me too! My first conference!

My first conference too. I will have the added pleasure of becoming Chair of Northern Lights Presbytery when I'm there. Yikes!

Toronto Conference and Montreal and Ottawa Conference met this past weekend. all the activity was on Twitter (and active it was!). Post any twitter links.

Hamilton Conference AGM convenes in Port Elgin this coming weekend.  It will be an entire weekend affair.  A departure from our typical AGM's where many delegates commute to and from on a daily basis.

I am remaining open to the idea.

In NL Conference I quite enjoyed our twice a year weekends away as there was actual social time alongside of business time.

Other than that I am being nominated to a Conference Committee as Chair so I should just swallow and deal.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Conference provides opportunities for making new connections, renewing old ones, learning more about particular issues, and sharing in making decisions about actions of conference including taking public positions on some issues.  ANW Conference's main issue this next week will be the restructuring of  Conference again with the possible elimination of the regional coordinators and the creation of animator positions.  It will be held at SAIT next to a C-Train station and close to the food offerings of the apprenticeship classes (my daughter is an apprentice baker).

I am getting old. I find that to be less and less true, these days. I could post a very cynical answer about conference, but I won't.

BTW, we blew up the conference and restructured thirty months ago. Best thing we could have done.

Thanks for the reminder about the restructuring issue at ANWC. I have some reading to do. We in Northern Lights Presbytery value our resource person. We are a huge Presbytery geographically and have some different challenges than most. She has been all around the Presbytery, so knows our issues. It is nice to have her voice in Edmonton and from Edmonton to us. It may not be necessary for Presbyteries closer to the main office to have a resource person. I get that. I just hope the final solution works for each Presbytery, and not just the urbanites.

coffee 3.50

tea 3.00

Food 90.00

Our conference experiment has been not perfect, but overall, a good success.

Blow up your conference. You will be the better for it.

I have to say that after 7 years living in the NL experiment I think it worked incredibly well. 

It also wasn't perfect.

I have been pondering how to "do church" for the last while. I do think we need to do it differently, and that we are evolving, so the notion of blowing up Conference is attractive.  That being said, this will be my first visit to Conference, so maybe I ought to learn more before I make such judgements!

Actually, the notion of blowing up Conference, and other structures fits with some of my political beliefs........I will have to ponder that a bit.....

Wasn't there a motion at General Council a few years ago to collapse our structure from four levels to three?

Sigh .. here we go again (it seems).

I would be in favour of that as well.  In ANW we have several presbyteries which have shrunk in numbers to the point where it is extremely difficult to find enough volunteers to manage all of the responsibilities of the presbytery.  Replacing conference and 9 presbyteries with three or four districts (one each for Calgary and Edmonton; one or two for the non-urban areas) appeals to me.

God forbid, we start thinking about Conference office as "the main office."    In that case, we might want to rethink the reformation and begin discussions with the Roman Catholics.

The restructuring that needs to happen is coming about for financial reasons and is not an urban vs. rural issue in my opinion.  At the same time, the distances and the challenges of presbyteries such as Northern Lights is why following Toronto's model is not realistic - perhaps, Northern Lights might want to consider covering the costs of having a resource person on their own.   

I agree, and really "main office" is really just a short form in this format. At the same time, a lot of things happen at the centre, and when you are on the fringes, there are challenges.

That's true, though it can become a rural vs urban issue because the realities are different for each group.

We have discussed different ways of responding to this, and ways that can work for everyone. There is no doubt that some things need to change. All voices need to have some input.

That was argued here, too. we opted for the same model for everyone; assessments are the same formula across the conference and expenses are equally shared. Presbyteries no longer act as employers.

I think the reference was to geography, which is one of the considerations that makes the Toronto model more challenging here.  But I like the logic behind their model.  THe district model suggested above where the 2 cities are each a district and then however many for the rural areas troubles me greatly. Partly because of the geography (one of the challenges at least 2 Presbyteries in ANW have (and other in other conferences) is that we are too geographically large for easy in-person contact between places but still too numerically small to really have people and finances and energy for mission tasks once the structure and maintenance are taken care of).  But also because I suspect such a model would allow those large PResbyteries to argue that they need to keep their financial resources to themselves (there is already a feeling that Calgary Presbytery is moving toward just that sort of suggestion).  Qeite frankly that is a no go.  A model like DKS suggests, where costs continue to be shared equally through assemsents needs to remain in place

Not only that, but all funds (cash, trust tunds, church extension funds, running into millions of dollars) held by the presbyteries were pooled and divided equally. That led to some interesting bunfights, but in the end, all came out well.

So what would happen if you divided the province into quarters? Divide Calgary and Edmonton in half by east/west and the province by Highway 2. Divide north/south at Red Deer/ Highway 11. Juggle the boundaries for balance.

What about the rest of the Presbytery that goes up to Yellowknife, NWT, through northern BC and onwards up to Whitehorse YK.  It is about a 15 hour drive from here to Whitehorse, about the same from here to Yellowknife and about seven to Edmonton...for perspective. Then there is the fact that the "big" churches are in Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Grande Prairie.

How many churches in the quads I have suggested? The size and number of churches is irrelevant. The magic number is around 60 churches in each quadrant, or if there aren't 240 congregations, divide the total in the conference  by 4 and adjust. The point is to actually divide the the large urban areas, not create blocks of them.

In our case, we have two presbyteries for Toronto and two for the north of Toronto. Toronto as a city is divided roughly in half. That's what you want; division in urban areas, so things are mixed up. And yes, the two northern quadrants in Alnerta would be large. That's what we have, too. Adjust for that. Make plans for that. Presume that. And recognize that offices may not always be located in urban areas.