Nurturing the Call

I'm on a sabbatical from writing for the United Methodist Reporter right now, as I'm getting ready for some big exams coming up in the month of December.

There has been a lot of good content in the Reporter of late, though. Allow me to point you toward some of it, gentle reader.

My friend and colleague Eric Van Meter, a campus minister at the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University, has a recent column looking at the importance of nurturing the call to ministry in youth and young adults. Eric has the ability to speak hard truths that are, nevertheless, expressed in great hope for what the church could be.

He writes, "The call to ordained ministry begins with catching the breath of God beneath our wings and seeing where it will take us. In the best of settings, we hear others shouting encouragement throughout the journey."

Eric reflects on the possibility of his own son someday following his footsteps into ministry. He wonders whether the church can move toward a fuller understanding of ordained ministry and a healthier process for those called into that form of service. This is a topic I've taken up myself recently, both in an article on structural change of the ordination process and an article on the reform of personal attitudes in the church.

I think Eric is right on when he directs us to look at our own approach to discipleship and ministry as the best way to set an example for future generations: "We have to be the ones who set positive examples. We have to be the ones to offer them opportunities for meaningful leadership. We have to be the ones who, despite our desire to protect them, go with them to encounter desperate and hurting humanity. We have to step up and be the disciples we want them to emulate."

Eric is good at expressing both frustration with the status quo and a guarded optimism that we can still follow the Holy Spirit's leading toward a more robust church. I think we all need a healthy dose of both of those qualities: the frustration to drive us to seek a more faithful path, and the hope that God ain't done with us yet.

The Church and Higher Education

It's taking me a bit longer than I expected to try and catch up here in Durham after my recent mission trip to Chincha, Peru. I think that's a result of the time of year, both with respect to church life and university life.

I'm going to write more about our time in Peru in the coming days, but until then, I wanted to let you know about a new feature piece in the United Methodist Reporter, in which my friend and colleague Eric Van Meter and I sound off on the issue of higher education and the United Methodist Church.

The feature - which is titled, "Dialogue on higher education and faith," - gave Eric and me a chance to share ideas and examine the relationship of church and academy. It's a topic I've thought a lot about over my adult life, since I've spent more than 12 of the past 15 years either attending or working for various colleges and universities. Interestingly enough, every one of those schools was founded by Methodists: Hendrix College, Vanderbilt University, Lambuth University, and Duke University. Of the four, all but Vandy continue to maintain some affiliation with the UMC.

But the church's understanding of its educational mission has changed significantly from the late 19th- to early 20th-century founding of most of its institutions of higher learning. Administrators at Methodist schools will be quick to tell you that they are not "church schools." The very term makes admissions officers shudder with sectarian horror. Instead, they are at best "church-related," a term that is vague enough that it can mean a great deal or nothing at all.

Sometimes the Enlightenment desire to appear blessedly free of religion - which is very strong in campus culture - leads the uninformed to overreach in their speech. I have personally walked behind tour groups led by undergraduate students on Duke's campus on a couple of occasions, when the guide pointed up to the statues of John Wesley and Francis Asbury on the facade of Duke Chapel. The university was founded by Methodists, the guide explained each time, but we here at Duke haven't been affiliated with any church for a long, long time. That isn't true, of course. But to prospective students and parents who might be offended by the idea that the Christian faith should have a robust place in the academy, a little white lie is one way to apologize for the beautiful-yet-unmistakeably-Christian presence of a big church in the middle of campus.

Generally speaking, I think there are about three ways to think about Methodism's historic mission in higher ed. One is as an avenue for the education of the poor and the children of preachers. Varieties of that rationale were behind Methodist establishments of everything from John Wesley's school at Kingswood to the post-Civil War foundations of most Methodist colleges in the U.S. But take a look at the price tag of United Methodist-related colleges and universities today. Many still give discounts to PK's, but "half-off" tuition still is pretty pricey when your tuition is northward of $25,000 per year. And the poor? You're much more likely to find them in junior colleges and state universities than in private church-related schools.

