convention – benefits for all and blessing possibilities
We are almost done with the legislative sessions for Convention, the processing and living out the resolutions is still to come. Today the deputies spent most of the morning on elections, and at first I thought that would be the extent of the morning, but with 30 minutes or so to go, we moved to consideration of the denominational health care plan, which not only provides for all the diocese to be on the Church Medical Trust but also brought lay employees at 30 hours or more into the plan. During the afternoon session the Deputies approved the Lay Pension plan. This day helped bring the laity from second class employees into the benefits of the Church. As one person said, we cannot balance our church budgets on the backs of our lay employees.
During the afternoon we had a joint session with the House of Bishops to have a presentation of the budget, and since Pia will blog on that, I will say no more, other than that it was great to have the Bishops with us. They were greeted with standing applause and great delight as they entered the hall.
I spent a couple hours this afternoon observing the House of Bishops at work. The feel is very different, with no time limits, more discussion and the bishops sitting at round tables. During the time I was there the bishops were discussing a resolution concerning the issue of same-gender blessings. After a great deal of discussion a resolution was overwhelmingly passed which basically said that since the changing culture has presented us with States, and other countries, which have authorized and approved same-gender civil unions and marriages, the Church needs to undertake the work of theological and liturical study and development around this issue. The Bishops have called for this study to be reported back to General Convention in 2012.
It was another tiring but good day. We are getting some very important work done, and some work that seeems tedious but is also important. All in all I will be glad when General Convention is over, and we get to work with the implementation phase.
Gretchen +
