I spent most of last week in Chicago at the Cenacle Center for IPMN's annual meeting. It was great to see "all my peeps" and i can't believe how much we got done with such a packed schedule. I arrived Monday for the steering cmt meetings and the rest of the network began arriving on Tuesday; the meeting ended with a big bang Thursday at noon. (look out for the press release to see the "bang!"). One highlight was Rev. Craig Hunter's excellent and moving sermon which is on the front page of the website now. I seriously felt chills when he delivered it - don't miss it! Gotta love his title: "God is a Slow Learner!"

Another highlight was getting Doug Dicks to talk to the plenary group via skype video! We hooked him up to JBL speakers and a projector and after his greeting, spent about 15 minutes asking him questions about the latest facts on the ground. It's always great when technology works and makes the world a smaller place. The meeting officially began at 3:30 pm Chicago time but as Amman, Jordan was 8 hours ahead of us and Doug was getting ready to go sleep, we skyped him right away as soon as we had welcomed everyone to Chicago. It's a new day: free video hookup to jordan! Wow!

Besides a short break mid-day Tuesday when i walked to the zoo and took some fun pics of the bears, the days were packed to the gills with presentations, workshops, decisions and votes. We kicked off a new fundraising campaign called "Sustaining the Hope" and before we left Chicago, our pledges totaled almost 2/3 of the goal. Another Wow! 

Where to begin?  For many involved in Middle East issues and the PCUSA, the elephant in the room has been whether interfaith considerations, i.e. relationships with the Jewish community, trump justice in Palestine.

Today we saw old tactics fail to work as they have in the past.  During the debate on interfaith papers from the Offices of Theology and Interfaith Relations, we heard a Commissioner from Philadelphia basically threaten commissioners with being anti-Semitic. He insinuated that if they voted to go with committee 8’s decision of sending the “Christians & Jews” paper back for improvement, they would be guilty of anti-Semitism. Cynthia Campbell, the president of McCormick Seminary in Chicago got to the microphone and argued that the paper called "Christians and Jews, A People of God" was sound theology and worthy of publishing now versus referring back as the committee had recommended.  What both speakers failed to address was the fact that no Middle Eastern Presbyterians or Middle Eastern Christian partners were at the table for the writing of this paper. Both Cynthia Campbell and the commissioner from Philadelphia basically said that it’s okay that no Mideastern Christians were part of the consultation process and to go ahead and approve the paper anyway. The assembly voted to send the paper back and said go get a bigger table. Campbell was obviously okay with excluding all Middle Eastern Christian voices.  Thanks but no thanks said the assembly; the vote was 80/20 to send the paper back. Campbell came out looking small and exclusionary. That is not okay for the president of a major “progressive” seminary in our denomination. Or is it?

The grueling committee work is done - all the results are up on www.PC-Biz.org 

Amazingly, the MESC report passed committee unanimously with some amendments and deletions. They decided to answer the Kairos overture with the MESC so that's that on Kairos. 

 The Apartheid overture was just too inflammatory and they ran a mile the other way from it - but the bottom line is that only a few years ago, the word "occupation" was too inflammatory to use and now it's irrefutable - Apartheid has now been aired, gotten a start - the day will come that naming the problem will lead to ending the problem - which will be good for everybody - Israelis and Palestinians alike. 

I spent the morning, afternoon and evening mostly in cmt 8 - Interfaith Relations. This is the committee dealing with the 2 interfaith papers coming jointly from the Office of Theology and Worship and Office of Interfaith Relations. Most of the morning was given to open mic time and the afternoon they spent several hours deliberating on 08-03: "Christians & Jews, A People of God." The big news is that after hours of debate on process flaws and content flaws, several amendments that were all eventually dropped for an up or down vote, close to 9 pm, they voted to disapprove the paper. Hurrah! The hope is that they will approve the overture that calls for both papers (2nd being the one on Christians & Muslims) to be referred for further study, i.e. widening the circle of voices who were invited to the table. Process IS theology and bad process is bad theology - as one pastor from Texas who was speaking against the paper said "why NOT have as big a table as possible?" This was Craig Hunter of IPMN - Bravo Craig!

So this is a good day for the small voice of Middle Eastern Christians who are rarely ever heard from and when they are heard from, they are usually dismissed. I don't know how final this is yet (I guess i am leery of celebrating in my heart), but i am very grateful to the commissioners who over and over again said that they were troubled to hear that the Palestinian Christians were not part of the process of writing 

I was able to get downstairs in the dungeon level to check out a little bit of what was happening in cmt 14 - i saw Brian Ellison's presentation for MRTI - i thought it was great and it felt to me like a perfect justification to divest though it only said denounce. I heard over dinner that the commissioner from Peoria (where Caterpillar is headquartered), got up and said don't denounce, either divest now or not all - just rip off the bandaid so the people of our churches can just move on - just get the pain over with! Well, anyway, apparently, they deliberated for hours too and ended up just approving the MRTI report which said denounce and keep corporate engagement going - i.e. don't rip off the bandaid - keep it going! In cmt 14, after dinner, they basically heard from all the other overture advocates left, Kairos, Apartheid, et al, then at 8:45, adjourned for the night! The sessions were supposed to end no later than 9:30 so they just called it a day and went home.

today started early and i have decided to bag the fireworks and turn in early at 10 pm. Here are the highlights of today - and some of the lowlights .

