Leadership Training with Gil Rendle

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a learning/training day with Gil Rendle, part of a training for leaders as United Methodists in most of New York State prepare to become one annual conference instead of four this July. I found Rendle's presentation to be very thought-provoking, churning thoughts not only on what we will do as a new annual conference, but what we do/can do in my local church.

Here are some notes and my comments mixed, hope you can decipher!:

Rendle notes that our UM membership has been declining for 40 years. We've been in the wilderness for 40 years, but in the wilderness, God can bring about change. We can manage incremental change - we can handle that because we can control it. But deep change - we can't control deep change, and deep change is what we need.

He talked about Friedman and family systems and the idea that "we've grossly overrated the power of information to change people with no motivation to change." That's pretty applicable in all areas of life, don't you think? I can't help but think of my favorite line from Tracy Chapman's "Change" - "If everything you think you know makes your life unbearable, would you change?" What is our motivation for changing the way we do church?

He points to CEUs as one system that was implemented to 'fix people' - 'If we only had better leaders' - just make them get more education, and the churches will be fixed... He says, "I was not trained to make disciples, I was trained to make members," of his own training for ministry, noting how we're set up to fail at our own mission of disciple-making.

He says that when "things are getting out of control, the natural response is to make more rules." But good leadership is: Not about doing things right, but about doing right things. I think we've particularly been struggling with this in my local church - are we trying to do things right or do right things?

Management satisfies. Leadership (well done appropriately) dissatisfies. That’s how you affect change. Unless we are dissatisfying, church will not change.

North American Hospitality: Fix things up just the way we like them, invite people in, and are happy until they want to change the channel. That's not biblical hospitality, radical hospitality.

Technical work – known solutions to known problems.

Adaptive work – can’t do technical. You don’t more to action. You move to learning. Have to learn to act. Deep work.

He said, "Who are we? What are we supposed to do? We think we already know the answer. But we know who we were, not who we are." In my first congregation, we once did a project as part of our stewardship campaign that asked people to identify the 'visionaries' within the congregation. To name people. And the congregation did - but it named mostly people who had died in the past years. They knew who they were in the past, but not their current identity.

Rendle says we are asked for leadership, but only rewarded for management in our systems. After all, asking the ‘why’ questions translates into a longer meeting! Whenever the system doesn’t know what to do, it does what it knows.

"Pastoral mode is one of our default modes – tries to manage everyone’s feelings, care for everyone." This is a big one for me personally. I have a very hard time not trying to make sure everyone is getting along and feeling ok. It's hard to say: I'm sorry you're not with the change that is taking place," and then just move on. I'm learning! Rendle notes that not all the Israelites make the journey out of the wilderness.

Church metaphor we love/live by (but is obviously bad): We have to learn how to build a new prison, using the bricks from the old prison, without losing any of the prisoners.

How do we prepare leaders for congregations we haven’t yet met, when we still require conformity of leaders?

The system get whatever it measures. How much, how many, how often measures. In absence of measures, get the same as before, or chaos. Have to measure something, but we’re using faulty measures. At the same time, you can't just have no measures. If you don't like the ones in place, alright, then what *do* you want to be measured on?

Our stated desired outcome: Improved relationship with Christ, enabling change in the world.

But: If you can’t measure output, you’ll measure input. (i.e. "I worked x hours." Not bragging. Just trying to show what we put *in* to system since we don’t know what we're getting out. And we feel we've never gotten enough inputs.)

Long established organizations have 2 missions: Public – what you say you do. Private – what you actually work on. The Private is always the satisfaction of the strongest constituent voices. School: Public – educate children. Private – satisfy parents, teachers, administrators. Students don’t make list.

Church: Public – making disciples. Private – satisfy clergy, congregations, interest groups. Disciples don’t make list.

Was: Whether clergy and congregations were happy.

Takes us from output position, buts us into input positions. We’re expendable resources. Can’t be deployed for our satisfaction but for the church’s mission.

When a system doesn’t know what went wrong, it wants to know who went wrong.

If you go at your work at a technical level, you might get all your tasks done, but it won’t matter.

When a paradigm shifts, everything has to go back to zero. Look for the purpose sentence in Discipline, and stop reading.

