St. Louis GC Session 2025: Day ½
by Loren Seibold | 3 July 2025 |
This is the first General Conference (GC) session I’ve ever attended. I always thought some conference, some time, would send me as a delegate. I thought I would have risen in the ranks, as many of my friends did, to be a conference or a union conference or a division guy, and be walking around here in a charcoal gray suit looking fat and sleek and important, sighting down my nose at the little people while saying righteous things to them in dulcet tones. I never succeeded at any of that.
So here I am at last. Thanks, Adventist Today. You made my dream come true.
Here are some general impressions.
First, I’m surprised at how haphazard it all is so far. I was expecting a well-planned, tightly organized event. If it will be, or was meant to be, it isn’t yet. The people at “Information” smiled sweetly, but they had no information. “Where do I park?” They didn’t know, but thought they remembered seeing a parking spot “somewhere in that direction.” “Where do we get our press badges?” “Your what?” No one around here seems to know anything, except that we should go somewhere else and look for something else and ask someone else.
Even the emails and texts we got were wrong. Not just a little wrong, but really wrong. We’d received a directive that there was a balcony where we were supposed to go to as the “external press.” (They make a big deal of that phrase “external press,” to distinguish us from God’s own dear reporters, I suppose—those who are hired by the church. The church reporters have their own skybox. We have to walk all the way around the building to a ragged door next to an abandoned ticket kiosk.) They said it opened at 9. I walked around over there three times in the heat—on the far side of the convention center—and there was always a chain on the door. It is now 1:00, and as far as I know, it isn’t open yet.
To be fair, the GC communications team told us they had the same problem: spaces they were planning on using but couldn’t get into. There’s a lack of coordination at a fairly significant level.
Second, and related: I was picturing a sort of warm and friendly camp meeting feeling. Running into people you know. There is nothing about the America’s Center Convention Complex that makes that easy. I did see old friends Bill Knott and Larry Evans and Cliff Goldstein—but this is not an intimate place. It sprawls over several square blocks. Long, long halls. Lots of doors, some open, some blocked, some chained, some taking you nowhere. Sometimes you have to go out to go in. Security—almost TSA level, with metal detectors and everything, but you don’t have to take off your shoes—guards every door and passage. You go somewhere you were told was open at a certain time, and you’re rudely blocked by someone asking you who you think you are going in there. (Someone told us there were plainclothes security agents milling among us. I hope they take their jewelry off, or they’ll be easy to spot.)
This afternoon
Official business starts up around 2:00 PM. Two items will come first. Approving the nominating committee (it’s already been nominated by caucuses from each division) and approving the agenda. With regard to the agenda, there are two items that, we were warned, some folks want to add: revisiting the statement on vaccinations (you’ve heard about this) and discussing the church’s taking government money, such as ADRA took for years from USAID. I’ll keep you updated.
The nominating committee, once approved, will go to work immediately, and their first task is to nominate a president. That will be done sometime tomorrow, and the new president will probably be approved in time for Sabbath.
Things will, I’m sure, get better. I think. I hope.
2:10 PM More of the same level of planning: now we’re in the press area—and can’t hear a thing! I see the ecclesiastical trinity (president Wilson, executive secretary Köhler, and treasurer Douglas) but they sound like the adults in the Charlie Brown movies. I finally decided to listen to it on line.
Loren Seibold is the Executive Editor of Adventist Today.
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PS. We’re trying something new – an experimental WhatsApp channel to bring you direct updates, insights, and highlights from the General Conference Session. Curious?
