Caucus at Conference: Dreams for the Future IV

Here is the final installment of the DREAMS FOR THE NEXT 300 YEARS OF THE CHURCH, shared by visitors at our booth at Annual Conference this year:

• I hope that everyone will be welcome into the Church of the Brethren.
• Every one love God
• Honesty
• Peace
• To grow where we are planted and produce
• More ordained women
• Inclusion, inclusion, inclusion
• House churches in small, intentional communities
• I dream of a church where gender, color, age, sexual preference and creed make no different in our hearts, minds, and souls! God loves you all the time!
• Out of the boxes – centered on Jesus – living the way – singing, storying
• We would be open to LIVING revelations of the Spirit instead of clinging to old
• When women will be respected as much as men in our church, society, and world
• More progressive churches
• As a lesbian, I would feel included
• Keep on growing!
• For my children and future generations to be welcome and embraced by the church, no matter who they are, what they do, or where God leads them
• A name which includes all
• That another way of living – with all ages and genders – will represent an alternative culture of love, service, mercy, and compassion. Known by their fruits for “Jesus is Lord” of all.
• Growth in the spirit
• Reach a higher vibration to the point where we do not live in earth anymore
• Inclusive, Equal, Loving, Global
• Every one that knows about the church will come and feel welcome
• Stay connected and united as a church so we will be strong together
• I pray we will learn how to live the love of God for all people.
• For the church to worry less about survival and more about living with faithful integrity
• Being a member of the Church of the Children of the Same Mother
• Love justice, Walk humbly

Caucus at Conference: Dream for the Future III

Here are some more of the DREAMS FOR THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE visitors shared at our booth at Annual Conference:

• PEACE
• To work on world hunger in foreign nations with our continued support
• All welcomed!
• I want the church to be nice!
• Find a gender-neutral name so we won’t be embarrassed inviting women to join the denomination!
• A great listening of souls
• No hungry people
• BMC will have an exhibit every year – BRF will not longer “run” the denomination
• No war and racism!
• A church that remembers all the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific voyages Brethren took to get here – chosen and unchosen.
• My dream for the future is our church will grow spiritually and in numbers.
• No more war!
• Multi-ethnic
• Everyone could be friends
• For the churches to grow bigger.
• Honor BMC by allowing booth space
• To include the healing arts as part of the church
• A Kin-dom of non-violent earth children of all stripes and colors
• A Brethren Church in every state
• A single peaceful united church in Christ
• Love is God, and the church is the community that shapes love to all.
• I want the church to get really involved in seeking the justice that will enable peace to come about.
• Each person will be truly welcomed and valued for her/his gifts
• Peace and prosperity for all people

Caucus at Conference: Dreams for the Future II

Here are more of the beautiful DREAMS FOR THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE visitors shared at our booth at Annual Conference:

• All people feel equally welcomed
• To branch out in the world, meanwhile accepting and loving all people and all the people within
• That each member will be a disciple in the community
• Every person is valued!
• Grow!
• An inclusive name
• The continued pursuit of peace!
• May we turn away only those whom Jesus would
• No one questions women or men for leadership in churches
• A church that continues to be faithful to Jesus in the New Testament
• All are welcome – unity in the image of God
• My dream is for all of the world’s people to have exactly what they need to live comfortably and no more and no less. Most of all I wish for PEACE.
• Peace – accept every one
• I dream of the day when we in the church learn how to respect the way that people live out their faith with integrity, no longer feeling threatened when it looks different from their own, no longer standing in the way of new practices emerging.
• An inclusive church
• Multiplicacion Santedad Amor
• That the CoB will adopt truly accepting, empowering practices for all of its members
• That every congregation will welcome female pastors
• Children to be encouraged and included
• Lots of peace
• We are still here working for the betterment of all Peacefully, Simply, Together.
• To see people of all races and cultures in all churches

Caucus at Conference: Dreams for the Future I

At our booth at Annual Conference, Womaen’s Caucus invited guests to write or draw their DREAMS FOR THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE on colored stars.  We posted them on the back of our booth and collected them at the end of the Conference.  Here are some of what you/they have been dreaming:

• All genders are include
• I think it will be very big.  And a lot of people.  Or the church will be in heaven and the angels would sing with the church. {with picture}
• My granddaughters and their daughters grow up in a world where all women worldwide have peace and equality.
• Acceptance of all people who believe that Jesus is Lord and are saved.
• We will have a Maen’s Caucus, too.
• Have more people come
• Find solutions to global warming – change our destructive habits towards the Earth.
• I will want more loving people to come.
• A church that accepts everyone, without people judging
• Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look down upon your children so as to be strengthened to do greater exploits for the Kingdom!
• To learn to accept and appreciate everyone within the church and not judge
• I dream that we will all be able to SEE the STARS through clean air.
• An openness to one another in love / A stronger witness for peace / A deeper commitment to following Jesus, surrender to the Holy Spirit, and deeper praise of God
• Growth and expansion in unity under God
• Everyone is welcome
• Women in all areas of leadership…. women preaching, teaching, singing, serving…. equal justice.

