Annual Conference Reflections

I have been in Rogers, Arkansas, since Sunday night at the Arkansas Annual Conference. Since moving to Durham, NC, I have always looked forward to returning home each summer to reunite with colleagues and friends in ministry. This year has been especially nice, since I had several friends who were either ordained or commissioned into ministry.

Since Annual Conference ends today, I wanted to offer some thoughts on what I thought were real highlights from the past three days. These are basically in reverse order starting with this morning and working backward.

- We completed voting on the constitutional amendments today, which I thought went mostly pretty well. The Rev. Rodney Steele, our lead clergy delegate to General Conference, explained the amendments to the annual conference. There were some real contentious issues, and I thought delegates tried hard to be respectful and courteous in their remarks. My sense from the floor discussion and the conversations in the halls makes me think that both the Worldwide Church amendments and Amendment 1 (on church membership) are going to fail.

The confused discussion on the Worldwide Church amendments proved to me that their defeat is a good thing. No one was clear on what the amendments, once adopted, would lead to in terms of church structure. And the possibility that we could see increased bureaucracy through a new layer of conferencing was distasteful to people from all over the spectrum. We need to reconcile the differences between the way the American church is treated in the Book of Discipline with the way the church in the rest of the world is treated, but this proposal is not the way to go. These amendments will most probably fail. And when they do, I hope the church as a whole is able to go about the discernment over our ecclesiastical structure in a more coherent way (and frankly, using a proposal that seeks to streamline our hierarchical structure and reduce the complexity of our bureaucracy rather than do the opposite).

On Amendment 1, we really had two debates. One was the debate that centered specifically on the issue of homosexuality (which I argued was not the way we should think about the amendment). The other was the issue of pastoral authority as the shepherd of the (local congregational) flock. The amendment, poorly worded and poorly conceived, will almost certainly fail.

[UPDATE: The Arkansas Conference voting results have been posted on the conference website, which you can find here. Thanks to Matthew Johnson for pointing this out.]

- This morning the Rev. Ronnie Miller-Yow preached the morning service, and the annual conference session was electrified. Ronnie was ordained just last night, and his message to the conference was a real highlight of the week. He spoke of what it means to be a transformative church, challenging the conference to welcome Jesus into their churches, to preach the good news, to do works of ministry in Jesus' name, and to be willing to think creatively in how we reach the suffering and the lost.

- Last night's Ordination Service was (as it always is) an occasion for celebration and hope. We commissioned or ordained 33 elders and deacons. And I have no doubt that they will go forth to do great ministry in Jesus' name.

- The Rev. Will Choate, who is planting Argenta UMC in North Little Rock, gave an address yesterday that touched on the importance of changing the way we think in how we are reaching people and going about our mission & evangelism. Will is one of the outstanding young adult clergy in the annual conference, and he provided a crucially important generational perspective to the delegates (and one that appeared to be much appreciated by young and old alike).

- On Monday evening, we had our annual gathering of Gen-X and Millennial clergy & lay delegates at the Mad Pizza Co. About 50 people came for food and conversation, and all had a great time. The Rev. Eric Van Meter began organizing this event 5 years ago, and it has grown from just a handful to a whole crowd. I would highly recommend this type of event for every annual conference. It helps to remind the young adult leaders in the conference that there are a lot of us out there and that we can support one another through reaching out and forming relationships.

- UMR Communications has been here this week, which is the parent company of the United Methodist Reporter where my bi-weekly column appears. I had the opportunity to visit with my friend Amy Forbus, the Digital Community Builder at UMR, and I got to meet the Rev. Andy James, who heads up Digital Print Sales. Sarah Wilke, the CEO, was also here and it was enjoyable to visit with her. Sarah has recently been named as the new world editor and publisher at the Upper Room, and she will no doubt bring the same high level leadership to the Upper Room that she has to UMR over the past several years.

- Dr. Jim Heidinger was the keynote speaker at the annual Confessing Movement breakfast, which took place on Monday morning. Jim is retiring this summer from his leadership of Good News, and he gave an optimistic and encouraging address on his view of the future of the UMC. Jim heads an organization that often gets unfairly pigeonholed by some, and I can tell you - from both his address and a personal conversation I was able to have with him afterward - that he is a warm and gentle pastor with a deep love for the church and a strong desire to see us embody our Wesleyan heritage in spreading the gospel and forming disciples for Jesus Christ.

It'll be tough not to see most of the folks here for another year, but the days of reunion are always a high point of my year. We can all (me included) tend toward cynicism when it comes to thinking about the way the UMC is structured. But annual conference is still very much a means of grace, and it needs to be named as such. I am grateful for the fellowship it represents, and I think it often serves as a powerful arena for equipping the saints for ministry and celebrating the victory we have in Christ Jesus.