The 32nd General Council of the United Church was held in the University of Victoria, Victoria, B. C. On August 17th the nearly 400 Commissioners began their sessions in what was to be one of the most memorable General Councils of the United Church of Canada. This General Council dealt with the most contentious issue which was to dominate the Church congregations and Courts ever since, even as this is written in 2004. The general description of the issue (which became known as "The Issue") was Human Sexuality and Ministry. This was described in various ways, some positive, some negative.

The final Report, "Membership, Ministry and Human Sexuality" became the most explosive four pages in decades for the Church. Some saw this as addressing the wrong of implicit exclusion of gay and bisexual persons from Ministry in the Church. Others saw as opening the floodgates to gays into ordination.

Here is the MMHS Report, final version:

MEMBERSHIP MINISTRY AND HUMAN SEXUALITY

My personal involvement in this General Council was on many levels:

• I was a member of the Small Computer Committee of the United Church (SCC). Our Committee had positioned itself to report, via computer communication, to many members of the whole United Church across Canada. I was Treasurer of the SCC and, with David Lochhead who was Chair, was one of two representatives scheduled to be in attendence for the entire General Council with facilities for sending and receiving notes.
• To my surprise in February I was asked to be a Preferred Candidate to be a Commissioner to the General Council. I was elected by the Presbytery from the four names nominated.

Some of the articles which are presented in PDF format below disclose some of my preparation for General Council.

The Mandate Article in October, 1987, expressed the dissatisfaction some of us felt about how the issues of previous General Councils had been communicated to members of the United Church. Some of us felt that our members were subjects of the news media and would receive articles written from the viewpoints of reporters, which did not always reflect the actions taken or show the context in which they were taken.

Frankly, we felt we could do better, by connecting directly with interested persons, on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, and to add the context that some of us, who were "insiders" to the Church, could impart.

The results were best written up in a book entitled: General Council Online (edited by David Lochhead and published by the Small Computer in the Church Committee, The United Church of Canada, Vancouver, B. C.). The contents of this book were:

• "Daily Council Bulletin" - pp.1-14
• "Live from Victoria" pp.15-128
• "Council Observer" (Rev. Curt Ackley) pp. 129-152
• "The Report As Adopted" pp.153-158
• "Appendix - Correspondents pp. 159-161

Unfortunately this book was distributed on a very limited basis. I am reading a copy now, one of the few extant copies of which I am aware.

Later I wrote an Epilogue to this book, which is shown here for the first time.

EPILOGUE - About General Council Online

This book [here I am describing the book "COMPUTERS IN THE CHURCH" by Gordon Laird, SCC, February, 1988, which can be read on my Home Page] describes events up to February 28, 1988. There was a good reason for that. That was the last opportunity I had to write anything in detail, since two events were going to dominate the summer of 1988: the Annual Meeting of the SCC (Small Computer Committee) which was held in the Lutheran Campus Centre at the University of British Columbia in early July, and the 32nd General Council of the United Church, which was to be help at the University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia in mid-August.

David Lochhead and I had a lot of arranging to do before the trip to Victoria. In the spring we had taken a trip to Victoria to meet with Clare Holmes and other members of the Local Arrangements Committee. We discussed the equipment and space needs for our aspect of the General Council. General Council was to be centred in the Theatre of the University, and the other available places would be in the halls and various rooms of the theatre, together with adjacent campus buildings. Many messages were exchanged about the availability of telephone jacks, both in the Rehearsal Hall, which was to be the home of the Division of Communication, and in the hallway, where there would be a public display and demonstration.

It may be interesting to know what kind of computer equipment we were using in 1988: The central computer was a 286 IBM-clone with a 40 Meg hard drive. We had made arrangements to rent a Hewlett Packard laser printer for two months. This was fairly early to have a laser printer and it proved invaluable. Then we took our own computers: I had my Radio Shack Model 100 portable, David had a Toshiba portable. The Model 100 had been very popular as recently as the Camcon conference in Atlanta in 1987, but the newer models of portables, much faster and with more memory, were beginning to take over.

We set up ourselves on one side of the Rehearsal Hall, with padded screens separating us from the rest of the Rehearsal Hall - the larger portion being set up with rows of tables, complete with electrical and telephone outlets, for all the newspaper reporters who would be officially registered for the General Council.

