 Hi, this is Sharon Patterson with NTC news. We are here today with Dr. Don Underwood senior pastor of Christ UMC Don is a long time Delegate to general conference and so he's come to give us his observations his reflections And so Don a question to you right now is from beginning to end of our time in Portland What have been some of the changes the most drastic changes that you have seen take place? Well, really the way I think I would answer that Sharon is to say from the ending of Tampa the 2012 conference when plan UMC Was was ruled unconstitutional at the end of that conference through the beginning of this conference There really was a sense that a kind of dysfunction with general conference And you carry that through the first three days here Where we spent two and a half days and a lot of money just simply debating the rules I think there was a real sense and we felt it on our delegation of that there was a lot of dysfunction What can we do to actually make anything happen? But as the conference has moved on I think clearly the most significant thing has happened has been the statement by the Council of Bishops and the decision by the Council of Bishops and that really grew out of some Some meetings and some lobbying I would say that they want to take leadership in helping our church move forward on the issue of human sexuality and just simply Moving forward as a denomination and so that statement the decision of the Council of Bishops to Appointed commission. I think they will do that whether we'll have a special called general conference I don't know but they'll appoint a commission to work on human sexuality But really that will be Also, I think dealing with the size of our discipline how rule bound we've become the apex report in 2010 Independent study of united Methodism said that we're rule bound. We have difficulty really Functioning well, and so I think this will give us an opportunity to do A lot of work that needs to be done to rethink the united Methodist church and rethink how we do general conference That's a lot Don So Don the people that back at home are watching this and their biggest question is how does this impact north texas? So what do you say to them? Well, it's a really good question And a lot of ways what we do here doesn't impact Won't impact anybody. I mean in the sense that we there's not schism The discipline really has not changed I think the impact felt by many in our conference We hear from them a lot is that those who were hoping that the denominations position on Human sexuality has not changed and so those who were hoping for a change in the denominations position on same-sex marriage or Full inclusion in terms of ordination of gays and lesbians that has not changed But the the great thing about the united Methodist churches that were resilient because we do our work at the local local church level and so I'm excited to get back home to the north texas conference where we have such a very very healthy and dynamic uh annual conference. We're led by a very Bright and capable and energetic bishop and we have vital churches in north texas So i'm excited to get back and do that work. I think we'll have ongoing discussions about where we're going in the next Two or three years what will be the outcome of this study commission that the bishops will appoint I think it will and that will involve some major changes I think in united Methodism, but until then we're just faithful and we do the work that christ has called us to I'm excited about that amen down anything else that I have an action that you'd like to say Well, no, this is always an exhausting experience. I will say that we're very proud In the north texas conference of our delegation We've got young people first timers in the delegation Almost everybody in the delegation came including our jurisdictional and jurisdictional alternates And uh, and we've got a lot of visitors here from north texas who came on their own dollar And have been really really faithful and and paying attention tuning into what happens at general conference So we're really proud of our conference