What a day at Synod! Part Two: the afternoon and evening

At the luncheon I sat with Scott Gove, who is a member of Community of Hope in Tulsa and a young man planning on going into ministry. Scott is full of energy and quite talkative. At one point I saw Bill Johnson across the room and said to Scott, “Have you met Bill Johnson?” His eyes got wide and he said, “No, is he here?” and started looking around. He said, “He’s the reason I want to be a minister. Do you know him?” I said yes. “Will you introduce me?” Of course. After lunch we had to take lots of pictures so Scott could record the moment of meeting Bill.

Oh, I forgot to add that there are now over 800 ONA churches in the coalition. There were so many new ones this year they couldn’t spend time celebrating them. The goal is 1,200 by 2012.

From there it was off to the exhibit hall were I picked up a sack full of books in the $20 for everything you can fit in the bag section. I grabbed a handful of things to share with you when I return.

The first plenary handled mostly routine business. It was great to see K-O’s own Jane Tedder as assistant moderator. And the celebration of new churches was fun, especially because we have three in Oklahoma. It is quite clear that single governance will be the big issue we debate. We also learned, from Rev. Leslie Penrose, that the Justice and Witness Board discussed our eugenics resolution and has recommended it for passage.

Nance Cunningham met up with me at the plenary and went to dinner with me, Kathy McCallie, and other Oklahomans. We had a stimulating discussion of Christology.

The evening plenary included an introduction of our newly nominated General Minister Geoffrey Black and a celebration of Rev. Joseph H. Evans, our former General Minister, who died this year.

Evening worship was led by Rev. Otis Moss, III and the choir and dancers of Trinity UCC in Chicago. Rev. Moss preached a powerful sermon on the punctuation of God. I’m sure it will be on the UCC website; I encourage you to look. He said that only God can put periods and that humans always try to put a period on other people. But, in fact, we are commas and God is always putting commas. God is still working with us and still speaking to us. One of my favourite phrases of his was when he called God, “the Seamstress of the patchwork of our hearts.”

I rounded out the evening with drinks and catching up with my old friend Rev. Dan DeLeon, pastor of Friends Congregational in College Station, TX. Dan and I were Texas baptist youth ministers together.

Now, off to bed. An early start with worship at 8:30 in the morning!

BTW, I am taking pictures but forgot the connector cable. I’ll post them when i get home next week.