General Assembly Update

I thought this update might be too long for a facebook status.

As of Monday night, we haven't elected any new General Superintendents yet but we are getting close to electing the first new one of this assembly and more importantly there seems to be a good chance we will elect our first GS from outside of the U.S. As I stated in my earlier status, 64% of our members live outside the U.S. but our leadership has been slow in reflecting this reality with less than half our GA delegates coming from outside the U.S. and no general from outside the U.S. It is extremely important that our church elect leaders from other parts of the world who understand their own culture where God is moving in new and exciting ways.

At the conclusion of business tonight, Eugenio Duarte was the leading vote getter. I found a short article in Holiness Today about him here. He already has 400+ votes and only needs about 250 more to be elected.

The second most votes went to Gustavo Crocker. Read about him here.

John Bowling, the president of Olivet Nazarene University, received the third most votes. It was a significant drop off from there.

There will have to be many more ballots cast before we have three new GS's but things are looking promising.

Perhaps even more importantly, the assembly passed the resolutions of the International Church Committee. This was a committee designed to help the Church of the Nazarene consider how it's church polity and organizational structures need to adapt to our international constintuency. The committee concluded that minor revisions to our organization and polity were no longer sufficient to adequately address the needs of our global denomination. The assembly adopted the committee resolution that Manual sections 100 - 384 be reviewed and re-written so that we can be a truly global denomination and no longer built around a North American framework. Some are saying that this is the most significant legislation of the assembly and it's adoption alone makes this GA an enormous success. I urge you to read more about the work of the ICC here.

Good things are happening here in Orlando. It makes me excited and hopeful for the future of our church. Hopefully, I'll be able to share with you tomorrow that we have elected our first General Superintendent from one of the international delegations.