Answered Prayers

The 221st General Assembly, for the first time in many years, elected a moderator on the first ballot this evening. Heath Rada, a ruling elder from the Presbytery of Western North Carolina received a bit more than the 50 percent of the votes cast, defeating teaching elders Kelly Allen and John Wilkinson. Rada is the former CEO of the Greater Richmond (Virginia) Chapter of the American Red Cross and the former president of Presbyterian School for Christian Education (now part of Union Seminary). As moderator, Rada will preside over what might be yet another contentious assembly, and is well deserving of our prayers.

We would also do well to pray that the evening's election process does not portent a foreboding and difficult week. 


This year, the assembly, in a move seemed both economically wise and uncommonly sensible, decided to move away from the rented individual voting terminals that commissioners have used for years, instead opting for an internet based, secure tally system accessible from computers, tablets and smart phones. The system promised speed and efficiency.

Tonight, the assembly received neither.

For reasons either not completely understood or easily explained, the internet access in the convention center seemed unable to carry the load of the nearly thousand devices necessary to log onto the voting system simultaneously, thus rendering our new paradigm completely useless.

That this might not have been either properly tested or perhaps calculated is, in the words of Vizzini, that weaselly villain in The Princess Bride, "Inconceivable!"

But the powers that be (or better named "the powers that organize") did have a Plan B. There were wireless voting "clickers" -- smaller and somewhat simpler machines than the former hard-wired terminals -- that seemed a reasonable substitution. However, after numerous attempts to verify their accuracy, it was apparent that many of the test votes were not recorded at all. Making matters even worse, or at least more embarrassing, on one attempt to record advisory votes the computers brought up results from the tallies of the moderator election of 2012!

All of this delayed everything by perhaps an hour or more. 

So, and I kid you not, paper ballots were distributed,eliciting a text message from a former GA moderator (who shall remain nameless to protect those with senses of humor) that read, "Now we'll see if we can count and add......what a clown show!"    

I have no idea how many years it has been since an assembly used paper ballots but it has been at least two decades. However, because the rules also require that there must be advisory votes prior to the actual election, the comedy continued. The intent of an advisory vote is precisely that -- advice given to commissioners as to the choices of particular "interest" groups -- young adults, seminary students, ecumenical partners, missionaries -- so how to do that in a way that will not take the obvious time of a paper ballot but still be effective?

First a simple show of hands was tried -- but in a room seemingly half the size of a football field, with upraised hands scattered throughout a thousand people -- the results were predictably dismal -- no one could see anything clearly enough to draw any conclusion. This was followed by raising red index cards. This was only marginally better -- a 3 x 5 card a hundred feet away is not easy to pick out. Finally they asked that the advisory delegates hold up a red flyer, about 11" x 17" -- whether that was in any way effective is anybody's guess, but from the cheap seats, it sure looked amusing.

So with no more options available the commissioners filled the name of their choice on the paper ballots, which were collected and about thirty minutes later we had a moderator.

My guess is that during that half hour of waiting (there was some music and hymn singing during the interval) many prayer were offered -- not for any particular candidate but rather for someone to get the necessary votes on the first ballot.

Perhaps we can put this one in the answered prayers column.