What are your dreams for the next 300 years of the Church?  Post them as comments here!

Caucus at Conference: In Pictures

The long-awaited visual account of (some of) Annual Conference! More images have been posted on our new Flickr page, so click over there from the right-hand navigation bar on this page. We’ll keep adding to that page, so check back in in weeks to come.

Caucus Worker Jan Eller at the booth, with the theme, “Empowering the Church of the Future:”

One “feminist of the future” is a painter:

BMC’s witness this year involved images of Brethren who have been pushed to the margins of the church by its homophobic stance. Supporters carried around the images with us at Conference, keeping these persons and families in our thoughts and prayers while there, and on Tuesday night we gathered for a vigil outside the auditorium to remember them all and remind the entire church to “Count the Cost of Exclusion.”

We invited visitors to the booth to write their “dreams for the church of the future” on the pink and white stars, then we stuck them up on the shiny cloth. We’ll be posting some of those dreams here and in Femailings in weeks to come. We got some great ideas flowing, and it’s nice to have a preview of what we’ll be making the church into in the next 300 years….

Caucus at Conference: Highlights

The reflections will keep coming in, as I continue to process and recover from Annual Conference. It was a packed, intense few days, and it’s taking me some time to unwind as I return three time zones west.

One thing I want all Caucus fans to be sure to read is Beacon Heights pastor Melissa Bennett’s EXCELLENT sermon, delivered Wednesday morning (unfortunately, after many delegates had already left). You can download the text from the index of the 2008 Annual Conference activity at the brethren webpage, by clicking here. As a good ally, she goes straight to the heart of the issue of inclusion and reaching out substantively across differences, and she names bigotry against gay and lesbian Christians outright. Way to go, Pastor Melissa!

UPDATE: The AC staff have posted the official text of the sermon now on the link cited here, which includes the version as delivered Wednesday. If you haven’t had a chance to experience it, be sure to – it’s a great sermon!

Another highlight was the BMC witness Tuesday afternoon outside the convention center, right on the path from exhibit hall and hotels to worship. Folks walking past filtered through the vigil participants holding signs of persons excluded by the church’s homophobia. Be sure to check out the pictures at our Flickr page (linked from the right side of this blog) to get a taste of this year’s incarnation of BMC’s important tradition.

Caucus at Conference: Day Four

So, I just brought my first amendment to a resolution to the floor of Annual Conference, and I simultaneously got my first collective shudder from the  floor of the convention.  It sure wasn’t popular. I just wanted to emphasize that the Ministerial Ethics paper clarify its prohibition against pastor-congregant sexual relations, instead of more general bans against sexual activity (whatever that means) in general. If we pass a paper that most pastors will not live out in one element, what does that say about our intentions behind more important elements such as preventing child abuse?  If we don’t mean it, and we don’t expect DEs to enforce extreme expectations of pastors’ personal ethics, then why do we expect them to uphold other parts of the document that mandates such ethics?

But the delegate body was not receptive to amendments at that time, especially  not from me, and especially not with the word “partner” in it.  (For translation, it seems that the word “partner” does not signal for some people legal alliances or life-long relationships, as it does for most people, but instead it only makes them think about gay people.)

We rounded out the day with a birthday party for VOS and a concert by Mutual Kumquat.  The booth’s about to come down and we’re about to head home…. until next year, sweet Conference-goers.

Caucus at Conference: Day Three

Another packed day at conference. We’ll have a big report tomorrow after our Caucus luncheon, the VOS birthday celebration, the BMC witness with the photos y’all sent in, and the Mutual Kumquat concert (my first – I’m excited!)

It felt good today to finally get business going, after two days of show and tell.  The only controversial business that came up today was the paper on forbearance (mentioned and linked in the post below).  Several dissenters for various reasons, and then an oddly-worded amendment from the floor adding text about the resolution’s limits (not a comprehensive conflict-resolution guide, in my words) and affirming that church bodies still have the right to choose exclusion of ‘offending’ members ‘as a last resort’ when ‘true discord’ arises.  The amendment also included some Bible citations, and one On Earth Peace member spoke well against the simplistic use of Matthew 18 to justify exclusion.  I wasn’t sure what the amend-ers could possibly mean by true discord, how that would be analytically determined, but the amendment failed before I had a chance to ask.

