by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
By Tom Lambrecht –
In the aftermath of the highly contentious General Conference last February in St. Louis, many ideas have surfaced as a way to attempt to resolve the conflict dividing our church.
One of these ideas is a proposal from the denomination’s Connectional Table to create the United States portion of the church as its own Regional Conference, allowing it to make changes to the Book of Discipline as it relates specifically to churches here in the U.S. The church constitution already gives the central conferences outside the U.S. the ability to “make such rules and regulations for the administration of the work within their boundaries including such changes and adaptations of the General Discipline as the conditions in the respective areas may require.” The new proposal wants to give the U.S. part of the church authority to make the same “changes and adaptations” that the central conferences may.
The original reasoning behind the proposal was to allow U.S. delegates to act on matters that pertain only to the U.S. church. The prime example is the pension program for U.S. pastors and professional staff. There are also some resolutions on political or moral issues that pertain to conditions in the U.S. It has been asked: Why should delegates from outside the U.S. be forced to sit through arcane discussions about provisions that do not pertain to them?
More recently, however, some progressives and centrists have attached themselves to this proposal as a way to provide for the U.S. delegates to change the standards in the U.S. to allow clergy to perform same-sex weddings and for practicing gays and lesbians to be ordained. That way, conservative African UM churches could keep the current restrictions on such practices, while they are allowed in the U.S.
This is actually not a new idea. A similar proposal was passed by the 2008 General Conference in response to the report of the World Wide Nature of the Church study committee. While the constitutional amendments needed to implement such a proposal passed General Conference by more than the requisite two-thirds vote, it failed to be ratified by the members of the annual conferences. In fact, it failed to garner even a majority of annual conference member votes, let alone the two-thirds needed to ratify the proposal. The idea was tried again in 2016, but was defeated in legislative committee. The same arguments that were persuasive in defeating this Regional Conference idea in the past still apply.
1. There is no clarity on which parts of the Book of Discipline can be “changed or adapted.” Paragraph 101 of the Discipline lists the parts that cannot be adapted, including the doctrinal standards and the Social Principles, covering paragraphs 1-166. The Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters was supposed to come back to the 2020 General Conference with a proposal as to which of the remaining paragraphs (paragraphs 201-2719) could be adapted. They have wisely decided, in light of the deep conflict in the church and the possibility of separation, that they will delay their defining proposal until 2024.
That means under the current Discipline everything after Paragraph 166 can be adapted or changed by a central or regional conference. The adaptable section would cover over 80 percent of the Discipline, including matters related to ordination, marriage, and sexual ethics. Under this Regional Conference proposal, almost any part of the “operation, governance, witness, and ministry” of the church (in the words of the relevant petition) could be changed or adapted by U.S. delegates for U.S. churches.
What was originally being sold as a way to handle a few specific issues now has the potential to further erode our connection. Rather than continuing as a unified global church, we could evolve into a conglomeration of diverse national churches.
2. There is no evidence that this proposal will save money or time of the General Conference. Proponents believe that, by allowing U.S. delegates to deal with uniquely U.S. matters, several days could be cut from the ten-day General Conference, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, proponents have produced no evidence of such a saving. There has been no analysis of the petitions and resolutions proposed at previous General Conferences to determine how many of them would actually be able to be dealt with by only U.S. delegates. There has been no analysis of the time spent in legislative committees or in plenary sessions on U.S. only issues.
3. This proposal sets up a whole new level of bureaucracy. This bureaucracy would exist between the jurisdictional conference and the General Conference. It would include a regional “judicial court” to decide questions of church law arising from the region. The proposed legislation also gives the regional conference the authority to “establish such other agencies, commissions, or committees as it may determine are important to the work and witness of the Church in the United States.” At a time when we are cutting the general church budget by 20 percent and apportionment payments are drastically declining, why would we create an expensive new bureaucratic structure in the church? It has the potential of siphoning funds from the global church and from the mission and ministry of the church.
