RMSA Day Two AM

These are your voting members for this year's Synod Assembly, Becca, Pastor Mark and Don. But Trinity has two other voting members as well. Laurel Alexander is here representing Campus Ministries and Ben Elger is here representing retired pastors. Trinity does have some impact.

The first item of business in the plenary session today was Resolution No.1, Energy Stewardship. As I mentioned in my preliminary musings before the Assembly started, I have some thoughts around this resolution. Because it was worded where congregations are "invited" to share their carbon footprint as well as their reduction goals, it has no teeth and will serve only as a political statement that the RMS is Green. I offered an amendment to substitute "required" for the word "invited" in the second resolved paragraph. After a brief consultation with the Synod Secretary, Katherine Cruson, Bishop Bjornberg informed me that the motion was out of order since the Synod office could not require the congregations to do anything. I did not know that. So there were no amendments. The number of people speaking for and against the motion were about equal - which surprised me. I predicted earlier in my remarks that this would pass with a huge majority. Final vote looked to be about 2/3 for and 1/3 against. My vote was against the resolution. One of the questions that came up during the debate was whether or not this would be a priority for the Synod since it was important enough to have a resolution. The Bishop stated that it was not a priority. So therefore the Assembly passed a non-enforceable resolution that does not have priority. It was purely political and furthers our liberal brand. There was another Bible Study and reports from California Lutheran University, Lutheran Family Services, ELCA headquarters and LIFT (Living Into the Future Together). LIFT is an initiative of the ELCA in determining where we want to be organizationally in the future. It's sort of like Trinity's Horizon Committee. The first ballot was taken and will be reported on right after lunch. More later...