SCC

President Edmond's GC Notes-Correction & Day 6

06/30/10

 

General Conference Session-Day 6

 

First, please allow me to correct an error in yesterday’s journal. I said that Dr. Delbert Baker, who was elected a General Vice President of the General Conference (GC) on Sunday, was the first African-American in that position in a while.

 

I meant that he was the first African-American male. We have a very capable African-American GC Vice President, one with South Central roots, Dr. Ella Simmons. Dr. Simmons was re-elected to a second term at the same time Dr. Baker was elected.

 

The black Adventist leadership in the Seventh-day Adventist Church from the United States felt rather strongly that while Dr. Simmons had done a fine job and was very worthy of re-election, that there needed to be an African-American male somewhere in leadership, along with Dr. Simmons. It was generally felt that Dr. Baker was a very strong candidate; I personally thought that he was one of the strongest candidates, period. So there was a lot of discussion about that in the days leading up to Dr. Baker’s election.

 

In any event, I am certainly apologetic about the oversight. It was not that I did not remember that Dr. Simmons was a Vice President; I just forgot to say first male VP in a while.

 

In any event, today, I thought I would share with you what a day at the GC is generally like:

 

6:30 a.m. -

Awakened a little later than normal; was away all day yesterday in Birmingham at the funeral of Elder W. C. Scales, Sr.--a really special person.

 

Stumbled around, trying to find what I needed to go on my morning walk. I try to walk between 2 to 4 miles every day at GC. I try to walk as many days as possible; ironically, it is easier to find the time to walk when I am away from home than it is when I am at home.

 

When I am away from home, I like to walk downtown or on the beach. Walking downtown helps me learn a little about the city. For example, when I am in Montgomery, Alabama, I often stay downtown. The first time I walked there, I walked by the Alabama State Capitol. Also, I walked by Martin Luther King’s former church without knowing it was near the Capitol-the two were about 2 blocks from each other.

 

In the early 1960's, when Dr. Martin Luther King was at his church and Governor George Wallace was at the Capitol, they may have been only a few blocks apart, but they might as well have been on 2 different planets.

 

That’s how life is, sometimes. People wind up far apart when they really do not have to be.

 

At any rate, I walked through a portion of downtown Atlanta, into the Cable News Network (CNN) Building. Usually, I eat breakfast here. The CNN building has a food court. Someone has apparently told them that the Seventh-day Adventists are coming. All the little restaurants and sandwich shops have signs, telling us that they are vegetarian friendly. One store even put up a sign on Friday, telling potential customers that they could pay for the food they were going to eat Saturday, on Friday.

 

When I ordered my pancakes the other day and told them that I did not want bacon, they immediately said, "Would you like some vegetarian patties?" Sure enough, out came the Morning Star patties. I like a business that takes care of business, a business that is intentional. That is how I want us to be.

 

No breakfast today; I have a lunch meeting--I only eat 2 meals a day. I do not like missing breakfast; I am a huge breakfast person. But I can’t eat breakfast and lunch, and my meeting is tied to lunch.

 

7:30-10:00 a.m. -

Devotional time/Getting dressed. Takes a little longer because we only have one bathroom in the hotel and I am still moving slowly because of the long day yesterday.

 

10:15 a.m. -

Leave hotel. There is a shuttle system between our hotel, the Westin, where the North American Division (NAD) is housed, and the Georgia Dome. The NAD has done a great job with the shuttle system-we never have to wait more than about 5-10 minutes for a shuttle, anytime of day between about 6:30 a.m. and about 10:30 p.m.

 

The other good thing about the shuttle is that you get to meet a lot of people while you are waiting for/riding on the shuttle. Today, I met the President of the Idaho Conference, As you would expect, their conference is much smaller than ours. They have a President, a Secretary, a Treasurer and an Education Superintendent in their conference office, and that’s all. They have about 25 Pastors; we have more people than that in the conference office. But our challenges and hopes are the same.

 

He has been President since 1988. He seems to be a nice older fellow; kind of their version of Elder Dudley. In a conference that size, I would imagine he pretty much knows everyone, just as Elder Dudley did.

 

There are 2 daily business sessions. I arrive towards the back end of the morning session.

 

Also today, I ran into my former landlord in the first apartment Mrs. Edmond and I lived in, 32 years ago, in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. It was a fully furnished apartment-which was a good thing, because we had nothing. We could not have furnished even one room of that 2 bedroom apartment. It is amazing to look back and see how wonderfully the Lord has blessed us. As the song says "He’s been faithful to me".

 

Noon-2:00 p.m. -

Mrs. Edmond and I for lunch meet with someone who wants to discuss a proposal for the black Seventh-day Adventist church. Given what our conference has just gone through, I know that makes some of you nervous. Have no fear; this involves no money and it does not involve anything or anyone in the South Central Conference, including me.

 

It’s just someone who would like to get involved in media ministry in the church and wants to know who to talk to in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I gave them the names of some people that I think can help them.

 

2:00-5:00 p.m.-

Afternoon business session. Today’s session is on changes in The Church Manual. It is a pretty interesting discussion that centered largely on a proposal that requires all churches to have a Church Business meeting at least once per year. Some of the laymen think that is not enough, so there are proposals for business meetings every quarter and another that says you should meet every quarter but no less than once a year.

 

Back and forth the discussion goes. It was far more interesting than I thought it would be. The chairman, retiring General Conference Vice President, Elder Jerry Karst, did an outstanding job, trying to move the discussion along towards a final vote while at the same time, trying not to cut off people who wanted to talk. And--some people wanted to talk!

 

It did not really seem like that big of a deal. But, first, I have learned that the more people are involved in a decision, the longer it takes to make a decision. Second, when the world church is involved in a decision, there are all types of different dynamics. There were laymen who apparently came from churches where business meetings were held too infrequently (personally, I think business meetings need to be held every quarter), But then, there were pastors, some of whom had 4, 5, maybe 10 churches, or even more, for whom, one more meeting was one more problem. And then, there were administrators, who would have to enforce whatever was voted.

 

My personal feeling was that while I thought that churches ought to have quarterly business meetings, I was not prepared to mandate everyone to follow my opinion. Eventually, after several failed amendments, the delegates voted to have the manual require one business meeting per year.

 

We left a little after 5:00 to go back to our hotel, where I began this article. We returned for the evening session, which features nightly reports from one of the world divisions. Today was the Inter-American Division (IAD). The environment was electrifying. The IAD is our largest division, with 3.3 million members. Additionally, there are transplanted "IAD’ers" ( people from the Caribbean and Latinos) all over the United States. I was sitting next to and behind some administrators from Regional Conferences who were Caribbean natives and they jumped up and down and cheered along with those from their homeland). As someone who started his ministry in the IAD, I always get a little excited at GC time when the IAD is on display as well. It is evident that the Lord is doing something special in that field.

 

We left the Dome, walked down the street from our hotel for a late supper (because of the schedule, we often eat late at GC, which I wish was not the case. I think I shall leave here a little heavier than when I arrived!) and went to bed around 11:30 p.m.

 

That is a typical day at GC.

Elder D. C. Edmond, President
South Central Conference of Seventh-day Adventists