Plenary 1

[Richard Johnson]

Mark Hanson just convened the first plenary. BTW, they are making a big deal of this being the 25th anniversary of the ELCA. There is a large display depicting the highlights (in someone's opinion) of each year. He's just announced that worship as well as plenaries will be livestreamed this year, so if you want to catch the worship, you can do so. Then you won't have to believe me.

Odd opening prayer:

Since Abraham and Sarah,
since Mary and Paul,
since Luther [must mean Katie] and Muhlenberg,
since 1987 in Columbus,
We gather to you, O God.

The good bishop has muffed a few things in the opening liturgy--words misread, failure to recognize lines intended to be read by the congregation.  Then he had everyone sit down before the last song, and seemed ready to cut the song entirely. The musicians forged ahead, however, and he had everyone stand up again.

[Richard Johnson]

Interesting to see how this iPad thing is going to work. They have a cadre of tech people in specially colored shirts spread out to help anyone with a need. Bp. Hanson predicts that by the end of the week, people's children and grandchildren will be asking them for iPad advice.

They've just wired us in the press section, so that should eliminate the WiFi problem. It says here.

912 voting members have registered. Local bishop Kurt Kusserow brings greetings.

They're now trying out voting machines with a series of silly questions. First one reveals the 514 are at a churchwide assembly for the first time. Another question reveals that 110 were born after 1988 (year of the ELCA's founding) (that's more than 10% of those present).

Long and complicated walking of members through rules of order by Bp. Hanson. Seems like way more preparation that should be necessary.

Rules adopted, except for some provisions removed from the motion because people wanted to make amendments. The amendments are generally nitpicky little things that don't make much difference to anyone or anything. One of them was a motion to eliminate the requirement that written ballots on the ecclesiastical ballot not be folded. Turns out this motion wasn't appropriate because that provision appears in the continuing resolutions rather than the rules of order. Gotta love parliamentary procedure. Secretary Swartling explains why this can't be done. Bishop Hanson decides he needs to re-explain it in other words.

Rules having been adopted, they went on to adopt the agenda as proposed.

Chair turned over to Vice President Carlos Pena, to conduct first ballot in election for presiding bishop. They expect to have the results of the ballot announced before the end of this first day. Pena sort of vamped for a while so that any late comers could get registered and eligible to vote. Credentials committee reported 935 voting members present.

Following yet another set of instructions about how to withdraw your name if you don't want to be presiding bishop but someone thinks otherwise, the secretary gave a bunch of announcements. "Opening" worship will be at 7:30 EDT.