BY KIM PECKHAM

Is this GC session worth the trouble? Wouldn't all the delegates rather stay home with a pint of ice cream and watch The Sound of Music one more time?

That would certainly take a load off of Sheri Clemmer. As an associate meeting planner at the General Conference, she helped arrange the details that would keep the session from degenerating into a soccer riot of the saints. She has spent the past several months on the phone with attendees who want a hotel room, and business people who want a piece of the action. "We appreciate your offer of discount tickets to the Friday night St. Louis Cardinals game," she said during a recent call, "but let me explain something to you . . ."

Nothing is too trivial to escape her attention. See those tent cards on the dining tables? I'm referring to the ones that say with as much tact as possible, "Do you have to spend so much time chewing? We've got people waiting for this table." She made those.

Of course, Clemmer wasn't the only person working on the GC session. This event requires the attention of no fewer than 14 committees. People who end up on these committees discover that their duties require the kind of self-sacrifice normally associated with Huss and Jerome.

The platform committee coordinates the arrival and departure of hundreds of speakers and musicians. And it must all be timed to the minute.

Security has its own challenges, including the possibility of protesters--though who would have a complaint with Adventists is a mystery to me, unless it's the Pork Producers Association.

The procurement and distribution committee members spent time sitting down on the job. But only because they needed to choose the padded chairs on which the delegates spend the greater part of the day. This was a task they did not take lightly, though it would have been a hoot to pioneer missionary L. R. Conradi. At the 1926 GC session Conradi told the group that he never had money to ride in train cars with upholstered seats, and he was glad. It toughened him up for the time the czar threw him in prison--where they didn't have upholstery either.

Another group put their heads together to come up with a theme for the meetings. I imagine that job had its frustrations, especially if you came up with an idea that was rejected, such as "Celebrating 150 Years of Fearing the Papacy."

I must mention Gary Patterson, who is coming to town with a mandate to prepare food for the delegates and other visitors. It's a scary situation to face 10,000 hungry Adventists at every meal when your only defense is five and a half tons of textured vegetable protein. But Patterson runs an academy cafeteria, so he doesn't scare easily. "I have never backed down from a challenge," he says. "This is my way of using the talents God gave me."

Roscoe Howard has also felt the mantle of responsibility come down on his shoulders like the gates of Gaza. He is in charge of the grand finale of the GC session, the Parade of Nations. "I didn't volunteer for this job, believe me," he says.

He has to figure out how to move 700 people (some of whom are shuffling along in wooden shoes) across the platform in 70 minutes. He has to provide flags to all the marchers. And he has to deal with the confusion about American Samoa. Nobody is quite sure if the representatives should march with the North American Division or the South Pacifc Division. (The natives are probably thinking Hey, our tithe dips for one year and suddenly we're orphans!) Howard must also put a leash on photographers who get so excited at this event that they crash into the parade like the Rams' defensive line and bring the whole procession to a halt.

Why It's Worth It
Can the GC session possibly be worth all this work? And I haven't even mentioned the money. The GC puts aside $1 million a year so they can pay their part of the tab when the session year comes around. Unless you're trying to buy real estate near the GC headquarters, that's a lot of money--money that can be used for other things such as evangelism, or feeding the hungry, or adding padded pews to all those churches we've built in India lately.

Evangelism. Food. Upholstery. These are important things. But so is community. Getting together with people is never cheap. I drive 20 miles each way to church. Should I call up the church and demand that they stream the sermon over the Internet because I want to save gas money? No way. I want to be there with the people, shaking hands and worrying about which of those hands may be passing on a flu virus. I want to sing with these people and go to potluck with these people and fight with them over the last of the macaroni and cheese.

The GC session is all about community. It has a sense of community that can leave you a little weepy and weak in the knees. You are in the same room with tens of thousands of people who have joined you on a serious mission from God, and you're standing shoulder to shoulder with them singing "We Have This Hope," which has so much emotion that it makes "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" seem as flat as an advertising jingle. That's when it occurs to you, You know, we're bigger than Wal-Mart, and we're going to change the world. That's got to be worth something.

And then there are the stories. Leaders take the stage from all over the world, and they can be forgiven for bragging a little about what the Lord has done. At the last GC session, representatives from the Northern Asia-Pacific Division talked about the 1000 Missionary Movement. Two of those missionaries entered a village in a remote mountain area of the Philippines. They found that the tribe had fought with neighboring villages for hundreds of years. Through the missionaries' acts of love, the whole village was converted. Then the villagers began to worry that their former enemies would take advantage of their new peaceful lifestyle. So they asked the missionaries to go to the next village and convert their foes--which they did. Eventually, 11 warlike villages were converted and entered a new era of peace. (Obviously, these two missionaries should be dispatched immediately to the Middle East.)

If you could listen in on the 1888 GC session, you would hear them read a letter from 60-year-old Abe La Rue, who had headed off to Hong Kong--which was much farther away in those days than it is now. He wrote about paddling around in a sampan, passing out tracts. "I never saw people read our publications better than they do here," he wrote. "They are stirring up things magnificently."

You wish you could tell him how much the work grew in that old British colony since he first steamed into the harbor. It makes you swell up with pride. Not because you're great, but because you are hanging on the shirttails of a movement that is great. That's got to be worth something.

Every GC is a kind of trophy ceremony. Only here the trophies are people. In 1926 the best trophy was Ratu Meli, a former cannibal from the Fiji islands. Let me tell you, there's a whole lot more interest in foreign missions when there's a chance someone will be eaten. You can almost see how the audience leaned forward in awe when Meli held up a war club that had actually been used to bring home the groceries. This former cannibal stood on the stage in his bare feet--he found shoes so uncomfortable that he refused to wear them--and he began to sing a hymn. This man had done things so wicked that they don't even show up on cable television. But the audience was seeing a new man--a living, breathing miracle of grace. That's got to be worth something.

Of course, the GC session is a time to take care of a little business. And it's significant that the most important business decisions can't be made unless everyone is represented. Everyone has to be around the family table, and everyone gets a vote. If everyone votes to move the GC headquarters to Hawaii, then you might as well get ready for workdays that end with a shout of "Surf's up, Paulsen!"

Think about it: This institution is so democratic that administrators can't even change a line in the Church Manual without giving Adventists in every corner of the globe a chance to vote their conscience. That's got to be worth something.

With 70,000 Friends
Yes, the GC takes its toll. Especially on people like Sheri Clemmer. But you want to know something strange? She claims to enjoy the job. She says she liked calling businesses in St. Louis and saying, "I'm coming to town with 70,000 of my friends."

That's an interesting thought. To think of the world church as friends--friends who are so close that you dare not do anything important without sending them an engraved invitation and putting a nice spread on the table. Think of standing in one of the largest auditoriums in the world and realizing that the enormous crowd pressing around you is made up of friends. No, better than that. Family. Yeah, that's got to be worth something!

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Kim Peckham has attended three GC sessions, including what he assumes will be the very last GC to be held in Atlantic City.