Annual Conference Day 1

Disclaimer: My two greatest fears in life are being boring and being wrong. And being hypocritical. Okay, three. I fear I may be all of the above in this following post, but I will try my best to not succeed.

Yesterday was... it's really hard to be nice. The conference began with a laity briefing session that discussed the amendments from General Conference. The head of our delegation discussed each of the amendments, though very scattered. He didn't go in order of the amendments, or even in order of the way they had been grouped to make things easier. It was very confusing, and in the end he told us how to vote, saying we should only vote in 2 or 3 of the 32. I was shocked, at first, to hear him telling us how to vote (especially since a lot of people here are first timers and aren't used to the politics). However, toward the end of his time I became outraged when someone asked why, if these are negative things, did they pass General Conference in the first place, and their response was that by the time they were voted on, about 200 people had already left, and the rest of the people there probably didn't understand what they were voting on. What?? I would imagine that the attendants at General Conference who were fully present and completely understood that they were voting for inclusiveness, voting for Jesus' words of spreading the gospel to ALL people, resent that comment.

Laity address today. The lay speaker told us that if we're still angry over the "progress" last year, that we need to "get over it." We're supposed to be reaching children and youth, and yet the conference has alienated this exact group of active people by their decisions last year. And now, we're just supposed to "get over it." Get over being marginalized, get over being ignored, get over being pushed aside and had our work scoffed at, saying it wasn't ever enough. I think he has some other things to say that may be good, but it's really hard to listen to him after that. He made a big point of saying we need people of all ages to be involved, but yet, when we do get involved and are completely overlooked and ignored, we're just supposed to get over it.

Okay... I need to think about some good things. The report for our camping ministries was really good. It was during the laity briefing, so we haven't heard the actual report to conference. The issue has been with one of our two camps that had a criminal incident several years ago, and really, the conference became afraid of the safety of this facility, and got to the point last year of considering closing the camp and selling the property. Fortunately, a committee was formed to look at this camp and discuss what needs to be done with it. This is the report that we heard, and basically they said there's nothing wrong with the camp, it just needs facility improvements and programming support. The problem is not with the facility, it's with us and what we've done with it. He said that one camp does not have to meet all the needs of a conference, and that one can focus on the needs of adults, and the other can focus on the needs of children and youth. It was an encouraging report, to know that this facility for summer camps will hopefully continue, and be improved to serve children and youth better.

Annual Conference

The time has come again! I'm headed to Annual Conference today. We're cramming it into two and a half days. I appreciate the honoring of our time, but we'll see what happens when we get to Resolutions and GC Amendments. I (averts eyes in shame) haven't read through the amendments yet. I don't know if there will be much debate - we don't debate a lot, with the exception of last year's Conference resolutions. We'll see how this year goes.

As always, it's sure to be an adventure.

Twitter

Twitter. I think my favorite commercial right now is for some phone or internet company (effective advertising right there, people) that gives stats on what viewers are doing... "47% are leaving the room to refill your drink," "62% are flipping through the channels to see what else is on," "24% are twittering," "38% don't know what that means." It's quite humorous. But seriously, twittering has become quite popular. At PodCamp, this was made known to me quite clearly, as there was a twitter feed running all day that people could tweet to to let others know what was going on - which sessions were good, which were bad, when the beer was being served. And since then, I've encountered it a couple of times: my sister now has a twitter account, and upon attending a district meeting, the Christian Ed director at the church we're, I guess, now attending tweeted his response to the meeting, and shared it with me and the pastor we rode over with after the meeting was over. 

But, most interesting about twitter, I think, is this article from Time, and the responses I've read about it here and here. The Time article is about Twittering in church, and how some pastors are supporting this, even setting up a screen with the twitter feed on it to scroll during worship. The responses are both positive and negative - yeah, this is a great idea to get people more involved, and this is distracting, and takes away from the personal connection that is created during worship. 

I can see both sides of the issue. On the one hand, I appreciate the GBOD article (first link) in responding intelligently on this topic, giving both positives and negatives, and looking at the deeper issues connected with this. It asks why Twittering would be necessary, and challenges congregations to look at what Twitter would accomplish and ask how and/or why/why not this is already happening in the worship service. The second article simply states four reasons that Twittering should not be used in worship. The author provides four good reasons, but I don't think he really explained himself very well. However, I'm not here to critique his article. I have a few thoughts of my own to offer.

First off, I am impressed that there are churches responding to new technology. There are always some, I know, and so I'm not surprised, but pleased that the church isn't all overlooking new ways to connect and reach people. The church, as a whole, is often very behind the times in terms of contemporary issues, so it's good to see some trying to be involved in what's going on in the world. Being in the world, but not of. I also think some of the critics are a little harsh - give them a break! At least they're trying. It's like Amazon's Kindle... the first one, I'm sure, sucked. There were good things about it, but bad things, too, but at least it was out there, and it could be improved on from that point. Twittering in church, if it's ever going to happen, has to start somewhere. We're just at the beginning. 

