Starting Votes

At the Orientation for Voting Members, we are told that there are 1025 Voting Members signed up, most nominated by their Synods (I am here as a representative of the Crow River Conference in the SW MN Synod). As the first Plenary Session begins, our Secretary tells us that 964 of those have registered. We have a quorum!

Our Synod is seated at the very front of the Assembly, at the extreme right side. We get a good view of the journalist section and the rightmost of the huge screens.

To test the handheld electronic voting devices, Bishop Hanson asks some trivia questions. At first the highlighted answers are all the top vote getters, so I wonder if this isn't more of a Family Feud event (winning answers are the most popular) rather than Jeopardy (though one of my fellow Voting Members from our synod likes to sing a little variation on the Final Jeopardy music during votes). Then the last question has a highlighted (correct) answer that wasn't the top vote-getter. This made me wonder if later on there would be a vote on actual business that might be revealed that way: "The right answer was Yes, but you voted No."

We go on to discuss the rules of the Assembly. Someone from the Rocky Mountain Synod has a procedural question: he knows Social Statements need a 2/3 majority to be rescinded, but how about approved recommendations from Social Statements, is that just a simple majority? After a short conference, Bishop Hanson confirms that notion as accurate. Surely a portent of things to come, but I'm wondering how much chance of success he thinks he can expect, coming in cold and telegraphing his move so early. It seems like his opposition is pretty well-organized.

One light moment came after going through a summary of the rules of the Assembly: Secretary Swartling mentioned that in previous assemblies speeches from the floor had been limited to 3 or 4 minutes, but that by the end of the Assembly, this had invariably been reduced to 2 minutes. In the interest of keeping us on schedule and saving time, the allotment this time was 2 minutes from the beginning. One earnest VM thought 2 minutes wasn't enough time to express a complete thought, so we took that provision out to be considered separately, the voting member was asked to provide specific language, and our first vote was to approve the rest of the rules (958-29, I wonder sometimes about the rationale for the contrary 2-3%). We returned to the original VM, and he asked to change 2 minutes in the rules to 5 minutes. An instinctive, audible groan rippled through the assembly, prompting Bishop Hanson to say that rules against applause in response to floor speeches applied to saying Whuuuuh as well. Someone else spoke on behalf of the proposed change (it really is a short amount of time, it'll be hard if I have to do it), but it was voted down in the interests of running a timely Assembly.

Another proposed change was to delay consideration of LIFT proposals, scheduled for Tuesday morning, to happen Wednesday instead (to provide more time for outside deliberation, as the deadline for LIFT-related suggested changes was 9:30 and there was a lot to consider). That was voted down as well, in light of Bishop Hanson's point that the LIFT recommendations were scheduled early because they would influence consideration of other items.

During that session, we got an introductory presentation regarding LIFT that wasn't very informative at all, packed with relatively content-free high-flown rhetoric and inspiring slides. At one point they actually said their perspective rose "to the 35,000 foot level", a bit of management self-help jargon I did not expect to hear during these proceedings.