What does the ‘31’ mean?

August 6, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

We are here in Chicago for the ELCA’s Churchwide Assembly at Navy Pier. Almost 1100 voting members have gathered from all over this –5 million member church body, to hear reports, get inspired and make decisions about my life.

We are here, hundreds of visitors, at the urging of Good Soil, an umbrella of justice and gospel-oriented movements within the Lutheran church. Like the voting members with their credentials entitling them to talk about me, at a microphone no less, we have come from all over America. Our badges aren’t the right color, of course, so we don’t get to talk about them.  No voice, no vote.

We will, however, get to talk to them when they are not in plenary session. The plan is for all of us to mingle over breakfast and lunch, in the halls and anywhere that voting members make their ears accessible. We, after all, are making our lives visible and palpable to them. We are trying to put a face on an issue.

Carl, my faithful partner, came up with an interesting idea. The two of us – only, out of more than 1700 people in this convention facility – are wearing round buttons with the number 31. The buttons are meant to be conversation starters.

So as the spirit would have it, the first person who approached us as we stepped off the Up-escalator at Navy Pier was a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. She wanted to know why we had come, what we hoped would happen — all the usual interview stuff — and then she asked, “what does the ‘31’ mean?”

It’s the number of years we have been together as a couple. This fact will make hundreds of voting members nervous, or disgusted, or unapproachable. But we are here to see if the spirit is about to tip the scale of Lutheran faith and justice, so that humanity and grace finally come to outweigh fear and indignation.

The reporter, by the way, did turn in several stories about the Churchwide Assembly.  The article in which she briefly quotes me can be found here.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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