A second way to think about the educational mission is as a way to form pastors for ministry. Since the M.Div is now required for ordained elders, and some master's-level degree is (almost always) required for deacons, that means the mission of theological education is mostly with the 13 UM-related seminaries. In my opinion, this is a continuing area where the church really needs to be involved in an educational mission. Unfortunately, there is just about zero consensus as to what theological education should look like. I happen to think Duke Divinity School is the best theological school in the connection, but someone educated at Claremont School of Theology or Iliff School of Theology would probably think they had landed on another planet if they spent much time around here. Is it okay for a church's seminaries to have widely divergent understandings of the church's own educational mission for its future clergy? And if not, how does the church bring about a consensus in its seminaries? Those seem to me to be open questions.

And then a third way to think about the church's mission in higher education is simply to say that it is the way the church contributes to a healthier, more robust, better educated society. That, I would argue, is the de facto reason the UMC continues to support undergraduate education at all. Though most UM-related schools have an active campus ministry affiliated with the denomination in some way, that is a far cry from the idea that the church has a vision for how higher education itself should be done. It is instead the secular paradigm of higher ed in a liberal democratic society that has won the day; it took the thought of Enlightenment-era French and German intellectuals about 250 years, but they have now successfully displaced the confessionally-oriented, communally Christian model of Methodist college life. And so the church's continuing support of its offspring can really only be justified with the affirmation that "our" schools are making a better society overall. But for my money, here's the really interesting question: What happens when the society we've bettered no longer has a use for something as odd and illiberal as the church?

These points really go beyond what Eric and I are doing in the feature piece, but I've been mulling them over since we finished it. He and I both focus a lot on the way the church can have a formative role in the lives of college students. And whether we're doing that in old ways or new, we simply must not let 18-22 year old men and women continue to fall through the cracks. If you get time to read the dialogue, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Our most crucial need...

... is vibrant & faithful campus ministry.

The church as a whole needs to embrace this idea in a big way.

Here are two reasons why:

First, the transition from high school to college is fun & exciting, but also scary & disruptive. You leave a stable environment, where the structures of nurture, authority, and accountability are all very plain. And you move into an environment where nurture is tough to find, authority is in flux, and accountability is often nil. Campus ministry provides a setting where young adult men and women can continue to grow in grace as they navigate the waters of college life.

Second, for many young men and women, the stirrings of a call into ministry that they might have sensed in high school come into full bloom during that crucial period from age 18 to age 22. But in order to really hear that call and begin to respond to it, they need the right environment. When it is resourced well and led capably, campus ministry offers that environment.

A colleague of mine, the Rev. Creighton Alexander, has written an op/ed in the United Methodist Reporter that asks the question, "Does anybody care about UMC's campus ministry?" Creighton offers a compelling argument both about the current neglect of campus ministry in the UMC and about the urgent need to reverse that neglect and embrace the potential that campus ministry represents. Creighton lays it out much better than I could, so go read his column for yourself.

Our campus ministries are a vulnerable part of the church's overall ministry. Wesley Foundations at state universities and Christian Life programs at UM-related colleges typically depend on apportionment dollars (either directly or indirectly) for their funding. And when the economy is bad, it is those programs that often suffer from cutbacks.

Another friend, the Rev. Eric Van Meter, has written compellingly in the past about the need for us to ask new questions and think unconventionally if we want the church to have a strong future. Eric is a campus minister, of course, at the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University.

And Eric, along with many of his colleagues, know how crucial campus ministry is to the health of the church - not because we want to prop up an institution, but because we want that institution to be the kind of community where the gospel of Jesus is proclaimed, broken people are given saving grace, and mature disciples are formed.

Campus ministry has the potential to 'stand in the gap,' as it were, providing a solid faith community for young adults during a vulnerable period in the lives, as well as offering an environment where those whom God is calling can hear and respond to that call into ministry.

