The Rules!

After Opening Worship and a presentation on Christian Conferencing, we had some training on using the electronic voting devices and also training on how to use an iPad (located at each table) to request to speak on the floor. This is new for us, and, frankly, seems a bit dicey, as the Wifi in the Convention Center is not good. But in a gathering this large, the ability of the Chair to see and address fairly all of those who are waiting at microphones to speak is very difficult. I'm hopeful that the electronic system will work. Much practice occurred. Overall, I'd say we did much better than in 2012!

Then, the first major act of General Conference took place: voting upon the Standing Rules. These are the rules by which our time together is governed.

Lately, our denomination has not been good at this task. If you missed General Conference 2012, you can read a recap of how this moment played out here. And you can get the rest of the story here.

There has been a great deal of apprehension about The Rules this go-round, partly because of our experience in Tampa, and partly because of the controversial Rule 44. So named because it has been added as the last rule, which was previously Rule 43, Rule 44 allows for us to take some legislative petitions out of committee and process them differently. Others have already done an excellent job of explaining Rule 44, so I'll commend this article, by Rev. Jeremy Smith, to you for clarification.

I doubt many of us came to The Rules vote in a a state of optimism. There was a pervasive expectation that Rule 44 would be a sticking point. Ironically, it turns out that everything besides Rule 44 was a sticking point!

Here's the rundown:

6:00 Chair (Bishop Warner H. Brown, Jr.) makes a motion that we vote on the Rules in stages, taking sections of The Rules at a time.
6:02 Rev. Sam Powers of Oklahoma makes an amendment to the motion to say that we vote on ALL of The Rules EXCEPT Rule 44 at one time. This sounds good to me, as it is likely to help us cut to the chase and allow more time to focus on Rule 44. We also don't have to throw out all of The Rules if Rule 44 isn't going to pass. [It should be noted that one of The Rules (Rule #1, in fact) states that we will conclude business at 6:30 p.m. each day. So, if we pass Rules 1-43, we will be hard pressed to get a vote in on Rule 44 before the end of the business day.]

Here's Sam on the floor. It took him less than a minute to offer an amendment.
It took us over two hours to accept it.

Following this, a lot of confusion ensued. There were questions about whether or not the Bishop could make the motion that he made (which Sam amended) in the first place. There were concerns about whether or not we could use the new electronic method of requesting to speak on the floor, since this method hadn't been approved, yet (Rule 6 & 10). A concern was raised about Rule 18, which prohibits "non-verbal distractions," and a request was made to amend the amendment to include Rules 44 and 18. This request was deemed against The Rules and therefore not allowed.
6:25 The question is called. We then voted on whether or not we would vote to accept what has now been lifted up as a substitute motion - essentially, Sam's original request.
6:30 Yes! We agree to move ahead!
6:34 No! Chair admits to making a mistake. We agreed to substitute the motion. We did not, in fact, vote on the motion.
6:35 More questions on meaning of non-verbal distractions. Chair says they are whatever the Chair says they are.
6:42 More concern about how we are operating using rules that aren't yet in place. Chair agrees and points out that the old rules say we will work until 9:30 p.m. Calls for a recess.
8:00 Session resumes. Chair recommends that we delay a vote on Rule 44 until tomorrow.
8:32 We vote to approve Substitute Motion!

To recap: The first amendment to a motion, which eventually became a substitute motion, took 2 1/2 hours to pass.

Tomorrow, we will tackle Rule 44, which is intended to help us avoid taking this much time to vote on amendments to amendments, etc.

The question is: If we can't trust the Rules Committee to get it right, how are we going to agree to trust a process like Rule 44?