4. Many central conference delegates do not favor this proposal. In 2008, the annual conferences outside the U.S. – particularly in Africa – voted almost unanimously against this idea. While this proposal is being portrayed as coming from the central conferences, delegates from Africa whom I have talked to do not support it. They have told me they wonder why, now that delegates from outside the U.S. are approaching a majority of the church, the U.S. wants to cut itself off from the global voice. For 50 years, while global delegates were a small minority of the General Conference, the U.S. was content to set policies and procedures for the whole church, with a very limited right of adaptation given to acknowledge the differences in legal structures outside the U.S. But now, the U.S. does not want to be subject to the voice of the global church and is proposing to allow itself to “opt out” of the global policies and procedures at will. Such an approach does not feel to them either respectful or fair.
The Renewal and Reform Coalition believes this proposal for a U.S. Regional Conference does not merit resurrection.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Ghoussoon and her children are featured in the film Salam Neighbor. They are refugees from Syria. Photo: Mohab Khattab.
By Max A. Wilkins –
God is a missionary God. From the moment of creation as told in Genesis, God makes his missionary nature known. With Jesus’ earthly mission, God burst forth into creation showing his missional heart. Jesus not only modeled a missional life, he also established the Church and called her to join him in his mission. Thus, mission is the reason the church exists. And from its inception, the church has always been on mission. As The United Methodist Church wrestles with what it looks like to be the Church in 2020 and beyond, one thing is certain: we will always be called to be missional.
While the call to join Jesus in his mission is universal, there are multitudes of ways for the church to be on mission. And many of the models seen in the early church are still fruitful models today. Let’s look at five missionary models of the early church.
The Prayer Meeting Response. In his last instructions to his disciples before ascending to heaven, Jesus told them to go down to Jerusalem, get in a prayer meeting, get filled with the Holy Spirit, and, under the power of the Holy Spirit, to become missionary witnesses. The church was born as a result of that prayer meeting. And down through the ages many missionary movements have been launched in a similar fashion.
In the mid-1800s just such a prayer meeting took place among a group of Methodists. The result was a mission movement to West Africa. Though many of the members of that prayer meeting died young on the mission field, the remaining members continued to go. As a result, the Methodist Church of Ghana exists today, a church that saw over 55,000 new believers come to faith last year alone! There is power in the prayer meeting when the Holy Spirit shows up!
The Local Sending Church. Through the efforts of Paul, Barnabas, and others, God grew a great church in Antioch of Syria. It rapidly became a missional church. In 44 AD, the church at worship felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to send forth missionaries into Asia Minor (see Acts 13). They laid hands on Paul and Barnabas and began a long, fruitful, multi-year engagement with missionaries sent out from their church. The missionaries from Antioch maintained a relationship with the church of accountability, support, encouragement, and resourcing. Many churches in North America today are becoming sending churches, or partnering with mission sending agencies to jointly send cross-cultural witnesses who maintain the same kinds of relationship with the church as witnessed in Acts 13.
The Immigrant Relations Strategy. Located along some major trade routes, ancient Palestine was a land of many immigrants and foreigners. The early church often took advantage of this home-grown opportunity for cross-cultural engagement with amazing results. In Acts 8, we read the story of Philip, an early church missionary. Sent by God from Jerusalem toward Gaza, he wasn’t at all sure where he was going; only what he was doing! Upon seeing a high official of the Ethiopian court, he knew his mission field. The ensuing engagement between Philip and the inquisitive foreigner resulted in new life for the Ethiopian, who immediately returned to Ethiopia and took the gospel with him! We see this pattern repeated throughout the New Testament. Today, with a global immigrant population exceeding 250 million people, there has never been a better or more fruitful season for employing this missional strategy.
The Mentor/Mentee Model. The Apostle Paul made several fruitless trips to a backwater town called Lystra. On his third trip, however, he encountered Timothy, a young man of mixed heritage about whom the believers spoke highly. Discerning both the gifts the Holy Spirit had implanted in Timothy and the missionary call of his life, Paul takes him on the road. In the next few years Paul not only mentored Timothy and modeled mission work for him, he also set Timothy on a course for an adult life as a missionary. Paul would subsequently repeat this model over and over again.
Today, missionary sending agencies are finding their greatest mobilizing success when current missionaries are putting forth the call to young people and then mentoring and modeling mission for them. And local churches that make a place for missionaries to put forth the call to their congregation are a big part of the success of this model.
