Imagine a dystopian landscape, where totalitarian overlords rule church polity/the world with an iron fist. They are called….”The Monitors.” Somehow, the GCORR/GCOSROW (General Commission on Religion and Race/General Commission on the Status and Role of Women) monitoring force has accrued magnificent power over the quadrennials. While they started out by merely eying the demographics of committees and subcommittees during General Conference, they eventually became mad with domination (perhaps in cahoots with a set-aside super-bishop?). Out of the tradition of Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury, I present to you my latest contribution to social futurist literature. I haven’t really decided if there’s going to be some equivalent to soma or New Speak or even H. G. Wells-esque tripods from Mars. I haven’t even come up with a strong plotline, but it’s going to be great. My fine novella will appeal to revisionists and orthodox United Methodists alike, who both expressed some discomfort with the presence of the committee monitors.
Yes, IRD researchers exhibit a potent combination of geekiness and eccentricity, but a recent article on the General Conference practically FORCED me to produce this invention. It touted the “ministry of monitoring,” hoping to ease the annoyance of observers and delegates. Propaganda for an insidious plot of ascendancy, I say! (That was a joke, folks). However, the monitors’ role does seem humorously minimal. They simply announce the racial/gender/age distribution of groups and complain that extraverts are talking while introverts are not. Sometimes this exhibits Ameri-centric politically correct multiculturalism, but it also helps remind participants about the global nature of the UMC.
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