Saturday night we did something we have been talking about for awhile. We went to Hollywood Forever Cemetery and watched the movie "The Jerk" on the mausoleum wall with about 2,500 of our closest friends. We brought down the average age there by a few years. It felt good to be outside and it was outrageous enough to be fun. Besides, I had forgotten how funny the movie "The Jerk" is.
Today I preached on Ehud and King Eglon in a sermon series I am doing called: "Is That Really in the Bible?" Four people joined the church. Then we had a special called Council Meeting to vote on a possible query concerning gender equality in Annual Conference elections. We passed the query on to District Conference without dissent. Then we had conversation about whether or not we are going to continue to send our benevolence money to the Mission and Ministry Board of the denomination or if we are going to hold it in a reserve account until we can have more conversation as a congregation. We eventually decided that we would follow the direction of the Church Board and have conversation and gather more information while we hold our denominational giving in a reserve account...for now. The meeting today pointed out the need for this intentional conversation. As someone said to me afterwards, all the arguments are coming from a commendable place. If we had voted today I think we would have had to choose between honoring people and programs at the denominational level we appreciate and honoring people in our denomination we love and who have been marginalized. I am praying that the chaos on the denominational level does not cause chaos for us as a congregation.
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