The Persecution/Dislocation Model. Jesus called his disciples to be his witnesses not only in Jerusalem but to the ends of the earth. Sadly, in the earliest days of the church, the disciples found it more comfortable and convenient to remain in Jerusalem. Then persecution broke out against the church. Suddenly, in response to the persecution, the believers were displaced and scattered all over the Roman world. The result was missionary work to the ends of the earth!
No one likes persecution. We pray for the persecuted church. But the reality is that God can also redeem persecution. Indeed, though many of the current global displacement challenges have resulted in the uprooting of centuries old Christian communities around the globe, it has also afforded these refugees incredible platforms for engaging both their host countries, and their fellow refugees, in mission. It is also incredibly fruitful when churches in North America partner with refugee believers in their midst, and resource, encourage, and empower them for mission.
According to Acts, in the early church the Lord was adding to their numbers daily those who were embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ. The mission continues today. And, perhaps by embracing some of the missional strategies we see modeled in the early church, we will also see the kingdom fruit experienced by the early church. May it be so.
Max Wilkins serves as President and CEO of TMS Global. He previously pastored churches in Florida and Hawaii for 30 years.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
By B.J. Funk –
Wouldn’t it be nice if kindness made a comeback? Wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t afraid to send our children to school, to go shopping at the mall, or to go without fear into a movie theater? Wouldn’t it be nice if church were a safe place to be, if sidewalks weren’t dangerous, and if Andy and Barney could walk the streets of our town without a gun?
Wouldn’t it be nice to go back many years ago and have Fred Rogers on television again, speaking kindness, love and acceptance to our children through his show, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood? The show ran on PBS for over thirty-five years. He taped more than 900 programs, winning four Emmys for his slow-moving, slow-talking visits with the children in his television audience. His central message to them was “You are loved just the way you are.”
He sat before the camera and gave children what they needed every day, large doses of kindness with a huge amount of love. Without knowing his audience individually, he approached the children with a voice that said, “Come on in to my neighborhood. You are always welcomed here.” And the children knew they were.
Mr. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister who kept his status with the church current by appearing regularly before church elders. But his calling was to bless children by teaching his central message of God’s love for all creation. He once said that his ministry was the “broadcasting of grace” throughout the land, and his vocation was to minister to children through the medium of television. Before taping each of those 900 programs, Rogers offered this simple prayer: “Let some word that is heard be thine.”
He had a name for the space between the viewer and the television set. He called that space, “Holy Ground.” That’s a beautiful picture for us in 2020. Unfortunately, that space is for some of our children not Holy Ground but instead a breeding ground for the unfortunate introduction of too much cursing, unnecessary fighting, and relentless screaming coming through the air waves. Some of our children, left alone without parental oversight, sit in the area Mr. Rogers called Holy and receive a far too early look into the raw and deviant side of humanity. Forgive us, Lord.
Mr. Rogers saw the potential for holiness in every experience through the power of the Holy Spirit. He brought the medium of kindness and acceptance as the doorway into faith and holy living. He invited the children to be his neighbor, to sit with him during his show as they joined hands in neighborly love.
Some have named him a televangelist to toddlers. He would likely have been uncomfortable with that thought, but that is exactly what he was doing. If our gospel is the gospel of grace, then Fred Rogers was seeking to offer the Good News of grace daily through his show.
Faith was so much a part of who he was, as it should be for each of us. His faith moved through his being in simple, yet powerful ways. Having faith was part of his makeup. It affected him in every moment.
If you haven’t thought about Fred Rogers lately, now would be a good time to renew your friendship with this soft-spoken man through the recent release of a movie about his life. Tom Hanks stars as Mr. Rogers in a delightful walk back to the years of his show, 1962-2001. Or you can read Shea Tuttle’s book, Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers.
Practicing kindness has a profound effect on our own mental and physiological health. Being kind helps us to become happier and more compassionate towards others. Being kind can help boost our own immune system, slow down aging, elevate our self-esteem and improve blood pressure.
“Kindness makes a person attractive. If you could win the world, melt it, do not hammer it,” wrote Alexander MacClaren, an English minister born in the nineteenth century.