Every one of the biannual General Councils has some area of controversy, and the more controversy, the more interest from the news media. But nothing quite compared with this General Council, because we had an item guaranteed to be controversial. The storm had been brewing for months over what was called the SOLM (Sexual Orientation, Lifestyles and Ministry) Report. Each one of the over 4,000 congregations of the United Church had been asked for its opinion on this report, and those opinions had been collected in Presbyteries and Conferences.

The nub of the issue, which was dubbed, "The Issue" was the ordination of homosexual persons, and whether or not such persons would be required to be celibate. This was a "dynamite" issue, because of the threats of boycott, and separation, and the rampant division of opinions within congregations.

Prior to General Council, as each Conference met, members of UCHUG had been reporting the conversations and decisions in various online conferences in Ecunet, and also, by the use of Fidonet "nodes", to hundreds of computer devotees across the country. There had been arrangements for decisions to be e-mailed across the country to the various conference offices. Almost every reported conversation spoke of the rage and dismay which was flooding our Church, through almost every congregation, Presbytery and Conferences. The telephones in every Conference Office and in the General Council office were besieged with calls, mostly opposing the possibility of ordination of "practicing homosexual persons".

We had one day to set up, find electrical and telephone outlets and get our main computer up and running. Next to us, just outside our corridor-like computer communication "room" was another computer run by Bill Dearborn, with the assistance of Linda Slough. (Linda, in 1995, was appointed Secretary of the Division of Communication!)

Bill Dearborn was one of the original members of UCHUG who had the ability and job situation to become the specialist in helping Conference Offices to communicate with one another through computers. Bill continued in this role, so that his task was to take care of official reports which would emanate out of the General Council and be sent to the United Church Conference Offices across Canada.

David Lochhead and I were the two whose expenses to General Council would be paid from the SCC budget, to which we hoped to add a number of volunteers - some who lived in the Victoria area, some of whom were commissioners to General Council and some who were visitors passing through, and attending a few days of General Council.

But at my Westminster Presbytery meeting in February something happened which affected everything for me. The nominations procedure for General Council commissioner was done hastily, and I was asked on the floor whether I would let my name stand. I had two minutes to make this momentous decision but I agreed, and was elected out of three or four names for this position.

That meant I would be in Victoria by virtue of being a Commissioner from B. C. Conference. It also meant that we no longer needed to pay for me out of SCC funds, which opened one more position.

We filled that position in a very unusual way. The Rev. Curt Ackley of the United Church of Christ who served as an Ecunet presence in Victoria, reporting on the proceedings for our sister denominations.

In addition we added some other volunteers: Dal McCrindle, Marta Frascati, Peter Chynoweth, and Hazel Arbon.

We were able to provide a number of viewpoints on everything that was happening in General Council.

We sent three kinds of reports to everyone linked with us across the country: formal documents and decisions as they became available, without comment, fairly formal reporting of events, and chatty news.

The tradition of "Live from.." began in the first Camcon meeting in Los Angeles March 6-8th, 1986. Actually it may even have been preceded by those Speakeasy conferences we held on UNISON, including the one at the first SCC meeting.

There was "Live from Camcon" [or LA] which was the first Live conference. It was never excelled, because it accumulated over 600 notes and numerous branches. Then we encouraged someone at each Conference meeting to set up a "Live from..." conference.

The following are all PDF documents, in that they require the use of the free download program, Adobe Acrobat Reader. To obtain the reader follow this URL: Adobe Acrobat Reader

These documents are relevant in this way: The Mandate Article was one I wrote for the Mandate Magazine of the United Church of Canada. This Article, published in the October, 1987 issue, criticized the reporting of previous General Councils and promised better reporting from GC 32.

The article on Marriage was my response to the SOLM report and detailed some of deficiencies of that report from my point of view.

The article on Ordination and the Bible was my attempt to describe how the United Church of Canada views Ordination and the Bible, and was also written in response to the SOLM report.

"General Council Report Analysis" was my line-by-line analysis of the final MMHS (Membership Ministry and Human Sexuality) Report, which I wrote in dialogue with a number of online participants.

Sermon, Ellesmere United August 28, 1988 was one I delivered when I returned to a very stormy reaction from my Congregation.

MANDATE ARTICLE - October, 1987

Marriage and the Bible 1988

Ordination and the Bible May 22, 1988

General Council Report Analysis 1988

Sermon, Ellesmere United August 28, 1988

Updated: November 20, 2005