• 7 am breakfast at the "Presbyterians 4 Peace" event. This is a group with an Orwellian name - Why Orwellian? because they think working for peace means to stand in the middle and not take sides... meantime, everything they stand for makes for anything but peace ~ many of the people who had shown up expected the breakfast to be an IPMN event and they found out it was run by IPMN's opposition within the church. The purpose of the breakfast was to attack the MESC report and cmt.  
• Henderson of Auburn Sem spoke, then a J-Street rep, then Byron Shafer who was on the MESC cmt and i guess resigned in the end of the process?? not sure - maybe not - but he was the sole dissenting vote. Word is that the MESC bent over backwards to please him and he strung them along and then bailed on them at the end - nasty. Henderson and Shafer's pro-Israel propoganda was hard to sit through and they both had an air of lecturing from on high... and Henderson kept calling anyone who doesn't agree with her "partisan."
• the Jstreet rep basically said that you presbyterians are great to work with but you need to NOT take strong positions (unless they are our positions) - and if you do, we will have to stop working with  you - Is that a threat, i thought to myself, and the next thing i hear, the rep says "and i don't mean this as a threat, but...."
• Worship was great - Greg's grammie (our kids' GG - great grandma) and his mom Nancy and her husband Jack joined us for worship - they live in Edina and they came downtown for sunday worship. I actually loved the spectacle that was the processional - look for the video below; i will add it in - the service was a bit over 2 hours and was wonderful in all ways - loved having communion in 3 languages: English, Spanish, Korean - and loved all the national costumes of the various people of color. Bruce Reyes-Chow knocked it out of the park with his sermon about moving mountains and that, yes, we need to do that as a church, as solid as they seem... new moderator closed with a benediction.
• spent all some time in the afternoon with my permanent GA cmt: ACREC - advocacy cmt for racial ethnic concerns - one of only 2 advocacy cmts in the PCUSA - we are allowed to advocate and take sides! (the other being women's concerns). ACREC went over the last minute commissioner resolutions to see if we needed to write A & C on any (advice and counsel). We did - especially the one about the new Arizona law.
• the GA committees convened in the pm - Cmt 14 - (Mideast Issues) was given overviews by MRTI (which i am a liaison to for ACREC) - MRTI is the group that does corporate engagement and is responsible for the church's SRI policies - socially responsible investment. - divestment is the last tool MRTI has in its toolbag when all else fails... hence the Caterpillar overtures in cmt 14.
• Also in cmt 14, the MESC got their chance to give an overview of their report. it was a presentation by Rev. Susan Andrews, past GA moderator and MESC member. Then came a move from their opposition - the aforementioned Orwellian-named group Presbyterians 4 Peace. They maneuvered a motion to be given 20 minutes to "present the other side" - the MESC is a GA mandated cmt and this other group, well, who knows who they are and where their funding comes from ~ in any case, a YAD saved the day for justice - a Youth Advisory Delegate called for equal time for the IPMN as IPMN has a GA mandate and this other group does not! In the end, as they did not want to give two 20 min slots out, they split the original 20 minutes and gave IPMN and the other group 10 minutes each.  The Holy Spirit at work...  never let it be said that YADs don't make a difference.
• to finish off this epic day, i joined IPMN for a reunion dinner where we celebrated the network's 5th anniversary - the group just keeps growing by leaps and bounds. IPMN peeps are the best peeps anywhere and i am so proud and privileged to be a part of this talented and committed group of Presbyterians. Our special guests at the dinner were Mitri Raheb of Bethlehem Christmas Church, Michel Nessir of WCC, Jeff Halper of ICAHD, Mark Braverman, author of Fatal Embrace, Sydney Levi of JVP, Dick Toll of Sabeel in the US, and more ... IPMN has arrived! It was a packed room.

• This year's GA theme:

Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water...John 7:38

just got back from the moderator election - went so late cuz there were 6 candidates and then we had a hanging chad/diebold issue - voting machines were not working and it took a while to fix the issue - it is not 11 pm and they just adjourned.

Cindy Bolbach from Arlington, VA elected as new moderator - an elder, not clergy - she sure has a keen sense of timing and humor - i like her; she gets it - reminds me of Bea Arthur! and to the question of what about civil unions, she said i am for it but this church is not! Yup - well said.

Jeff Halper did a great talk today on "Is it really apartheid?" He just gets better and better. I recorded the audio - i will see if i can post it on the site soon.

arrived in Minneapolis at noon, checked in to the Hyatt and rushed over to registration at the convention center. Checked in on the IPMN booth, delivered the ribbon Just Peace Stoles and sat and manned the ACREC booth for an hour. ACREC meeting at 2:30 to synch calendars then off to the preGA Mideast Conference which was sold out and was a packed room.  The tickets were $60 for talk and dinner and $30 for just the talk.  SOLD OUT, even with that big price tag.

It was announced that the Muslim speaker Allam Jarrar, who was scheduled to speak, would not be there; he could not get the clearance to get to his visa interview in Jerusalem and ended up not being able to get a US visa.  Such a shame to NOT have a Muslim voice present when a Jewish and Christian one were there to speak about things that also affect Muslims. For me personally, that was a great disappointment. The way I understood it was that the Israeli Authorities prevented him from getting to an interview with the US consulate. Dr. Jarrar's statement was printed and was available with tons of other advocacy material from both sides of the debate at a back table.

these ribbons are on their way to GA - look out for them "walking around" :-)

Leaving for GA in 2 days - some work to do still with organizing papers and things but with today's good news from the Methodist Church, UK, I am feeling ready to go. 

The Methodists in the UK announced, with perfect timing for PCUSA, a boycott of goods from illegal israeli settlements. Hallelujah!

see this article: 

it's going to be great... 

so we launched this new website with 2-way communications. I am hoping to post to it from General Assembly - pictures, videos and news... Let's hope we get a few people signing on to the community. It would be nice to get a few people attending GA to post here about the comings and goings. meantime, check out Jim Wall's new piece about the"Kangaroo Court."

http://wallwritings.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/obama-backs-israeli-kangaroo-court-search-for-justice-at-sea/