So, let’s see if we can do our part for kindness to make a comeback. It’s worth a try. And, by the way, will you be my neighbor?
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Baptism at Christ’s Foundry Fellowship in Dallas. Photo courtesy of Christ’s Foundry Fellowship.
By Heather Hahn –
The U.S.’s majority status in The United Methodist Church is coming to an end – and may be there already. That’s according to projections from the denomination’s General Council on Finance and Administration – based on the continuing decline in U.S. membership as much as growth in Africa.
According to the agency’s forecast, total membership in the central conferences – church regions in Africa, the Philippines and Europe – will exceed that of the U.S. jurisdictions in 2020.
“Based on trends that have occurred over the last several years, we are annually averaging a decline of 2.0 percent overall for the jurisdictional membership,” Kevin Dunn, the agency’s director of data services, told the GCFA board at its November meeting. “We may fall below 6 million (U.S.) members by 2025.”
It’s a significant development for a church whose governance and history have both helped shape and been shaped by the United States, where the denomination got its start in 1784.
Dunn said the U.S. decline has largely resulted from members’ deaths – people leaving The United Methodist Church for the church triumphant.
However, starting in 2014, he said, the overall drop has exceeded the number of funerals. U.S. worship attendance also has been shrinking as a percentage of overall membership for the past decade.
Dunn noted that United Methodist numbers are in keeping with overall U.S. religious trends. In October, Pew Research Center reported losses across Christian groups while showing the religiously unaffiliated rising to more than a quarter of U.S. adults.
Even with shrinking U.S. rolls, The United Methodist Church is still the country’s third largest denomination – behind the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Convention.
The most recent data GCFA actually has on hand is the U.S. membership and attendance figures for 2018. Unequal infrastructure and technology typically mean that membership reports are usually out of sync between the U.S. and the rest of the globe.
On its website, umdata.org, the agency reports the U.S. church had just under 6.7 million members at the end of 2018 — down from about 6.8 million in 2017. In the U.S., average weekly attendance was under 2.5 million in 2018, a decline of about 3.6 percent from the previous year.
The agency’s most recent data for the central conferences is from 2017, when the denomination counted more than 6.4 million members in Africa, Europe, and the Philippines. That’s up from about 5.7 million members in 2015.
However, the central conference total comes with an asterisk. On its data services website, GCFA notes that the 2017 numbers reflect the most recent submitted. Where conferences have not reported any new data, the agency carries over numbers from previous reporting.
The story of the church in the U.S. is not strictly one of decline. “We have some good news,” Dunn said. “Our Hispanic and multiracial growth has consistently been trending upwards 2 percent to 3 percent (a year) in each category.” Between 2009 and 2018, the number of U.S. members identifying as multiracial increased from 45,955 to 68,029. In the same period, the number of Hispanic United Methodists has grown from 68,088 to 80,968.
Family Fun Night at Christ’s Foundry Fellowship in Dallas. Photo courtesy of Christ’s Foundry Fellowship.
The predominantly Hispanic Christ’s Foundry Fellowship in Dallas is an example of that growth. The North Texas Conference decided more than 10 years ago to plant a congregation in a growing Latino neighborhood. The congregation that began as a small group worshipping in various locations has grown to 166 members and 228 in average weekly attendance.
The Rev. Lucia “Lucy” French, the congregation’s associate pastor, attributed the congregation’s growth to several programs the church instituted early on. These include small groups, a worker association to help people find employment and Family Wednesday — Miercoles de Familias — a time for children’s choir, youth group, parenting classes and marriage instruction. French, who came to Dallas from Quito, Ecuador in 2006, found her calling as a pastor by leading the Wednesday night programs.
“Everything that has happened in the growth and development at Christ’s Foundry has been the result of many collaborators, each bringing their unique strengths, resources, talents, and dedication to the effort,” she said, with interpretation from her husband, John.
Christ’s Foundry, which now has a building to call its own, is also now taking a lead role in the North Texas Conference’s response to recent tornadoes that wreaked havoc on the city.
