Day Two in Ottawa

General Council 41 has launched in worship and prayer, music and celebration, laughter and greeting.  For some of us who have served in various places it's like "Old Home Week" as we reconnect with friends and colleagues from coast-to-coast-to-coast.  Truly we are a national family!  The General Council is trying to live-into our commitment to be an intercultural church reflective of the great diversity of Canada.  of course, that sometimes means that folks from the dominant English-speaking group are now experiencing what those in linguistic minorities know as a lived fact: you don't always understand.  Words in French, English and a variety of First Nations tongues have graced our time together.  The first evening, Moderator Mardi Tindal preached in English and French - setting a high bar indeed.

The General Council takes time to gel - table groups are made up of commissioners from different conferences and so there are times to build relationships so that we can speak honestly with one another.  As well, the General Council as a whole has to understand its own processes for doing its work.  Each GC is about 1/3 brand new folk who have never attended a GC; 1/3 who have attended GC's but not the previous one (2009); and 1/3 whose prior experience includes 2009.  These are rough numbers  and commissioners are elected by conferences according to formulae that include divisions of lay and ministry personnel and a determined percentage of youth commissioners.

We have been blessed by the presence and wisdom of former moderators.  We are grieving the death of the 27th moderator, the Very Rev George Tuttle, who served from 1977-79.  But it was wonderful to hear folk like Anne Squire, Marion Best, Marion Pardy, Stan Mackay, Peter Short, Bill Phipps and David Guiliano.  They are our elders.

We have done some important work around the greater inclusion of First Nations.  The changes in the historic prologue to the Basis of Union and the Crest are good steps in my mind.

The work continues today.  Decisions bathed in worship, payer and hope.