Learning to Moderate

It's been a L-O-O-N-G day at the Moderator's Conference. Too long to write a really substantive post, but I promise that I'll do one after I get home about the FOG Task Force workshop that I attended for my Presbypolity readers, and about the Q&A session tonight with the PCUSA's Moderator and Vice Moderator.

So it's back to a little list of the day's highlights, to give you a feel for how the day at the Moderator's Conference went.

• My old acquaintance and I remembered that we knew each other from our days back in the 1990's when we were involved with the Cho-Yeh Camp board (Cho-Yeh is the camp and conference center owned by New Covenant Presbytery)
• In the session on Meetings for Moderators, I was reassured to learn that " I don't have to know everything, I just have to know more than they do!"
• Other tips for running a presbytery meeting included: Don't let them have your mike, Consensus is NOT unanimity, and Preparation-GOOD! Surprises-USUALLY BAD. Truly words to live by.
• There was a demonstration of how to use sticky note pads to keep track of motions, amendments to the motion and amendments to the amendment.
• We were also urged to remember that there is a difference between being nice and being fair. A moderator's job is to be fair and if you do a good job of that, then people will think you are nice.
  
• The best for last: the PCUSA Moderator, Rev. Joan Gray and her husband Bob came up and introduced themselves to me in the buffet line at dinner. He reads QG (among other Presbyblogs) and reports on it back to her. He'd read I would be here and was looking for me. I was amazed. And flattered. Thanks for reading!
  

I can't resist closing with a couple of excerpts from the Litany for Eight Useful Motions by Marianne L. Wolfe that we all recited at the end of the training about running a presbytery meeting.

"Liturgist: Amend. There are only three forms of simple amendment. They are: to delete or strike out, to add or insert and to strike out and insert. The words proposed for deletion or additions must be consecutive words.

Congregation: And Job said, "Do you think you can correct words, as if the speech of the desperate were wind?" (Job 6.26)

...

Liturgist: Limits on Debate. The assembly always has the power, and the moderator the right of suggestion, to limit debate to a particular hour, or extend or shorten speeches according to the necessity of the moment.

Congregation: And Job said, "Have windy words no limit? Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?" (Job 16.3)
...
ALL: Do not think that we have come to abolish Robert's Rules of Order; we have come to fulfill it..."

Okay, there was a lot of Job in this liturgy. That should tell me something about being a Moderator. Good night.