When I first started going to General Assembly, I went to hang out with my friends, and to take the odd "spiritual" workshop, preferably something which didn't require a lot of intellect or clothing. But, then I got too old for LRY. Later, when I entered seminary, it occurred to me going to GA would be a good idea, and so I went to take the workshops on growth, capital campaigns, and to see who was extra-fidgety at the "Meet the MFC" workshops.

There were two parts of General Assembly that have increasingly struck me as anti-UU. The first is the way attendees are treated like cattle in the hour or so before the Service of the Living Tradition. It is almost hard to believe that in the last several years, no one's suffered a medical emergency by being trampled or crushed by the people forced to wait outside until let in to the auditorium. There is no good reason not to let people in as they arrive, so the policy of exclusionary crowd control– particularly to an event the general public is specifically invited to– seems punitively arbitrary & capricious.

The second part that has seemed odd was that the "powers that be" wouldn't allow anything else to go on while plenary was in session. Apparently, the "powers-that-be" wouldn't trust people to choose their program options wisely. "Well, maybe we'll get better attendance if we don't let them do anything else." This seems pretty un-UU: to deny people choosing for themselves. Whose agenda is it, after all? This has resulted in the GA version of Blue Laws: no shopping, no workshopping, no worshiping while the Assembly goes about its most holy duty.

Of course, sometimes the most holy duty of the democratically empowered plenary is an agonized discussion of "whether or not to encourage congregations to encourage their parishioners to write letters to their representatives to urge other political powers-that-be to adopt Esperanto as the official language of the universe and thereby avert all wars and other man-made catastrophes" or some such issue requiring great deliberation at Pro & Con mikes and earnest questioning at the Procedural Mike.

Other times, the plenary session takes on all the excitement of a courtroom drama and no one is quite sure how things will turn out. But in the in-between times, we can get testy. Annoyance avoidance is something I have seen repeatedly at GA when minority opinions would be expressed from the floor on a resolution about to be voted on.

It is part of our slipperiness when it comes to engagement with issues or people we don't want to confront. It's like wanting a jury of your peers but trying to weasel out of jury duty if possible. God forbid one person should vote their conscience and prevent a unanimous vote– they might get hit with a flung Birkenstock or at least stabbed with steely stares.

We want enough information and advice as to how to vote, to make it easy, but often refuse to do the homework ourselves. We want the plenary to slow down when it is "our" issue at stake, but want it to speed up at all other times.

Sometimes the UUA administration puts forth a votable matter and doesn't provide much context except "we want to do this & we know it's in your best interests." Other times, plenary bogs down in minutia that's not even important to the person who's pointing it out.

Ah well, the vagaries of large scale democracy. And now some folks want to put GA to a two year cycle. I sit on the Metro New York District Board and we've been asked to consider this item this year.

Why switch to a two year cycle? Perhaps four primary reasons.

1. It's expensive to go to GA every year for the GA junkies (disclosure: with 1 exception, I've been to the last 6 in a row).
2. Some people don't want to go every year to GA and they don't want to miss anything.
3. Some people think that with the rise of regional mini-GAs like the North Atlantic Gathering (NARG) last year in Providence, RI, we're asking too much of people if we're asking them to go to GA in the same year. Maybe more people will go to NARG & similar ventures if we "cut back" to two General Assemblies.
4. It's a waste of the UUA's resources to go out into the "field" every year.

In my view, this is what is known as "scarcity" thinking. It presupposes that in terms of priorities for scheduling General Assemblies, it is more important to accommodate the GA Junkies than it is to maximize participation. If half the people who attend GA are new UUs then we significantly decrease our outreach and leadership development efforts if we go biennial.

Also:

1. If expense were really an issue, we wouldn't see such dramatic attendance increases each year. If it's too expensive, don't go. Perhaps we should subsidize families with children more: make Young Fun and Childcare free.
2. This is the real issue I think: wanting it both ways. Not wanting to go every year but preventing everyone else from going, too. When churches go to two Sunday services, this kind of lament will be heard for quite a while. But one cannot pick up all the beautiful shells on the beach. And we don't have church or GA to let everyone experience everything, one thing at a time (GA calendar-meisters notwithstanding). Some folks unconsciously harbor the idea that GA ought not to be held without them, and so seek a biennial GA for their personal convenience. While this is understandable, it is not justifiable.
3. Attendance at regional gatherings has gone up in spite of GA: it's a both/and, not an either/or thing. This will doubtless continue.
4. The UUA Staff becomes real, embodied persons who model their faith through their work at GA. Getting them in front of people at GA is– I would guess– most UUs only direct experience with the people whose compensation they help pay for. Also, we get more press & publicity by having an annual GA at each host city.

Thinking back through previous GAs, I think it's similar to the line Mozart speaks in the movie Amadeus: "which notes would you have me cut out?" And which GAs would we remove from our history? Last year's when Joel Miller spoke to us? How about the year John Buehrens led us to affirm gay marriages? Having an annual GA is not easy, but true evangelism rarely is.

(Rev.) Daniel Simer Ó Connell, D.Min.
Parish Minister, West Redding, CT