Campus ministers and their ministry settings need our help. So be an advocate. Speak out. And pray without ceasing.

Young Adult no more (?)

At the age of 35, Eric Van Meter reflects on the experience that many Gen Xers are having these days: that of moving past the fabled "young adult" category.

As Eric puts it, he is now in "the border country between young adult and unqualified adult."

His column series in the Reporter began here, and in his new article, he reports that he is more hopeful than ever. He talks about the somewhat strange experience of moving out of that phase of life where everyone is excited about who you are (young, and therefore the hope for the future) but no one wants to listen to you (because you're young, and you don't know anything).

In your 30s, people do start to listen to you. And with that age, you also tend to mellow a little bit. You start to take the less savory and more frustrating parts of your own denomination as an inevitable part of what it means to be in a church that is run by real, broken people.

But - and this is an important but - you still have the desire to work for the change you so ardently hoped for back in the more idealistic days of your 20s. This is probably a common experience of all generations; it's just that Gen Xers are only now beginning to realize it for themselves.

Eric points to the way that the Arkansas Conference Vision Team invited a bunch of Gen X pastors to help think about what it would mean to "youthify" the church in Arkansas. As Eric rightly points out, the willingness of the Vision Team to make such a move is a very positive step. The group Eric took part in did some great brainstorming. Now the annual conference needs to show that it can not only listen but also take action based on what they heard.

In my recent article in Faith & Leadership, I specifically used Eric as an example of one who has navigated the waters of ministry as a young adult and made a positive impact. I also believe he represents a type for hundreds of other young (yes, still young) United Methodist pastors out there. Let's not forget the difference we can make!

Treading water...

My posting has slowed down a little bit the past couple of weeks. I've been inordinately busy, trying to balance my work at school and my ministry at my church. I'm working on a paper on conceptions of friendship in marriage, which has been absorbing all my spare moments. I'll get back up to speed with twice weekly posts when I am able.

In the mean time, you might check out this article by my friend, Eric Van Meter. Eric is a clergy colleague from Arkansas who serves the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. He contributes to the United Methodist Reporter from time to time, including in this post where he reflects on turning 35 and passing out of the 'young adult' category. Eric's writing is generally funny and insightful. In this article, he offers a hopeful word about the future of the church we commonly serve.

Learning to die

Eric Van Meter concludes his remarkable series of 'imaginatve therapy sessions' in the current issue of the UM Reporter. His articles have all been based on the idea that he has a dysfunctional relationship with his church - the UMC. The same spiritual fire and theological depth that drew him to find his pastoral home as a United Methodist minister is sometimes hard to see in the regular machinary of the church's bureaucracy. Systems, processes, and the inertia of old habits get ingrained into a denomination's culture in such a way that they are hard to root out.

Out of step with the gospel? Who cares. This is the way we've always done things.

In this last installment, Eric's therapy sessions conclude with the realization that Jesus' call on him (and on the church) is a call to die. We can soft pedal the idea of death as a "death to the world" or a "death to the old self" but the reality of the gospel's call is that we are buried with Christ through our baptism, so that we might have the hope of being raised with him through resurrection (Romans 6). And this means pursuing God's call on our lives with reckless abandon, including a faithfulness unto real, actual death if that is what is required of us.

All of this means that we can't try to save the United Methodist Church.

As Eric rightly points out, trying to "restore the church" is a wrong-headed mission. It's not the institution of the UMC that Jesus wants to preserve. The UMC can be a faithful ecclesial community insofar as it is reflective of the church Jesus does want to preserve. But the right response to Jesus' call is not in trying to prop up a structure that has only dubious claims to faithfulness in the first place. It is rather to live the kind of lives befitting of Jesus' disciples, in the community he has established.

That may kill us. And it certainly may kill the United Methodist Church. But it won't kill the Church, which has been built upon a rock and will endure until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.

