’t just making it seem like church is regularly boring, which it isn’t.)

For me, the most important resolution of the afternoon was the final amendment to the constitution, which called for 10% of the voting members at synod and Churchwide assemblies to be youth and young adults, where youth are voting members under 18 and young adults are voting members ages 18-30. In addition, Church & synod councils and committees need to have youth and young adult members. In fact, I felt so strongly about this that I got up to speak in favor of it; I messed up the order of my notes and botched my speech terribly, but apparently was good enough to convince someone in my delegation to vote in favor of this instead of against, so yay! (If you really want, I’m sure you can watch the video of the plenary session and find me speaking somewhere in there, but I’m not linking to it.)

Note: The next couple paragraphs were written late at night and I have found that my thoughts simultaneously become more clear and more confused as this happens. Also recognize that the point of this blog is not merely to tell you what happened – you can just read the ELCA page for that – but to try and share what runs through my mind as I observe and what the experience is like. My thoughts are by no means representative of anyone else besides myself.

I am in such a state of mind right now after the events of this week. I came to Churchwide Assembly (CWA) thinking that I knew what I wanted, but aware that I needed to listen. And oh, the things I learned! The church is so much bigger and does so many more things that I knew before, and the people are a diverse and unexpected group. I have come away with a firm conviction that we must pray and strive for the unity of the church and with an unexpected appreciation and understanding of those with opinions that differ from mine and what it means to bear one another’s burdens and to respect the bound conscience of my neighbor.  In a way, this has subdued the joy I expected to feel if the changes in ministry policies passed, and yet, I can’t be upset that I have learned who the people of this church are and the need to remember that we are bound together by Christ’s love and that we are Lutheran because we recognize that we are saved by grace, through faith, and not by any works we could do. I think, in a sense, that I am still too close to this assembly to feel the overflowing joy I expected, because I am tied to those who mourn and cannot be joyous without immediately remembering the difficulties of those who interpret Scripture differently than I do and those who wonder how they can return to their congregations and synods and explain the action of this assembly.

I only wish there were a way to take everything I learned and observed and felt and fully share it with people who ask me how Churchwide went. Yes, there are news reports and press reports and voting results. You can view videos online, which can help you experience a lot of the plenary. But I don’t know how to share the joy in worship, or the conversations over lunch and dinner where complete strangers became friends to smile at in the hallway and in the aisles, regardless of what opinions they held, and how those things changed the way I watched people speak. I am left to consider the questions Bishop Hanson asked us in this afternoon’s committee of the whole: What will be your witness of this week? To what will you testify?

We are a church sent out in mission to share the good news of Jesus Christ. What will be your witness? To what will you testify?

Off for afternoon plenary!

It’s funny, because I came to the assembly with a good idea of how I wanted to vote, and that didn’t change, and the vote went the way I wanted, but the hours of debate (though good) and considering the implications of the changes was so physically, emotionally, and spiritually draining that I was exhausted and stressed out by the end of the day, not really happy or unhappy, but weighed down.

There is healing through music, or at least there was for me, as I went with a couple hundred people to a Peter Mayer concert, which was fantastic. The joy in the music was uplifting, the words of the songs were healing, the music was great (violin/mandolin, guitar, bass, drums, kind of country-ish?), and there was one song where at least half of the audience joined in a giant conga line. (Also, ways you know you’re an MIT student: you’re distracted from music at a concert by the lights and think “Gee, it would be awesome if I knew stuff about lighting” and completely miss the words to an entire verse while thinking about them.)

I am filled with great respect and thanksgiving for Mark Hanson as presiding bishop in his role as chair of the Churchwide Assembly and as pastor to the entire church. How he manages to separate his personal feelings and act as unbiased as possible so that he can facilitate discussion, as well as explain RONR to people who clearly have no idea how it works. (Apparently I’m one of the few geeky enough to try and learn RONR for the express purpose of going to Churchwide.) In addition, he listened to a suggestion a voting member offered yesterday and stopped the assembly every 20-30 minutes to pray, which was good. He also offered thoughts and prayers at the very end of the session, after voting was over, that were just wonderful. I don’t think I have a good way to paraphrase, but I doubt you want me to quote the entire thing, so I strongly urge you to go watch it, especially if you’re a member of the ELCA and are reacting to the changes in ministry policies. (If you lost track, I think I’ve recommended you watch everything Bishop Hanson says, the Secretary’s report, and any highlights of worship that you can. The debate is also interesting, but I’m not sure you want to sit through hours and hours of it, though you can see New England synod people talking, if you’d like.)

