Well, alrighty then!

Day one of the 221st General Assembly has come and gone. So many people put so much time and effort into this gathering - and even so, it's a human enterprise and imperfections seem to get in the way.

The morning started off with a fire drill at the Courtyard Hotel, sending hundreds of Presbyterians streaming down stairwells in various stages of sleep deprivation. The Marriott, where I'm staying, reportedly had a fire incident of some kind on the upper floors, causing there to be no water available in the morning. One colleague said she was given a bottle of water and a bottle of body spritzer. I had already hugged her when she told me that!

There is a "People Mover" that loops through downtown Detroit, giving easy access to the sports stadiums and restaurants all around. Ordinarily that's a good thing. Around dinner time, though, it also had a malfunction, causing Sharon Yates and Linda Kirby to have a good hike from the Bricktown station over to COBO (the convention center)

The most notable malfunction of the day, however, came from the electronic voting system at the meeting! As I have been known to say, technology is great until it isn't. And it wasn't last night. The primary system began to malfunction. And so as the commissioners returned from dinner, they were each handed "clickers" (which look like remote controls) with which they were to vote.

They ran a number of test votes - "Press 1 if you are present, press 2 if you are not.  Vote now." There were a predictable number of people not present!  But it became clear that the number of votes registered did not come near to equaling the number of voters present. So when the time came to elect the next Moderator, the Stated Clerk declared that paper ballots would be used.

The three candidates for Moderator - Kelly Allen, Heath Rada and John Wilkinson - handled the delays with grace, perhaps better than the rest of us. Each was well spoken. From this writer's point of view, however, none of them lit any big fires or said a lot to distinguish themselves from the others. All three are left of center; all three have some level of affiliation with the Next Church movement; all three are anglos. I wanted poetry; they were far more pragmatic. One wag commented that we might do better with the late Cynthia Bolbach through a Ouija board! All that being said, however - the new Moderator was elected on the first ballot,  a rarity in my experience.

Heath Rada, a Ruling Elder from North Carolina and former President of the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, was elected with twice the votes of either of the other two candidates on the first go-round. In my opinion, the thing that he did to distinguish himself from the others was in his choice of a Vice-Moderator: Teaching Elder Larissa Kwong Abazia from the Presbytery of New York City.

Unfortunately, Kelly chose another Teaching Elder, another woman, and another Texan as her running mate. John chose a longtime friend and colleague, another Teaching Elder, from the same Synod.  But in his remarks, Heath showed that he was likely the most aware of his blind spots. He noted that his face - that of an aging white male - was not that of the future of the PC(USA). He said that when he was encouraged by some young adults at the Next Church conference to run, he told them he needed a running mate who could help him understand and reflect the future of the church. And so they introduced him, an older anglo ruling elder, to a young Asian teaching elder - and the rest is now history.

When we endure - I mean, experience - presidential races in our country (no, I really mean endure!), we say that the candidate's first major decision often reflects what his or her leadership would be like in the White House. Ordinarily their first major decision is a running mate. I believe that Heath's wise choice of running mate not only helped him to win the office of Moderator, it also reflects what we can anticipate in the next two years.  That system did not malfunction!  

What concerns me, however, is something that was raised by another colleague. Heath won handily with 52% of the vote. He was elected with 331 votes, with 157 for John and 143 for Kelly. But when you add the totals for the other two candidates, the total is closer to 50-50. I hope and pray this is not an indication of the voting pattern for this particular assembly; may they not be divided but instead be able to find consensus.

The other highlight of the first day, which fortunately was not tanked by technological problems, was this video featuring two beloved members of the Presbytery of Santa Fe! If you haven't yet seen "G.A. Floor," stop what you're doing and watch this video now. If you know your way around the PC(USA) even a little, you'll be glad you did.