There was an elephant in the room. I have yet to name the elephant, but I think it is customary to put "bo" on the end. This elephant was spotted roaming around my Conference Annual Meeting on the weekend, knocking over the odd table and crashing through the book display. Despite an obvious attempt to grab the floor, the elephant went unacknowledged.

Once or twice we hinted at the broad outline of our large friend. I think the treasurer referred to the fact that less people translated into less revenue at assessment time. A couple people spoke of former congregations or churches set to close. The General Council report seemed pretty candid. But the elephant roamed free, a protected species in our meeting.

Maybe the elephant was ignored because the crowd was artificially flavoured. There were young people present in abundance, participants in Youth at Conference. They provide an alternate voice, you see, because there are so few in our congregations. Inject a few dozen teenagers into any gathering and the meeting changes, and thank goodness for that. But the artificial flavour makes the elephant more transparent (mixed metaphor alert).

The elephant was also masked by the hopeful optimism of new and newly welcomed ministers. Sixteen people gave hopeful, forward-looking speeches (90 seconds of hope at a time) that made that elephant harder to see. Again, thank goodness for that and for the brave sixteen who will no doubt bring transformation to the places lucky enough to have them. Maybe 90 minutes each would have brought that elephant out, the new and the nearly new in ministry more likely to acknowledge the current state of the church.

The elephant, I'll call him Declinebo, was not addressed at an otherwise fine Annual Meeting. We hit all the right notes and spoke of the right causes, but we didn't speak candidly about the churches with 10 members left or the churches that get 70% of their revenue from tenants. We didn't speak of the volunteers ready to give up or the indifference of our communities. We didn't speak about ministers who rely on medication and a line of credit to survive. We didn't talk about a lot of things.