Reflections from Home

The car trip home provided an opportunity to reflect on the Assembly, its worship and its business.

Patti Case gets all the kudos we can send her way. As the planner and production manager, she put together and ran one of the best General Assemblies in my memory. Following the assemblies held in Charlotte (2003), Portland (2005) and Fort Worth, Indianapolis has a long row to hoe. The bar has been set high for the General Assembly in 2009.

Sharon Watkins could not have asked for a better moderator team to serve during her first two years as General Minister and President. I have already told of the outstanding job Bill Lee did in guiding the Assembly through its business sessions. He could not have done so without the support of vice-moderators Carolyn Ho and Charlie Gaines. As parliamentarian, Bill Bailey was indispensible.

I do find myself wondering if sense of the assembly resolutions make sense for this church in this time. The Design, rightly I think, gives the Assembly the responsibility to affirm or reject some operational business of the church from the General Board. However, sense of the assembly resolutions are another matter. They represent the church's effort to take a stand on a variety of issues.

Like any other resolution, sense of the assembly resolutions are debated, then the Assembly votes. In the past, the effort to take a stand based on a democratic majority has set up a system of winners and losers that have left some in the church feeling alienated, no longer a part of the church they have loved.

It seems contrary to the congregational polity of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) to force a vote on such matters. As Stone's Christians and Campbell's Disciples were coming together in 1832, Raccoon John Smith warned that the church must not let opinions be in control. The sense of the assembly resolution seems contrary in that it takes one set of opinions and assumptions, lifts them up before the church and then calls the question.

Debate on social issues of the day is an important practice in which the church should engage. One learning track offered at the Fort Worth Assembly provided just such a forum. It is even helpful to have such debates while the plenary is in session. By allowing debate, we get to hear a variety of voices in the church. Debate allows us to learn and form new opinions. Debate gives a basis to decide what actions we might take as individuals, but a vote implies that one set of opinions represents the view of the church. If I don't agree with that view, where am I left?

We have gotten better. In days gone by, the winners would often break into applause or start singing the Doxology. But we should still exercise caution, lest our opinions become yet one more test of fellowship in a church that claims to hold no creed but Christ and no book but the Bible.