In-gathering (Sean)

Welcome once again to our almost-live blogging of the 2010 General Assembly (GA) of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (UUA), to become our official report to the board of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).

We are in Minneapolis, with our bus well-parked in the lot of the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, who have very generously offered us this parking space for the duration of GA. We arrived here Tuesday evening, checked in with the office, and got settled into position. Apparently, there will be no service here Sunday on account of GA.

Yesterday was the first official day of the Assembly, and we attended the CLF in-gathering cum reception for outgoing minister Reverend Jane Rzepka, followed by opening ceremonies and Plenary-I. In-gathering was very informal this year, and we had a "normal" turnout of perhaps 40 or so; frankly, I was a bit disappointed, as I expected the reception for Jane would have brought in more of a crowd.

Plenary hall is good this year, with decent acoustics and lighting. We enjoyed, as always, the banner parade and the convocation, and Plenary-I consisted of the usual pleasantries and reminders principally aimed at first-timers. By 9:30 Plenary was adjourned to 8am this morning.

Plenary-II was scheduled for only half an hour, and the agenda showed only committee reports and no actual business to be conducted. We've done this before, and learned the hard way that we can get burned out early in the program if we try to do absolutely everything. So while we usually consider Plenary to be mandatory, with everything else optional, we gave ourselves permission to skip this morning's session, since we can read the reports on-line, and the detailing of the mini-assembly process is, again, targeted at first-timers.

In a few minutes, we will be heading off to our 1pm workshops; there is no more Association business today, and we'll get into the meat of things tomorrow at Plenary-III.