Side note: whatever his politics or theology may be, Moderator Jim Beckwith has one of the most soothing, crystal-clear voices I’ve heard from a pulpit in a while.  I want him to lead meditation exercises.

Some disappointment that the delegates voted yet again for the male candidate for Moderator over the female candidate.  If this weren’t so much of a pattern, we wouldn’t take it personally, but we’ve seen what we’ve seen…

In the evening was a  nice concert by Ken Medema, who got the Brethren on their feet for singing and dance-like movement for several pieces in a row (one Caucus friend wondered how many collective calories he got us to shed from that concert alone).  We also discovered that Ken Medema concerts are more popular than Annual Conference business sessions.  Huh.

Caucus at Conference: Day Deux

The Richmond Annual Conference marches on.

Last night we were treated to an opening worship service with a few nice hymns led by a woman with one of the most dramatic facial expressions I have seen in a while. The service also incorporated a processional with different members and families bringing in stalks of wheat to decorate the front area of the convention center/worship hall. The lovely logo for the year’s Conference makes use of great natural imagery, including the wheat (from the parable that is a central text for the week) but also water and fire. And, of course, rainbow colors, which I am particularly fond of:

After the service, the boards held hearings with the public on the various items of business facing Conference this year. I (Audrey) attended the talk about the resolution urging forbearance. There was much support for the resolution and its creative language of “seekers” and “keepers” of truths, but there was also some indirect dissension: fretting about the historical background of the term “forbearance;” concern about the seeming negative judgment implicit in the term “seeker;” worries about confusion between the term “seeker” as used in the paper and the word as used by the Emergent Church; some brothers’ sense that the paper did not fully enough address conflict (i.e. when to kick people out) and that it presented a “squishy” theology/morality in terms of being “tolerant” (which has somehow become a bad word, apparently) instead of “forbearing.” To that final concern, one clever brother responded that he has seen, from recent experience of surgery, that for the body to function properly it needs a harmonious interaction of both rigid parts and squishy parts. Amen.

For the text of this year’s business resolutions, click here.

Today, Sunday, we had another worship service, this one in the morning – all services except for Saturday’s have been moved to mornings this year. We worshiped with the Brethren Church, who are also holding their conference in Richmond even as we speak – what a coincidence, huh? (Just kidding – we know the committee spent at least eight years planning all this. Phew!) The service used another nice processional, with representatives from each district bringing in a vial or bottle or jug of water with portions from the baptismals in every church building in the country of both CoB and BC. Maybe I’m a sucker for these dramatic rituals, but hey. Unity was the theme of the day, throughout the 2 1/2-hour service with its three sermons. The Brethren Church pastor tried to energize us in her sermon, and we revealed how unlively we can be, despite our best efforts. Chris Bowman from the CoB gave a particularly rousing, inspiring message calling us to recognize the dirt and manure piled on top of us as our being planted, not buried (wow – I am not expressing this as poetically as he made it sound. Sorry, gentle readers!)

In the afternoon, the boards of the two churches presented facets of their various ministries and ended the evening with a worship celebration of international missions. Plenty of folks spent the afternoon milling about the exhibit hall, too, enjoying the booths (pictures coming soon!). The Womaen’s Caucus booth has become so … popular? that one girl was overheard telling her mother where she got the antennae from as responding “the space booth.” Well, its message may not be readily apparent to all, but at least it’s memorable!

Caucus at Conference: Day One-Half

Well, most of us from the Caucus Steering Committee have at least arrived in Richmond by now, though we’ve yet to meet up. Tomorrow your ladies in action will meet to strategize for the week and to unveil the booth for the first hours of the Conference.

Audrey came in by train and set up most of the booth in the exhibit hall (pictures to come!), amidst the boxes and bundles of the other booths in progress.  She enjoyed seeing Annual Conference “back stage” for the first time, noting which organizations are overachievers and have their booths fully set up a full day in advance (VOS, New Community Project, all the General Board offices – but they had a head start) and which will be working hard tomorrow to pretty up the booths you’ve come to know and love.  The most eye-catching and chuckle-inducing juxtaposition of the booths is a huge rainbow draped behind the booth right next to BRF’s booth.  Wonder what they’ll think of that.

Jan is arriving by plane any moment now.  Anna Lisa cooled off after observing an exciting Standing Committee session by going to an Ani DiFranco concert.  Peg had been here for a few days with her fancy-pants DE husband.  We’ll get them to elaborate more on their experiences and impressions in coming days.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!