Today was also a day for meeting people. Among others, I met:

• Jessica Crist, Bishop of the Montana synod, former pastor of UniLu (Mom and Dad, she says hi)
• R. Sally Moldwin, voting member from Southeast Michigan Synod and mother-in-law of my pastor at UniLu
• Yolanda Tanner, voting member from Delaware-Maryland Synod, MIT ’78, Course 14
• some bishop who had Grandpa as a professor, but I forget his name
• someone who taught with Grandpa and went along on the trip to Israel in ’74? He says hi, but I’ve forgotten his name already
• Paul Rajashekar, who apparently had Grandpa as a professor, served with Mom on candidacy committee in New England, and works at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia with my uncle

Wow, the church is a really small world. I’m still looking for a pastor from the Sierra Pacific synod who went to MIT, and I think there may be another, so if for some reason you know them, tell them I’m interesting in finding them.

Off to sleep, because we have another full day tomorrow, including a couple things that have gotten postponed multiple days, and so far, we’ve extended every session (usually 15 min in the morning and 45-60 minutes in the evening). 8 hours of plenary session every day is a lot, even if I’m enjoying it.

Personal reminder: I really want to write a blog post about the awesome worship we’ve been having this week, but it never seems to fit in the day’s wrap-up and I always run out of time.

Many people seem to regard Robert’s Rules of Order (RONR) as a hindrance, overly complicated rules that only serve to confuse the general assembly. I would contest that they are brilliant and give order to what would otherwise be absolutely chaotic. I only had a vague sense of RONR before I came to Churchwide, but truly, this is possibly the best crash course ever. (I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that I’m an absolute geek and love parliamentary procedure, nor that I’m the type of person who feels compelled to stay in their seat and be there for every single moment of the assembly, and, for the most part, to try and remain completely focused on the speaker and the matter at hand.) This would have been such a different assembly without the Constitution, Bylaws, and Continuing Resolutions; the Rules of Procedure; and RONR to keep things from descending into chaos. One of the things I love doing is realizing why we have to do things in a certain order and then explaining it to confused people around me and helping them keep track of where we are.

I was told this before I came and I’m willing to confirm it to everyone: Bishop Hanson is an excellent presider. Throughout debate and handling all the strange questions and motions/attempts at motions that come up, he never gives any hint of frustration with a particular speaker or any sign that he wants things to happen a certain way. He also is amazing with votes: before any vote, he clearly states exactly what we’re voting on, what to press if you want it to pass, what to press if you don’t. It sounds very simple, but in an assembly like this, when we have amendments to amendments and substitutions to the amended amendment, it can be extremely confusing, as things can change so quickly; you look away for a minute and discussion has changed completely. What the bishop does ensures that everyone can follow what is going on.

As secretary, David Swartling assists with keeping track of amendments to actions and what matter is on the floor, which is invaluable to knowing what is happening. He also reads the resolutions and recommendations of the church council and other committees. This brings me back to a conversation I had back around Synod Assembly in May. For many years, my mother has chaired Reference and Counsel at the Synod level. This committee receives all the resolutions and memorials in the time preceding Synod Assembly, reads them through to make sure they’re in order as written, combines those that seem to propose the same thing, and presents them to the Assembly for action. As chair of the committee, my mom is the person who reads every resolution out loud for the Assembly when it is presented. She was practicing reading some out loud the night before they were to be presented, and the reason was this: clarity when reading out loud is critical to the understanding of the listeners. A bad reading of a resolution can confuse the listeners as to its purpose. A pause in the wrong place, or leaving out a pause where there should be one can join or break ideas that are supposed to be separate or seamless. I had a much better appreciation of this after I heard her read some of the more difficult ones to us. Secretary Swartling is excellent at telling and reading things to us (he also does the announcements at the end of each plenary session) in a way that is clear and concise.

I’m sure both men have many gifts that I simply haven’t observed, having only seen them here at assembly, but I want to commend them for these, since they make assembly so much better (i.e. they both do many other things, but I don’t have a testimony to how awesome they are there). (They also both wrote and presented excellent reports, but that’s different. I mean, excellent reports are much better for an assembly than boring reports, but in a different way than a great chair and secretary.)