I'm a Wesleyan, by the way. And it's worth pointing out that Wesley would never want us to focus on him in some kind of fetishizing way, nor would he want us to try to restore the UMC-as-institution to some former glory when we were The Largest Church in America (the memory of which haunts our every move). He would rather want us to practice what he called "primitive Christianity", which is a form of disciplined, faithful living that embodies the gospel and witnesses to the watching world.

Reflections on the ordination process

On the second night of my Annual Conference session this year, the young clergy of the conference had their annual Gen X/Y Clergy Dinner. This is a practice that began a few years ago under the leadership of Eric Van Meter, and it has grown in size each year. In fact, this year the bishop ate supper with us! The dinner gives a great opportunity for Gen-X and Millennial-aged clergy to get to know one another, have fellowship, and engage in conversation about issues that are relevant to our lives in ministry.

This year, Eric asked me to lead a conversation about Lovett Weems and Ann Michel's new book, The Crisis of Younger Clergy. (I've written a review of this book, which you can read here.) Their book looks at the declining numbers of young adult elders in the United Methodist Church and attempts to offer some solutions. It is, by the way, a great resource for Boards of Ordained Ministry, District Committees on Ministry, and local churches. They could all benefit by using it to seek out ways the church could better nurture a "culture of call" for its young people.

As the conversation began, we asked each person to speak - sharing information about placement in ministry and about the greatest challenge each has faced in the ordination candidacy process. The results were fascinating. I think it would be best for me to just list the examples we were given of greatest challenges encountered:

- Loneliness/Isolation
- Difficulties in itineracy/family issues
- "Good ol' boy" system
- A feeling of invisibility
- Not recognizing the value of people serving in extension ministries
- Being sensitive to clergy couples
- Mechanics of the process (and let-downs in BOM record keeping)
- Seeing the attrition of others leaving the ministry
- Not taken seriously and the church no responsive to concerns
- BOM politics [editorial note: presumably among members of the BOM itself and how that impacts candidates]
- Being sensitive to the particularities of calling
- Others' expectations of my calling in ministry
- The BOM's difficulty in really nurturing candidates

Following this time of sharing experiences, we asked the young adults present to offer possible ways that the candidacy and ordination process could be improved. Here are their responses:

- Need for great financial support (MEF Funds, support for Exploration and other events focused on calling, etc)
- Need for programs run throughout the conference - "centers of hospitality" - possibly on college campuses. Also, a greater, more personal role for mentors. Conference funds could support these types of initiatives.
- Accountability/Peer Groups amongst probationary/provisional clergy
- Networking & support structures within the Annual Conference [editorial note: the work of Eric Van Meter and others over the past several years has sought to directly meet this need]
- The character of the relationships between young clergy [editorial note: this point was much-discussed, and a lot was shared about what relationships can accomplish that programs cannot]
- A "call event" for high school or college students held locally within the annual conference possibly in the off-year that the Exploration event does not occur

Overall, I thought it was a very productive conversation - at times funny and at times poignant. There were 26 people present for the conversation, and several more than that at the dinner just before. All of them were either currently in the ordination process or recently ordained elders and deacons. For me, the fact that so many were present and engaged in the conversation was a great sign of hope. The point that came up at the end of the evening about the importance of person-to-person relationships was key. The more we nurture those, the less impersonal the ordination process will seem. And that would be an important step in helping young clergy enter their ministries with the right attitude and the right relationships.

Two articles worth reading

Eric Van Meter has got a new article in the United Methodist Reporter as a part of his "In Therapy" series that takes a creative look at how young adults relate to the UMC. In his ususual, insightful way, Eric takes aim at how the church tends to want to "package what it values" so that young adults will buy into it. The problem, as he sees it, is that what the church is packaging (or re-packaging) is oftentimes a "connectional web" of structures, processes, and institutional forms that offer little sustenance to the hunger that young adults feel for true Christian community.

