Sunday May 18 I was a delegate from my local church to the Northern California Conference constituency meetingMost of the morning was taken up by formally voting in the candidates for each office of the conference administration. As is the usual practice, the candidates had been earlier selected by a nominating committee. Every candidate was currently holding the office, and was re-elected by very large margins. The next item on the agenda was a proposal from the administration to change the frequency of constituency meetings from every two years as is now the practice, to every 5 years starting in 2014. The second person in the debate to speak was Doug Batchelor who was an ex-oficio delegate from the Granite Harbor Church. (His new pastorate) He warned the group that in 2015 there would be a very important General Conference Session and there would very likely be significant issues for the conference to deal with by the constituency. If this proposal is voted in, there would not be another constituency meeting until 2019. A conference official stated that they would have frequent Town Hall meetings all around the conference instead. (Of course, town meetings have no authority at all!!) In order for this to pass, it required a two thirds majority. It failed. The results were close to even for and against. Incidentally, voting was done by a credit card size electronic device, supplied to each delegate, which required merely pushing a button to register a yes or no vote. 20 seconds were allowed for the vote. The result was shown by a graph and numbers on the large screen above the platform. That part was great. There were 3 proposals that had been placed on the agenda for discussion by a group of local churches: women's ordination, homosexuality, and evolution. Before any discussion started, a motion was made to refer these items to the executive committee rather than discuss them in the current meeting. There was very pointed statements made by some during the debate. It was pointed out by one delegate that this was an attempt to subvert the legal process that had been done bring these issues before the constituents. It was finally brought to a vote, which only required a 2/3 majority to pass and it barely passed. It was time for lunch and there had been 2 hours allocated for open discussion. The chair was asked if discussion of the 3 agenda items would be allowed. The chair (Elder Pederson, conference president) after consultation with the official parliamentarian answered that they could be discussed in the open discussion that would take place after lunch. Someone immediately mace a motion that the meeting be adjourned. Elder Pederson said that motions to adjourn take precedence over every thing else and a vote to adjourn would end the constituency meeting and everyone could go home. This was voted down. During the discussion after lunch the proposals were read and some very direct comments were made by speakers. It was made clear that the proposed resolutions state that the conference must be in compliancewith the policies of the general conference. It was stated that because of the fact that they have been ordaining women pastors since 2012, the conference is not only in violation of the general conference policy, but their own official policy as well. Needless to say, there were no happy faces on the platform. The proposal on evolution was read and a very eloquent and emphatic statement was made concerning the teaching of evolution in Adventist schools. The speaker did not mince words when pointing out the danger and the damage this can do to students. Elder Pederson called the education secretary to the podium to speak to that. He apparently took the previous statement very personally and displayed a bit of anger in his response. He basically defended what is being taught in the schools on the basis that students need to know these things because they will need to know what it is about etc. etc. etc. I'm glad I got to witness this. Was anyone form this forum there? I only saw one person I knew from another forum. Each delegate received a little gift when we turned in our voting devices. The gift? A little book titled "Is Jesus Enough?" by NAD president Dan Jackson, NAD president. How symbolic of the meeting. Was this deliberate, or are they clueless?
5. Create and distribute videos of member's responses to female pastoral leadership. Does that mean that they will create and distribute videos of member's responses who oppose WO ?
What I meant was that there is nothing new about "helpful editing" ( to use the EGW Estate's words) to Ellen White's writings to make them appear to support currently held views. Of course, people like us talking about it is seen as worse than actually doing it. The "helpful editing" of Ellen White's writings is something we are supposed to keep secret, lest people lose confidence in those writings. That is why I said, "nothing to see here, move along"....As was shown, the "helpful editing" of Sr White's quote had the direct effect of changing the meaning of the comment, which of course Angel Rodriguez took advantage of.Got honesty, anyone?
