Critical Truths about the Response to the ERC Town Hall Meetings

Except that his brain is slowly shutting down, my dad is extremely healthy for a man of his age. He's dying but his heart and all his organs are healthy. He's dropping weight dramatically. There's no reason to weigh him but the last time he was weighed, he lost 5 pounds in a week. But, he's probably still 20-30 pounds away from wasting away.

It's hard to watch. And, my time has been taken with visiting him, hoping to catch a wakeful, lucid moment and helping mom through her intense sadness. They've been married for 65 years.

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But, I have been chatting with people who've attended a few of the ERC Town Hall Meetings. Most of what I'm hearing doesn't surprise me but I've reached a conclusion that is new to me and I've received some valuable insight/observations.

I've talked about cynicism here ad nauseam. Nothing new there. The meetings, as far as I can tell, have sported a modest turnout but nothing spectacular. The fairly large number of cynics, of course, have not been attending. They are not being wooed and they won't join in. This is sad. It's a lost opportunity for the hierarchs but it's par for a course ERC mountaintoppers have been playing on since before I entered the Conference in the 1970s.

What I'm newly concluding is that most of the people who are attending are, as far as this new New Strategic Plan is concerned, not cynics, but skeptics.

I'm hearing that no one is wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the plan...except for Dr. Richardson.

I'm also hearing that everyone sees weaknesses in the plan but that there is no agreement on the way the plan is lacking. (I've observed that this is inevitable because there is no core truth that unites the people of the Conference. This lack of unity about truth is a function of Shepherd leadership.)

The sense I get is that the skeptics are going to give Dr. Richardson, and probably Dave and Chuck as well, a chance to make this work...

...but that they will be on a short tether...

...and few, probably really no one, expects them to succeed.

Tonight, October 5, is that fancy, online Strategic Plan Round Table Meeting.

I'll miss it because it comes at the end of a day in which I will have spent emotion-depleting day with mom and dad.