He doesn't say it exactly this way, but I think a lot of what Eric is talking about is the way in which the church so often tries to offer a program for something that can really only be lived. What young adults want is what the grace of the Holy Spirit teaches them to want, deep in their souls: sacrificial discipleship in a community of Jesus' friends.

Also, I don't know how I missed this one, but John the Methodist (of Locusts and Honey blog fame) also has a really good, short article in the Reporter where he looks at the issue of calling in ministry. Countering the oft-heard statement that you should "only go into ministry if you can't see yourself doing anything else," John cites numerous biblical examples of calling where figures such as Elijah and Jeremiah remained faithful to the calls even when their own lives would have been made easier by doing something else.

I would want to qualify John's closing statement: "Those of us who serve in full-time ministry ... do not do so because we find it blissful. We do so because we are called." In one sense, he's right - but only if you define 'blissful' as the kind of sugary, superficial consumerist gratification that the world names as happiness. For that matter, the article's title: "A calling: not the same as happiness" evokes the same distinction (only with 'happiness' instead of 'blissful').

It may be the case that calling or vocation should be understood not through the world's definitional claims but rather through the new meanings for words like happiness, bliss, joy, and love that we learn when we are formed in the community of the church. The Johannine account of what it means to be a follower of Jesus is key in this changed understanding. Take, for instance, Jesus' words to the disciples in John 15:15: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." There, we have an example of how Jesus' calling on the disciples opens up new meanings to them - specifically, they know Jesus himself in a new way, and that will change the whole lens through which they view the world.

Another Johannine example is in 1 John 3:16 - "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." Again, in our day to day lives, we don't often equate love with sacrifice unto death. But here, we have love redefined for us - and this has connections to what we ultimately understand happiness and joy to be.

So I think calling can and does bring real happiness. But only if we understand what real happiness is all about. I would go so far as to say that the experience of ministry is sublime. The practice of ministry itself is a means of grace that can open up levels of deep joy and love one would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

John, I hope your time away from L&H has been restful. You are missed.

Itineracy under the magnifying glass

This is an important post.

My friend and Arkansas Conference colleague Eric Van Meter continues his series of columns in the United Methodist Reporter this week. You can access his first, second, and third articles in the Reporter's archive.

In his current installment, Eric looks at the issue of itineracy. He centers on the problem that itineracy creates in the church being able to fulfill its mission, which is (according to Paragraph 120 in the Book of Discipline) to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Eric writes, "Itineracy - in practice, if not in theory - fosters [a] culture of shared-and-shirked responsibility. Superintendents, pastors and local congregations all share the responsibility for the formation of Christian disciples. Most of these folks are decent, committed people who love the Lord and want to serve faithfully.

"But they're distracted, constantly preoccupied with the short-term commitments our practice of itineracy encourages."

Bingo. He is right-on there. Because the UMC has evolved into a large denomination with congregations ranging in size from a handful up to thousands, the itinerant system has taken on the character of a corporate ladder. When you get a church, you need to balance the budget, avoid scandal, keep attendance steady, and come across to your people as reasonably competent. Do all that, and you can be guaranteed a move in a few years' time to a bigger church with a more impressive salary and greater prestige. All the incentive for taking risks for the gospel are effectively eliminated.

Eric says that pastors accomplish their tasks as well as they do in spite of, and not because of, the increasing transience of the American experience. And I think he's hitting on something really crucial. Think of it this way: in the true days of the circuit riders back in the 1800s, it was the communities that were permanent and the pastors that were not. You might get a new Methodist preacher every year or two, but you could be sure that the same people you knew in your little town would grow up, grow old, and die there.

Now our cultural situation is such that people move around constantly. Take me, for example: I'm 32 years old, and since I was 18 I have lived in Paragould, AR, Conway, AR, Nashville, TN, Jackson, TN, Searcy, AR, and now Durham, NC. That's 6 different towns in 14 years! I may be a little over the norm because I've moved so many times for school and ministry, but my experience is by no means uncommon for today's young adults. And in fact, it's not even young adults, since job opportunities, divorces, and other factors lead even older adults to move much more frequently than they did in the past.