“The congregation of Christ’s Foundry has been and continues to be blessed by the community, and has shown its ability and willingness to be a blessing to others in the community by living their faith,” the pastor said. “While head counts and budgets have their place, this is the best measure of success.”
What about General Conference?
Membership plays a large role in determining how many delegates each annual conference can send to General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking body. The Book of Discipline outlines a statistical formula for delegation size based on the number of clergy and professing lay members of each annual conference. Each annual conference must have a minimum of one lay and one clergy delegate. However, the latest figures from the General Council on Finance and Administration will not be reflected in the composition of next year’s General Conference.
The Rev. Gary Graves, General Conference secretary, determined the size of each annual conference’s delegation in 2017, based on data in the most recent annual conference journals submitted to GCFA.
Of the 862 delegates in 2020, 55.9 percent will be from the U.S., 32 percent from Africa, 6 percent from the Philippines, 4.6 percent from Europe and the remainder from concordat churches that have close ties to The United Methodist Church. Compared to the 2019 special session, the U.S. will have fewer delegates overall, while African delegations gain 18 and the Philippines two.
Heather Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News. Distributed by United Methodist News.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
By Tom Lambrecht –
The recently announced separation plan called the “Protocol on Reconciliation and Grace through Separation” has aroused many reactions in and beyond the church. Some are satisfied and even hopeful that the long-running conflict in our church can finally be over and traditional and evangelical United Methodists will be free to pursue ministry without being hampered by discord or a dysfunctional denominational structure. Local churches will get to keep their buildings, property, and assets and will need to make no extra payments to move into the new traditionalist Methodist denomination.
Others are upset and angry over provisions of the agreement they believe are unfair. We have heard the criticisms of the plan. We understand them. Many of them are legitimate. Clearly, there are several unfair provisions. I will be addressing them in future articles.
The most common criticism I have heard of the agreement is that traditionalists are leaving The United Methodist Church, rather than it being an equal separation. The follow-up comment is that since traditionalists “won” the vote in the St. Louis special General Conference in 2019, it should be those who want to change the church who have to leave, not those who want to maintain the current doctrine and discipline of the church.
This is a perfectly valid point. In a perfect and just world, those who want to change the church’s understanding of marriage and ordination would leave and those who want to keep the church’s long-standing teachings could remain. We do not live in a perfect or just world, however.
This agreement did not come down from God on Mt. Sinai like the Ten Commandments. It is a negotiated agreement worked out between factions in the church that deeply disagree with one another and do not trust one another. The fact that there is an agreement at all is astounding and a testament to the dedication of the participants and the perseverance of the mediator.
In negotiated settlements, it is not what is right or fair that determines the outcome, but what is possible. I’m convinced this agreement is the best possible agreement that could be reached and is preferable to all other likely alternatives.
What happened in 2019?
At the 2019 General Conference, traditionalists made a good-faith effort to bring about unity in the church through compliance with the Book of Discipline, the governing document of the church. It maintained the current teaching and standards of the church, while attempting to increase accountability of bishops and clergy to live by those standards.
Since February, it has become readily apparent that this attempt at unity through compliance did not work. More than half the annual conferences in the U.S. declared their opposition to the provisions enacted in the Traditional Plan. A number of annual conferences and bishops have declared that they will not abide by the provisions of the Discipline. The Greater New Jersey Annual Conference is even trying to write its own Book of Discipline!
This widespread disarray indicates that the church cannot achieve unity through compliance. The gate-keepers on enforcing the Discipline are the bishops. If some bishops are unwilling to enforce the Discipline and plan to simply ignore its requirements, there is nothing the larger church can do about it. The accountability process for bishops envisioned in the Traditional Plan was ruled unconstitutional by the Judicial Council. The accountability process proposed by Bishop Scott Jones and others that relies upon the Council of Bishops to hold other bishops accountable depends upon having a majority of the Council willing to exercise that accountability. At this point and into the foreseeable future the majority of the Council favors changing the church’s requirements and will decline to hold colleague bishops accountable.
