Monday Morning

Monday morning fittingly began with worship and praise, with a liturgy focusing on how faith can be a dividing or uniting force.

As we began the legislative session, an attendance check was reported. There are several missing, and one entire delegation is absent. Most all absences are the result of issues regarding visas.

The chair of the legislative committee outlined the differences between legislative and plenary sessions. One major difference is that there is no minumum debate requirement for legislative committee. The legislative committee cannot extend beyond today, and items cannot be tabled.

The Traditional Plan discussion was next on the schedule. The first proposal regarding it was to postpone the discussion of that legislation to the end of the day. That motion failed.

In working on the Traditional Plan in committee, an ammendment was brought forward to ammend one of its components dealing with clergy oversight to make it pass the constitutionality issue of it. It passed. The same addition was added to another amendment. It passed.

In the meantime, one delegate offered to give information about ammendments and plans to the body, but the secretary noted that those documents would have to be translated into the other official languages of the General Conference and were not received in time to make that happen. A point of order was noted the rules state that after the first day, only official documents may be distibuted by the pages of the General Conference.

Speeches were given in support for and against the Traditional Plan.

Another similar amendment was offered to uphold due process for a different part of the plan regarding Episcopal oversight. It passed.

A call for the question regarding all amendments and Traditional Plan itself was made. I passed.

The vote on the Traditional Plan was taken. It pased legislative committee by 56%. It will be forwarded to plenary session tomorrow.

The next two items are “exit plans” for churches who wish to leave the denomination.

On the first, speeches for and against were given. An amendment to remove a provision to require churches to repay conference grants passes. Another amendment to rearrange the subsets to make the process clearer passed. Another amendment was proposed to move 33% of resources from leaving church to others in the area. Ammendment fails. The petition passes.

The second exit plan petition was discussed. After discussion, the petition passed.