All that leads to a suggestion that Eric makes well: namely, the suggestion that pastors and congregations need to covenant together for long-term ministries that will allow for the full flowering of gospel ministry. If communities are more transient, the cultural reality calls for pastors to be less so. And that means bishops and district superintendents realizing the situation and taking on the discipline of really listening to their pastors and churches instead of forcing pastors for the sake of the appointment process.

This is a timely and prophetic column. I only hope the rest of the church is reading it.

Into the wilderness

My friend Eric Van Meter, campus minister at Arkansas State University, continues his series on the church in this week's United Methodist Reporter.

In his current column, Eric says that he has always had a desire to work along "the borders of the church." He uses the image of an old, rusty barbed wire fence that is meant to mark off territory but stands largely forgotten. Those familiar with the UMC's recent wrangling over the meaning of church membership will not fail to catch Eric's meaning: the dry description of boundaries off the page of a Book of Discipline are no match for the identity given to us in a living faith with Christ through the church.

Eric writes, "Regardless of how much time we spend trying to identify our target market, or how many assimilation classes we hold to help people transform from outsiders to one of us, the fact remains that the land between the United Methodist Church and the world at large is frontier territory. It's chaotic, disorderly, untamed ... And interesting."

He uses his own ministry group as an example - college students. They show a deep desire for relationship with Christ but are often skittish about the formal aspects of church membership. But there are plenty of them out there, in the wilderness areas, waiting to be found. (Note, for instance, my post earlier this week about the 48 million religiously unaffiliated people in the United States alone.)

Eric admits that boundary issues are important, but he insists that we pay a disproportionate amount of time dealing with them. He suggests that moving out into the wilderness - a call to evangelism if ever I've heard one - would help us refocus on the true meaning of the gospel.

The subtext here definitely touches on issues of sexuality in the church, and Eric is offering one way forward (even if it is implied rather than explicit). There are other ways of approaching that particular topic, of course, and some would suggest that a greater emphasis on discipline and accountability in membership is the way the church should move. Regardless, with General Conference looming ever closer, it is certainly a timely subject matter.

Have fun stormin' the castle!

Eric Van Meter continues his imaginative therapy session in the United Methodist Reporter this week. This stuff is getting really good. He compares the church he came to know as a kind of giant castle, where the walls and towers have been built by successive generations of inhabitants to the point where it is just a monumental structure. We all know the castle has got serious problems. The problem, of course, is that the current inhabitants of the castle (that's right, us) keep trying to figure out how to rearrange the furniture inside without realizing that it may be the very structure itself that is the problem.

Local churches, annual conferences, and aspiring leaders all want to improve the church. But inevitably they just try to work with making what we've already got work a bit better. Eric calls this tendency "tinkering with space." I've also heard it called rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is usually well-intentioned, but it misses the heart of the problem.

I don't know whether Eric would agree with this or not, but I tend to see the root of the church's problem as mistaking Wesleyan theology for United Methodist polity. The Holy Spirit may not call us to revival, and if so, that will be God's judgment on our faithlessness. But if the prospect of revival exists, I think the key question will be whether we can do something that Wesley essentially could not: respond to the Spirit's invitation by reforming the church without separating from it (or destroying it entirely). Because as Eric points out, being faithful as the church is ultimately not about polishing the castle walls. It is about living as Christian people redeemed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A strained love

My friend and fellow pastor Eric Van Meter has got a remarkable article in the United Methodist Reporter this week, where he tells the imaginative story of being in "therapy" for a troubled relationship with his true love - the church. The church he's talking about is the UMC, and he relates how he was attracted to it by the warmly evangelistic outreach of the Wesley Foundation where he went to college. His love of the church grew throughout his college career as he saw a Wesleyan expression of faith at its best, from heartfelt worship, to weekly Holy Communion, to outreach ministry to children and the elderly.

