The Nature of Our Conversations
Monday, June 20, 2011 at 1:21PM Up to this point, the business in the plenary sessions of the synod have mostly agreeable. I can attribute this to a few possible causes:
-Perhaps the issues are not very controversial. No one has introduced issues like homosexuality into the debate, issues which tend to stir up a lot more passion in people.
-Perhaps we are being united by a common Spirit, which has helped to smooth over some of our rough edges and helped us to bring some of the norms of our advisory committees to the floor, not to mention putting us in an agreeable mood.
-Perhaps our conversations have been structured in such a way that we are all being led to a common conclusion, as I heard one delegate observe: "Nothing we say or do will ultimately have any effect on the outcomes of this General Synod."
-Perhaps the all synod advisory committees have lured the delegates to neglect the rest of the workbook, so that we don't have the information needed to disagree. So "yes" is our default answer.
As we head into the afternoon session, we'll be hearing from our Vice Presidential candidates and hearing some information about Our Call. I don't think we'll have any votes (other than the election) so the discussion will probably be at a minimum. It was suggested to me that perhaps it is a waste of money to bring all of us to Grand Rapids to "rubber stamp" the business that has already been decided for us. That is a strong statement, and I'd like to hear what some other of you readers have to say about that.
Reader Comments (2)
Sometimes more controversial business just comes to General Synod. Some of them are filled with controversial stuff. If GS is held every 2 years, it will increase the possibility of GS being more contentious. Would that really be all that awful, as long as "contentious" is not "divisive"?
There were some controversial issues, such as the R-71 overtures, which were the subject of many hours of pre-Synod negotiation among the classes and appropriate RCA staff. In that case, an acceptable response and suitable language were hammered out so that the issues could be handled without undue controversy.