First of all, we want to thank everyone out there who contributed to our Rainbow Handcraft project in any way. We have been overwhelmed by the response and to see all these gorgeous rainbow colors literally showering down upon us is both inspiring and awe-some! We’ve got at least 500 rainbow scarves and more keep arriving as people drop by the booth for the first time. God arranged for the perfect booth space — a row-end spot where we could hang the rainbow handcrafts and people could easily pick them up. The colors are just amazing and the different designs and patterns are terrific! We wear them in celebration of all God’s bright, colorful, unique, and hand-made children!
BMC Luncheon
The BMC luncheon was wonderful, not to mention brightly-colored! The San Diego COB hosted us graciously, the food was excellent, the music was wonderful, and the community was vibrant and open. After lunch, we heard from BMC worker Carrie Fry-Miller and I discovered one of the most stunning surprises of Conference for me. Did you know that Carrie had to work through the United Church of Christ to be placed as a volunteer at BMC because BVS does not (refuses to) have a project for the BMC worker?!!!! Are you kidding me?!!! I urge everyone out there to write or email BVS and demand that they support Brethren women and men who want to work with BMC in an official BVS project placement. It is unconscionable that a Brethren woman had to go through the UCC to be placed in a Brethren organization in a Brethren volunteer position.
We also heard from BMC Director Carol Wise about the new and continuing work BMC is doing. I was especially interested to hear about their increasing focus on Elder glbt issues and workshops for college students and faculty. One exciting thing this year is that VOS Coordinating Council member and all-around-awesome-guy Dan McRoberts has gifted BMC & VOS 1000 copies of a small book by renowned theologian Walter Wink entitled “Homosexuality and the Bible”. These books are being distributed free at Conference and Wink has given permission for the text to be posted online here!
Following the BMC business report, Rick Polhamus of Christian Peacemaker Teams conducted a short training in nonviolent resistance, focusing on how to handle confrontations during nonviolent actions. As you know, BMC was AGAIN denied booth space in the exhibit hall, despite the granting of booth space to many other groups that have disagreement with some AC statements like the BRF. So, this year, BMC and allies will be setting up “Mobile Booths” all over the Conference site. A person or team will set up a booth on a card table for about 1.5 hours and then move to a different location. The excellent buttons we’re all wearing say “Be the Booth you wish to see”. So smart!!!
Business
In terms of business, things have taken a less positive turn. Your Caucus Steering Committee sat in on Standing Committee business yesterday morning while discussion began on two items of particular interest to us: (1) the Statement of Confession and Commitment; and (2) the Query on Language on Same Sex Covenantal Relationships. There was quite a bit of discussion on how to handle these two items — together or separately. Following discussion, SC (Standing Committee) voted to consider the items separately.
SC chose to deal with the Statement first. Early in the discussion, Nelda Rhoades Clark (Northern Plains) read the Call to Confession, Commitment, and Action that has been signed by over 160 COB youth and young adults to date. If you are under 35, you can sign the paper by clicking on the link. This was received well by SC and several later comments referred back to the young people of the church and how their voice needed to be heard and taken seriously. Just before lunch, SC voted to recommend to the delegate body that the Statement be adopted. At that point, we had heard considerable discussion and thought that we had a handle on what direction SC was going to go with the Query. After lunch, we had to attend to our own business, so we didn’t return to hear SC work through the Query.
After lunch, everything apparently went haywire! Someone on SC will have to share the details, but the result was that they rescinded both their vote on the Statement and their eventual vote on the Query and chose to send the Statement on to Conference as a Special Response Query (even though it’s not a query). If Conference would approve treating the Statement as a Special Response Query, that would initiate a 3-year process of study and action in congregations and the districts before Conference would consider it again. AND, since Conference can only handle one Special Response Query per year, the Query on Language on Same Sex Covenantal Relationships would be postponed until at least next year. All in all, it seemed as if this was one more way to postpone actual discussion on same-sex relationships and dealing with the 1983 Human Sexuality paper, which is now 26 years old and even factually outdated. There were the ever-present scare-tactics of “this will split the church”. I fail to understand how ignoring the deep fracture lines in the church and the great wrong the church is doing every day to real glbt people somehow keeps the church more ‘together’.
The delegate body does have the option of voting down the recommendation to deal with the Statement as a Special Response Query, so the final outcome remains to be seen.
Worship
Shawn Flory Replogle, the moderator-elect, led worship and Moderator David Shumate preached. The available seats were filled to the point that probably 50 people or more were sitting or standing in the back area. I sat on the floor and so my worship experience was staring at the backs of the people in the row of chairs before me. At no point did there appear to be any attempt to find more chairs to put out, though there was plenty of room in the corners of the worship space. I’m not even sure anyone ‘in charge’ noticed. I hope that they do put out more chairs tonight.
It was somewhat hard for me to listen to David’s sermon, I’ll confess. The text will be online here if it’s not already. After spending the day with the Caucus-BMC-VOS community, it felt very hollow to listen for calls to live ‘justly’ in the church and to be transformed and such when there was no naming of the actual injustices so many are living with. Talk about “justice” remains an abstract ideal and means nothing to me when there is no call by church leadership to identify specific injustices that are being done by the church and call the church to specific actions of justice-doing. The leadership vacuum continues.
About the Blogging
I am going to do my best to update this daily. One thing I realized last night is that when I said I’d update every evening I wasn’t thinking that “evening” here is after midnight on the East Coast! So, let’s just say that sometime every day I’ll check in! Other Caucus Steering Committee members may be blogging, too, so we’ll be sure to sign our names so you know who’s viewpoint you’re getting! 
peace — Sharon Nearhoof May
Our booth space this year focuses on a phrase from the Conference theme scripture: “…in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” (2 Cor. 5:19) As we discussed the scripture together as a Steering Committee, we kept coming back to the idea that God had entrusted this crucial message to the community of faith and we began to think about what message God had entrusted us with. Out of a lot of other ideas, we focused on this one and also the powerful symbolism of the butterfly. So, our booth is covered with butterflies — butterfly fabric, butterflies stickers, butterflies everywhere. And, we have three messages we believe that God has entrusted to the Caucus community — the message of equality, justice, and wholeness for all people. We could have used a number of others — but our booth designer (that would be me!) kept coming back to those three. 