On the other side, however, I completely agree with the GBOD's article and the four points in the other blog about why this is a bad idea - namely, taking away focus on what's going on in worship, and removing that personal connection. Twittering is supposed to help people connect when they are not together. When you're together, talk to one another. Connect face to face. And, also, worship is supposed to be a stepping out of your daily life to renew. If you twitter and tweet all week, isn't a break needed?

The best thing I think from the original article was its discussion of what's happening at Next Level, a church in North Carolina. The article cites that this church is not monitoring or displaying the twitter conversation, but isn't discouraging it from happening. I think this might be the way to go - people who want to be involved in it can be, and it won't distract others. Isn't that what twitter is in the first place? It's there to be there for those who want to use it, and if you want a break, or don't understand it, or are distracted by it, you just don't have to be involved. 

Finally, I think churches considering this need to ask a very important question: why do we worship? I think we get so involved in wanting to bring more people in to worship, into membership in our community, that we forget the real reason we're there. We're there to worship God. We're not there for ourselves. Worship is an act for God's glory. We're not even really there to "get something out of it." Bible study, Wednesday night dinners, covenant groups, and all the other activities of the church are there for us to learn and grow and serve. But Sunday morning worship (or whenever you worship) is specifically about honoring God. So, as we look at making worship purposeful, we have to remember what the real purpose is. 

Earnest...

Okay, so I know the show was, what, two months ago? But, finally, here are some pictures from my theatrical re-debut in The Importance of Being Earnest!

Here's the whole cast...


And my favorite scene... after spending an afternoon despising one another because we thought we were engaged to the same man, we realize we've been hoodwinked, and become immediate friends! "My poor, wounded Cecily!"


It was a great show, lots of fun. I am so glad I did it, not only because I got to be involved in theatre again, but I got to know some great college students.

And it's only just the beginning! I've been cast as Miranda in the upcoming production of The Tempest. I'm so excited!

New Beginnings

I, in essence, have a new computer. Not by choice. My hard drive crashed. And I lost pretty much everything I've done in the past year, which, luckily, wasn't much. I haven't been very productive in my personal life. But, most importantly, I've lost my pictures, and I've lost all my notes from Podcamp. So, that second wrap up you were all holding your breath for? Breathe now - it's not coming.

I did manage to hold on to my music, thanks to a handy little program called PodWorks. But all my pictures from the past year, including my "week in the life of..." pictures, are gone. (I knew I shouldn't have procrastinated in scrapbooking those!)

As frustrating as it is, I really am okay with it. Maybe it's because I didn't lose a lot of stuff. But it's kinda nice having a "brand new" computer. A fresh start. And, my hubby bought me a cute little green and black external hard drive to back things up on.

Isn't it pretty? And oh so functional! It even comes with it's own carrying case. Ah, the little things that make me smile...

Starting to Wrap Up...

I'm reaching information overload. Either that, or these last few sessions aren't that interesting.

I really got a lot out of 2 sessions today, Gavin's (the session I came for) and Storytelling for Gen X&Y.

I'll start with Storytelling... it was a really good session with a guy from Ethos 3, a company that strives to help people with presentations. His session was about presenting to and connecting with Gen Xers and Yers. I am a Gen Y, my hubby and sis Gen Xers, and I was intrigued by this session because I'm really into generational theory. (I had one or two class sessions on it in college, and it really spoke to me. Not quite sure what to do with it yet, but it's on the back burner.) But, this session he talked about how you have to know the culture of the people you're trying to reach, so he talked about his "cultural DNA" - all the things he grew up in/with that make him who he is today (nurture, for the nature vs. nurture fight). And then he gave some guidelines on creating a presentation. Overall, it was very interesting and gave some really good tips on creating presentations for this generation, including:

Get back to basics and leave ego at the door
Have Stellar content (craft a story), design it, deliver it
Know your audience (Myer’s Briggs, Multiple Intelligences)
Avoid templates
Know where you’re going, know what’s next
move quickly, keep slides moving - 3 sentences, then move to next scene - say main points, then move on
Cut 30% of fat of presentation before you give it

Some good ideas.

Okay, I'm on the move. I'll post about Spirituality and Social Networking later!

PodCamp 2009

I'm taking another step into the "techy" world and attending PodCamp 2009. I'm very excited about some of the sessions, especially the one being led by Gavin on Spirituality and Social Media. There are some others, too, mostly about social networking, so it should be an interesting.

I'm thinking I'm slightly out of the loop when it comes to all of this stuff. I don't twitter, I don't podcast... about all I do is facebook and blog, and not even that all that often! But I'm excited to hear some new information, hopefully learn some new things that I might be interested in getting more involved in.