25 April 2008
Lay Leader’s Lines
As this is my initial posting on this new and improved church website, I suppose I should first take a few lines to introduce myself. I’m Dan Browning, the Lay Leader of Druid Hills United Methodist Church. Formally speaking, the Lay Leader is the primary lay representative of the laity (i.e., non-ordained, non-clergy folks, otherwise known as everyone out there in the pews) in a local United Methodist church. It’s not an “us v. them” thing, though – the laity and the clergy really are working together toward the same goals to fulfill the same visions.
I’ll speak more on all that in some subsequent posts. At the moment, however, there’s a very important event that is taking place in the life of the United Methodist Church worldwide. It’s our quadrennial General Conference, being held this time around in Fort Worth, Texas. Because of the structure of the United Methodist Church (which I’m going to start abbreviating now as “UMC” so I don’t have to keep typing it out), the General Conference (”GC”…can you tell I’m inherently lazy?), as essentially the legislative body of the UMC, is the only body that speaks for the entire UMC.
The GC has the authority to revise the UMC’s Book of Discipline, essentially our laws and doctrines, and the Book of Resolutions, a collection of non-legislative resolutions setting forth all current and official social policies and other resolutions adopted by the General Conference of The United Methodist Church.
What do all those delegates from around the world talk about at GC? There are some very high profile topics mixed in with lots of administrative and legislative minutiae. On the high profile side, for example, delegates will decide whether to implement a policy of selective divestment of the UMC from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands (our own Administrative Council Chair, Beth Corrie, will be in Fort Worth to support this issue). They will also address the issue of transgendered clergy in light of a recent case of a transgendered clergyperson being allowed to keep his clergy credentials (a decision that pleasantly surprised me, given the UMC’s history of anti-gay discrimination).
Along with Beth, others from our congregation who are in attendance at GC include Mary Elizabeth Moore and Darryl Stephens. Darryl has authored five petitions proposing various changes to the Book of Discipline. I’m hoping to get Darryl’s permission to add a link to his GC blog on our site; you can find Mary Elizabeth’s occasional blog here. And for ongoing coverage of GC (including live video streams, if you really want to geek out on the UMC!), check out this site.
Keep all of the delegates and the entire church in your thoughts and prayers as GC continues, and if you have any questions about anything that’s going on at GC, feel free to send me an email at danielabrowning[at]gmail.com, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone who does.
Peace,
Dan
Dan