Eric then describes how his idyllic view of the church came crashing down around him during the ordination process, particularly when he started meeting with the Board of Ordained Ministry. There he saw how particulars of polity certain structures or traditions of the church (though he doesn't say which ones) caused him to become frustrated, because it seemed that they stood in the way of the church's full flourishing. These experiences caused him to begin seeing the church as having a "split personality."

This article is worth a read, both for its creativity and for the way so much of it will ring true in the experiences of young clergy. This is only the first installment in a series of articles continuing the same story. I'll post them all as they appear online.

What a week!

It's Friday evening, and I am finishing a 7-day period where I preached at a blessing service for a friend's child, attended the Arkansas Annual Conference, worked like crazy to get caught up on all the Latin work I missed while I was away from Durham, and logged about 2000 miles in travel. It's good to be home!

Since this was the year we elected delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences, it was an interesting annual conference session. I'll share a few thoughts:

-- As always, it is really good to attend annual conference just to see friends and colleagues in ministry. That was especially the case this year, since I am now living in North Carolina and haven't gotten to see those folks Emily and I have missed over the past year. I also had a lot of people express the desire for us to return to the conference when I finish my Th.D., something that I hope God provides a way for us to do.

-- This year marked the third year in a row that Eric Van Meter has organized a Gen X clergy supper. We had 30 or so clergy and clergy spouses who gathered in the Arkansas Tech University Wesley Foundation building on Monday evening for good ol' Arkansas barbeque (this is a noun rather than a verb for those of you not from the South). Eric does a good job of resisting the temptation to set an agenda at these gatherings. And so the conversations just naturally flow from what our concerns and hopes happen to be. This year, we focused on the need to keep in touch with young seminarians while they are in school as well as talking about how to get better involved in connectional conference structures such as the Board of Ordained Ministry and other appointed bodies. We believe this is important to add our voices to conference leadership. This year, we made the firmest commitment yet to keeping in touch and making progress throughout the year. We had some volunteers offer to serve as 'point people,' and I think we are going to use the new 7 Villages website to build an online connection. Kudos to Eric for all his work in this area. He has shown real leadership. And good luck to him as he starts a new appointment in campus ministry at Arkansas State Univeristy in Jonesboro. The Gen X clergy gathering is, by the way, something I would highly recommend for other annual conferences to do.

-- Billy Reeder and his group Sanctus led an emergent-style worship service outdoors following regular worship on Monday evening that was pretty well attended. The Holy Spirit was obviously in attendance, which was awesome.

-- This was the first conference session that I have attended where we have elected delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences. For all the horror stories I have heard about how nasty elections can be, I think this one went pretty well. We ended up electing a balanced group including Conservatives, Liberals, and Moderates. I think that is important, since it reflects the makeup of our annual conference. For the record, I personally voted for people who would generally be categorized in all three groups.

-- Kudos to Revs. J.J. Whitney and Aubrietta Jones, who were elected as General and Jurisdictional delegates, respectively. They are both Gen X'ers and help to bring a young clergy voice to our delegations. Sarah Steele, a Millennial teenager, was also elected as a lay delegate to General Conference. And Jay Clark, youth ministry guru who has held positions in the Arkansas Conference, New England Conference, and the General Board of Discipleship, was elected as a Jurisdictional alternate. Jay is soon moving from Nashville to become the minister of youth at Pulaski Heights UMC in Little Rock, and my only regret is that he was not elected as a General Conference delegate in his own right. But then, there's always 2012!

One final note: In her e-mail recap of annual conference, SMU professors (and Arkansas Conference elder) Rebekah Miles wrote, "There is nothing like the sound of a group of preachers and lay people singing hymns loudly and enthusiastically at annual conference." Amen to that! "And are we yet alive?" You bet we are. And the work of the kingdom goes on.