ONE MOMENT I WAS drowsily sitting at my station on the floor of the first General Conference business session, and the next I was swarmed by delegates wishing to speak. I frantically sorted through badges and scanned QR codes while directing delegates to the microphone. As the debate continued, delegates began raising motions: motions to vote immediately, motions to refer back to committee, and even motions to second other motions. Each motion meant a new queue of speakers was started, meaning I had a new set of badges to scan. Soon I was left with only one question: What on earth is going on?
In June 2022 I was one of the nine Kettering Health summer interns and employees who went to St. Louis, Missouri, to help at the 61st General Conference Session of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I was assigned the role of main floor barcode attendant page, a fancy name for a simple job. I was given a station on the floor of the Dome at the America’s Center, a laptop, and a scanner. My role was to scan QR codes on the badges of delegates who wished to speak. They would then be entered into a digital queue, ready for the chair of the meeting to call on them. With eight separate stations on the floor, this seemed like quite a boring task. After all, nobody pays attention to the little details. Right?
I was unprepared for the amount of passion the delegates brought to their roles. They questioned everything, even comma placements! I quickly realized there is a lot more to church business than I had thought. Having grown up a Seventh-day Adventist, I was familiar with the structure of the local church, but I hadn’t given any thought to how the conferences and unions fit together. Watching the delegates debate motions that would affect every church in the world was fascinating.
ONE GOAL
As the week progressed, I became better at keeping track of the motions on the floor. I developed a rhythm for scanning badges that allowed me to keep up with the waves of delegates who came my way. I was able to understand why the parliamentary procedure was so important in keeping debate organized. The delegates spent hours discussing different perspectives; without some sort of structure in place, we would have never been through. Sometimes the arguments for or against a certain issue got a bit heated. I always pricked up my ears to hear what the delegates had to say.
The last few years have been marked by instability across the world. No one has escaped untouched, not even our church. Many of the reports that we heard focused on how the church has been adapting to new circumstances across the globe. It was comforting to hear that despite the changes, our church’s core mission and focus on Christ remain the same. Although the delegates often disputed the details of the motions, it was easy to tell they had the same goal in mind: to spread the message of Christ’s soon return.