Okay, I’m a geek, I love everything I’m learning about parliamentary procedure, but I think that’s good, because hating it would make this assembly much less enjoyable.

I do occasionally break and write things on post-it notes or small pads of paper lying around and save them to tell you, but then I get caught up in things that happen and forget. So, I’m going to tell you important things that happened today, very briefly, expand on some, and if you want a more complete list or more details or videos of everyone talking (there were some really funny moments today; Bishop Hanson is a really sharp guy), they’re over at the ELCA website, as always.

So, in day 4 of the Churchwide Assembly:

• Quasi committee of the whole re: ministry policies
• Approved full communion with the Methodists, 958-51!
• Voting on the Vice President & Common ballot (church council, committees)
• Other ecumenical stuff
• memorials, reference and counsel stuff
• Youth/Young Adults dinner/networking/reception
• dinner with the NE Synod voting members

The quasi committee of the whole was interesting because it started off differently: we gathered in the large ballroom where we ate meals for breakfast and sat at tables of ten. I thought – and as far as I can tell, most of the assembly agreed – that it was a great help in facilitating discussion because you could actually talk back and forth about issues with people instead of talking at people in the large plenary. It was also interesting that though my group clearly had not all voted similarly on the social statement, we didn’t really discuss any moral stance on homosexuality at all, but was clearly focused on the implications of the ministry policies and how to implement the social statement in very conservative areas where congregations would clearly not approve of a pastor blessing a same-sex marriage. The social statement and ministry policies don’t force any pastor to bless same-sex relationships, nor a congregation to call a pastor in a same-sex relationship (should they be allowed). And while someone said that the questions probably wouldn’t even arise in particularly conservative regions, it’s still there – does the pastor bless the union? Bless it, but refuse to have a ceremony at the church? How can they do something while still respecting the consciences of members who cannot understand? Which, okay, I think we achieved the point of the discussions, but it was heartening to talk with and see discussions leading people to work more together to explore rather than think of how we’re opposed. (We then went back into regular quasi committee of the whole with everyone, which was not nearly as fun.)

Full communion with the Methodists! Okay, I’m way too tired to try and explain in my own words what full communion is and why it’s awesome, so instead, you can go read the news release about it on the ELCA website. Voting was voting, other stuff you can go and read on your own, though if you’re in New England, the last plenary ended in the middle of the discussion about peace in Israel and Palestine, and Pastor John Stendahl and Bishop Margaret Payne were both at the microphone to speak, so if you tune in tomorrow, you may see them speak eloquently on the importance of advocating for peace and justice.

Plenary went late, to around 6:30, but I then headed to a bar/restaurant called the Local to hang out with other young adults and youth. As well as meeting some of the churchwide staff who work with youth, a young pastor, and a few others, I got a chance to talk with 3 of the young adults from the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Synod, who has 4 young adults among their 8 voting members. I am so pleased to see that! (If you’ve been watching, you’ve seen 2 of them – Caleb called the question on the social statement; Matt is the “tv guy” who mentioned that people might just like talking into a microphone in front of a giant assembly and the internet today (it was relevant, yes, but also very funny).) Relatedly, tomorrow we’re considering an amendment to the constitution that would require 10% of voting members of Synod and Churchwide Assemblies to be youth, as well as requiring youth and young adult membership on Church, Synod, and congregational councils.

Somehow I had the impression that pastors were mature, responsible people who always acted appropriately. I have been thoroughly cured of this notion. Not that they aren’t, but dinner with the other New England voting members included some of the worst jokes I’ve ever heard, as well as, um, cautionary tales against drinking and marijuana. Really, it was just something of a surprise how much fun I had having dinner with this group of adults, with conversation ranging from really bad jokes to politics to church politics to Italian food to “what’s the worst way to die? Tell a true story”.

Some memorable quotes from yesterday:

Bishop Hanson: “Do you want to challenge the ruling of the chair?”

Member: in a definitive, quiet voice “No way.”

“NE Synod Quote of the Day: Who said sex isn’t fun?” (Of course, I was reminded of a previous quote someone had told me from a few years ago, which was “I never thought we’d get tired of talking about the church and sex!”)

Memorable quotes from today:

Voting Member: Is it possible to get another blue ballot if ours have been raptured?

Bishop Hanson: Why were you left behind?

Voting member: What will you be bringing to the potluck?

Methodist Pastor: I think we have the same recipe book.