Since unity through compliance is not possible, and unity through allowing for “local option” (each annual conference and local church making its own rules about marriage and ordination) does not have the votes to pass General Conference, the only apparent way to resolve the conflict is some form of separation. The recent agreement recognizes this fact and provides a way for the church to go in two different directions. We should not discount the fact that, for the first time, some of our leading bishops and other church leaders have finally acknowledged that separation is the only viable way forward for the church.
How to Separate
The fairest way to separate would be to dissolve The United Methodist Church and create two or more new denominations with new names. Such an approach is unworkable because it requires changes to the constitution, which needs a two-thirds vote at General Conference and a two-thirds vote of all the annual conference members (which could take up to two years). Most self-described centrists and progressives are against dissolving the church, as are many Africans and Europeans. Dissolving the church and starting over would most likely not reach even a majority vote, let alone the two-thirds vote required.
So any form of separation that General Conference adopts will have to have a continuing United Methodist Church and a group or groups that form something new. The closest to an equal plan of separation under this precondition is the Indianapolis Plan. However, that plan did not resolve the contentious issue of a division of assets. Furthermore, it encountered fierce opposition from key leaders in the centrist camp, who believe it comes too close to dissolving the denomination. To pass the Indianapolis Plan would require a major fight at General Conference, which could degenerate into a repeat of the vitriol of St. Louis. And its passage is by no means certain, as the margin for traditionalists is projected to be very slim.
The leaders of the Renewal and Reform Coalition decided that it would be better to support a plan that is less fair, but promised a definitive end to the conflict, was much more certain to pass, and would give traditionalists a way to separate while keeping their buildings and property.
Throughout the last year, many progressives and centrists have vowed not to leave the church, but to stay and continue to fight to change the church’s teachings and standards. It is true that a few very progressive annual conferences and a few high-profile progressive leaders have announced plans to prepare to possibly leave the denomination. But the vast majority would stay, and the fight would continue. It is therefore unrealistic to hope that most centrists and progressives would voluntarily leave the church. No matter what good legislation General Conference adopts, if there is no way to obtain compliance, the Discipline is not worth the paper it is written on. Any attempt on traditionalists’ part to keep on fighting for the current teachings of the church would entail another 20 years of conflict, rebellion, disobedience, and vitriol that would destroy the church. While attempting to force out those unwilling to live by the Discipline, the church would also lose many traditionalists who are sick of the fighting and want to maximize their ministry of the Gospel rather than spend millions of dollars, time, and energy fighting a battle against those who will not be convinced.
If we were to fight to hang on to The United Methodist Church, traditionalists would also be saddled with trying to either maintain or reform an intractable bureaucracy that is often counterproductive to local church ministry. Every single general board or agency except United Methodist Communications endorsed the One Church Plan. Most of those boards and agencies are staffed by people who want to change the church’s teachings and do not share our traditional theological perspective. To reform and reclaim these agencies would be a monumental task that would again drain valuable resources from actual ministry. Better to walk away from these entrenched agencies and start something new that can be much more streamlined and oriented toward resourcing and empowering local church ministry. If we can drastically lower denominational overhead, we can pour more resources into supporting our central conferences outside the U.S. and engaging in innovative, effective ministry to the unchurched and marginalized people in our world.
The use of the United Methodist name and cross and flame logo has also been of great concern. Once again, we have heard the concerns. We understand them. I will be writing on that issue in a separate blog after the implementing legislation for the separation agreement is finalized. I will also be addressing in a future article the apparent unfairness of the amount of money traditionalists will receive from the general church assets that generations of traditional United Methodists have contributed to over the years.
It is understandable for some to see it as though traditionalists will be “leaving” The United Methodist Church. A better way of describing it is that traditionalists will be separating from a denomination that has left them theologically and seizing this opportunity to create a new traditionalist Methodist movement. No, this agreement is not as fair to traditionalists as we hoped it would be. But it promises a definitive end to the conflict in our denomination and provides an unparalleled opportunity for a fresh start that can create a new denomination that can go forward in unity of belief, vision, and mission. When we have had a chance to process our anger, frustration, disappointment, and grief, we can either choose to dig in our heels in an unrealistic hope for a better deal, or we can focus on the positives of what this deal makes possible for us. I, for one, am excited about what the Lord can and will do through a new expression of Methodism. We can walk into this new future together.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
