OK, CWA has now been over for nearly a week, and it's time for me to wrap up. There will be a bit of narrative in the posts I have planned, but also some posts addressing broader themes of the week. This is one of the latter.
Goodsoil is "A collaboration of allies working for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families in the full ministerial and sacramental life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Goodsoil is comprised entirely of lay and clergy members of the ELCA. Lutherans Concerned/North America is the fiscal agent for Goodsoil."
Though there was less on the agenda this Assembly in Goodsoil's wheelhouse than, say, the 2009 assembly, they seemed omnipresent at the Assembly, demonstrating their skills at fundraising and organization.
As to fundraising, people were handing out professionally printed 2-color 20-page letter size booklets* with full color covers, and seemed to have ample copies for everyone (that's the source of the thumbnail description of Goodsoil at the top of the post). They also had a suite on the 17th floor in the hotel open all day which served as a meeting place and anchor for all the other activities they'd been planning, where you could also buy several pins or buttons to identify yourself with them (a fun side note: I also heard the suite gave a distant, dim view of the EPCOT fireworks at night). Unfortunately, the one time I tried to go up to the suite was the worst possible time for the week, about an hour before the Goodsoil worship service that was happening in one of the ballrooms. I didn't make it to that service (because I was writing to you, dear reader).
As to organization, that was clear at the Assembly by the number of events advertised on monitors throughout the common areas of the hotel, sometimes (usually?) dwarfing the number attributed to "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America". These included planning meetings for their own events and legislative actions, the aforementioned church service they put on (with attendant choir rehearsals, etc.), and general open hours for their suite. Even overlooking the amount of time and effort undoubtedly necessary to put on this kind of program parallel to the assembly, their main legislative priority (an anti-bullying statement) was probably the biggest feature of the Memorials portion of the Assembly. 38 synods passed anti-bullying memorials to the Assembly, which is no small feat of coordination no matter how uncontroversial the stance is. Furthermore, when the initial recommendation of the Memorials committee wasn't specific enough for them (the original recommendation was just a couple of short paragraphs, directing the Assembly to refer the memorials to a list of churchwide offices, and to ask for a report to the 2012 meeting of the Church Council), they had a plan to fix it. Sometime between then and the vote, that recommendation was expanded by nearly a half-column of text, including references to forming partnerships with many non-churchwide organizations (including LC/NA specifically), as well as a bulleted list of specific points to be addressed by such partnerships. They certainly knew what they were doing, and weren't messing around.
By omnipresence generally, I'm mainly referring to the pins and buttons I mentioned earlier, which could be seen on a big portion of the Voting Members and other attendees. Any time there were a few of us badged Lutherans anywhere in the hotel, there were invariably some with rainbow buttons on. With that and the placards and event notices advertising various Goodsoil events, it often seemed as though there were two conventions going on.
*Yes, I found it curious that the booklet was not available on the sparse goodsoil.org site; at first glance it seems that Goodsoil is merely the face that LC/NA presents to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, and if I find out anything interesting about why that might be, I'll post it, but I assume it's something to do with tax/nonprofit rules. But otherwise, if you're looking for any content related to Goodsoil, you'd probably be better served searching on lcna.org.
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