Annual Council: Tweeting The Meeting Live
Women’s Ordination. Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation. Clarification on how Adventists define the Spirit of Prophecy. These topics and many more fill the 268 pages of the 2014 Annual Council. Now updates from the Annual Council come to readers in real time with Spectrum’s Twitter coverage.
The Annual Council will be the final meeting of the full General Conference Executive Committee before the 2015 General Conference Session in San Antonio, Texas, and all the hot-button issues facing the church will come before delegates. The meetings, held in the World Church Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland span six days, October 9-15.
Spectrum will be tweeting the meeting throughout the business sessions from the Twitter handle @spectrummag, using the hashtag #GCAC14. While not exhaustive, the tweets will provide up to the second coverage of the proceedings to supplement daily reports from Spectrum’s news team on the floor of Annual Council.
Particularly on Tuesday, October 14, when delegates will spend the entire day discussing the women’s ordination recommendation to take to San Antinio’s General Conference meetings, the real-time updates will provide the quickest way to follow along.
During the first two days of meetings, live-tweeting focused on lectures by professor of public health at Harvard University, GC Dr. David Williams, GC associate Health Ministries director Dr. Fred Hardinge and GC Health Ministries director Dr. Peter Landless, whose presentations highlighted healthy-living data. The clear message from the three was that leadership in the Church should begin with healthy lifestyle choices. Also, vegetarianism of the lacto-ovo variety with an occasional fish or two corresponds with longevity and few health risks.
“Are we talking about such things at these holy meetings?” Dr. Peter Landless asks rhetorically. #Colonoscopy #RectalExam #PapSmear #GCAC14
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 9, 2014
Vegans (“Total Vegetarians”) have lowest “bad” cholesterol levels. Pesco-vegetarians have lowest total mortality rates. #GCAC14
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 9, 2014
Move from revival and reformation to transformational living and wholeness, says Landless. #GCAC14
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 9, 2014
The Spectrum twitterfeed has also told stories of some of the participants in the meeting that cannot be found in other media outlets. Specifically, our coverage will focus this week on women at these meetings.
Women attendees/mothers at #GCAC14: Adria Asamoah-Addo, Ghana Union Conference; Marlene Baluch, S. American Division pic.twitter.com/QisMdBGRv1
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 10, 2014
West Central Africa Division delegates with custom 100th anniversary clothing sporting the #Adventist logo. #GCAC14 pic.twitter.com/MAEL6FERn5
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 10, 2014
Friday morning, we tweeted snippets of Elder Mark Finley’s presentation comparing the conflicts in the early Christian Church as recorded in Acts with the current debate over women’s ordination, which will come to the floor on Tuesday.
Mark Finley – when you’ve studied an issue for 40 years, further discussion and debate only furthers division. #GCAC14
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 10, 2014
Confidence Church has in leadership body allows Church to move on to mission after contentious decision. -Elder Mark Finley #GCAC14
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 10, 2014
Acts 6: A Satan-generated conflict point over distribution of food to widows. Finley is calling endless debate, disunity satanic. #GCAC14
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 10, 2014
This is fundamental, Mark Finley says of these two points. #GCAC14 pic.twitter.com/rqN6N56oxc
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 10, 2014
Live tweets continue Sabbath morning with a sermon by General Conference president Ted Wilson on a special day of prayer on the ebloa crisis.
The @adventistchurch invites Church to pray for West Africa #EbolaCrisis. We spoke with @ADRAIntl, who are very busy providing aid. #GCAC14
— SPECTRUM (@spectrummag) October 10, 2014
Follow @spectrummag on Twitter.