Looks Like We is Stuck...

I didn't go to Tampa for the Conference.

I only watched it via Live-Streaming on my computer from time-to-time.  Never did I watch an entire session.  Except for once.  Bishop Michael Coyner had the misfortune of being in the leadership position for what may have been the shortest United Methodist General Conference session...ever.

Bishop Coyner presides over the Indiana Area of the UMC.  He is my Bishop.  He is a good and fair man...perhaps it was only fitting that he would preside over a Conference session hijacked by protesters, agitating for a more open position as regards the matter of homosexuality...allowing gay and lesbian persons to be ordained, and pastors to officiate at gay and lesbian Unions or Weddings.  For about 18 to 20 minutes the Bishop tried, calmly, to conduct business; but it was impossible to do so with protesters shouting him down, standing on tables, etc.  True to who he is, Bishop Coyner remained cool, calm, and collected...maybe not inside, but certainly on the outside.

I am in favor of folks protesting.  I am also in favor of a conference moving peaceably through its agenda.  I don't have a side to take in what happened at the session Bishop Coyner presided over.  I do, however, think he was the right person for that time and place.

We UMCs have been debating and arguing over this matter for some 40 years!  We couldn't even come together in Tampa over inserting language in our Book of Discipline (that's right up there with the Bible...not really; but you get the point: its our book of rules, positions, polity, governance, etc.) that would state that we agree to disagree on this volitile matter.  No language to the effect that "we disagree" on things at all!

There was actual business conducted in Tampa.  Nothing I will delve into here...except for the matter named above.

I read reports from friends and others who actually attended the Conference...some as delegates, most as observers.  I found this:
"An 18th Century structure cannot sustain a 21st century global organization."  A very interesting blog-observation from a Conference attendee, Maria Dixon Hall. She continued: "While as a denomination, we will not disappear over the next 4 years, I believe that the Fat Lady has taken off her kaftan and is looking through sheet music and for an evening gown."

I paid attention when one friend, Mark Dicken, a delegate, posted on FaceBook that he was discouraged...or maybe it was disheartened...or angry.  At any rate, he was not feeling overjoyed as he returned to northern Indiana from Tampa.

I should point out that, as relates to the matter mentioned earlier, Dixon and Dicken would come down on opposite sides of the debate.  Discouraged was the one thing they shared in common.

The preacher at my church yesterday, talking about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and how his view of things opens new windows for us to see through...said that we should never make our fold the prototype for the whole flock. All the sheep in one fold might look (and think, and smell, and act...my words, not her's) alike, but that one fold of sheep is in no way the whole-world's worth of sheep that make up the flock Jesus calls his own.  Look out the window, the preacher was suggesting, there's more to the world than your little corner of it!

That preacher, she knows her stuff.  But that ain't easy "stuff" to wrestle with.  Some of the folks on either side of the matter are downright nasty!  Each believes they are correct (who is gonna hold on to a belief they think is incorrect?). 
 
I do have a dog in this fight (a phrase I learned from another Indiana Bishop, Woodie W. White).  I have taken a side in the matter.  I think folks on the other side should see it my way.  They think the same thing over there on their side.
 
The dog in the picture above seems to me to be the United Methodist Church at this point in its history.  I could be wrong...but I could be right.  I don't know who the "some kind soul" will be to pull our UMC butt out of the bind we've gotten ourself into...maybe God's Spirit; maybe some lightning-flash of new truth; maybe some wise Bishop, or wise clergy person, or wise lay person.  Maybe it will take something more dramatic and drastic.
 
But it sure do seem like we is stuck!