Mine

Some of you know that I just returned from spending a week in Cape Cod with my family. One of the best parts of the trip for me was spending time with my 2 year-old nephew, Sam. I have to say that being an aunt is one of the greatest joys in my life. Sam is so precious, so wonderful. One night, my mom and I took Sam out to dinner so that my brother and sister-in-law could go out for dinner on their own. My mom and I took Sam out for dinner too – but after running around and playing and go-go-going in his new vacation home, a tuckered out Sam fell asleep before we even got to the restaurant. While we waited for our table, and for the first 10 or 15 minutes before our food arrived, I held a perfect sleeping Sam on my lap, and enjoyed all the smiles from staff and patrons admiring Sam’s sweet face. As I was holding him, I was just really overwhelmed with how much I adore Sam, and I was just thinking: “Sam is mine.” Mine. Not as in ownership, obviously, but as in connection. Deep, unbreakable bond. Relationship based on unconditional love.

Sam is not the only person I feel this way about, although he’s pretty darn special. I tend to feel this way about my parishioners too – I remember sitting at an elementary school graduation for some children in my first appointment, and watching as my church girls received award after award, and I was sitting there thinking, “they’re mine.” As the Conference Youth Coordinator for the North Central New York Annual Conference, I look at the young people I work with, and watch them leading worship, and speaking about God at work in their lives, and I think: “Mine.” Just this week I visited one of our church camps, Casowasco, and saw several “former youth” of mine who are now on staff at camp, becoming objects of inspiration to a whole set of young people on their own, and I just felt so happy seeing them in action, in ministry, and I thought, “They’re still mine.” As you may also know, our annual conference will soon be merged together with three other annual conferences in New York State. This June, just before I started at First United Church, I spent a week a training camp for youth from all four conferences. And after a week together, I left feeling like the number of youth who I count as “mine” had just quadrupled. I once baptized a woman a few days before she died from ALS, a most horrific disease. I didn’t know her very well at all – she was a friend of a friend of the congregation. But as I sat with her and said those words: “I baptize you,” I was thinking, “and so now you are mine.”

Mine. As I was thinking about that amazing bond that we can feel with others, imperfect though we are, I thought I was starting to understand, or at least get a better hint at how God feels about us. I think of my love for my nephew Sam, which is certainly one of the most powerful feelings I’ve experienced, and I can only imagine a bit of how much my brother and sister-in-law feel about Sam, their child, who they created, and who is, in every way, made from them, part of them, even while he is unique and all his own. How much, then, must God love us! I think of the chorus of one of my favorite songs from The Faith We Sing, called, “You are Mine,” by David Haas. “Do not be afraid, I am with you. I have called you each by name. Come and follow me, I will bring you home; I love you and you are mine.” God must look at us, and think, “Mine!” My beloved children. Created in my image. So unique. So wonderful. So precious. Mine. God must just treasure us.

Sometimes, we lose sight of that. We can’t see ourselves as God sees us, and/or can’t see one another as God sees. But if you can remember the love that swells inside you when you look into the eyes of your child, or grandchild, or niece or nephew, or godchild, or student, or friend – I hope you can catch a glimpse, a hint, of how beloved you are, knowing that you belong to God.

Revgals Friday Five: Friends

I decided to play the Friday Five this week - Jan writes: As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "The way to have a friend is to be a friend."

So today let's write about the different kinds of friends we have, like childhood friends, lost friends, tennis friends, work friends, and the list goes on. List 5 different types of friends you have had in your life and what they were/are like.


***
1. Long lost friends - I've written before about the struggle I have with what I'd call "long lost friends," those relationships you have in life that were once so important, but for whatever reason, have disappeared. It's less common, now, to completely lose touch, I guess, or lose awareness of what someone else is up to, thanks to thinks like facebook (see #2), which I truly treasure, even as these mediums drive others crazy. I love that something like facebook at least lets me answer the "what ever happened to..." question, even if we don't remain in contact. Who are my lost friends? My elementary school "boyfriend" who gave me a stuffed chesire cat for my birthday (which I still have,) and then moved to Florida. The Norwegian boy who came to the US for a year with his family and was in my third grade class - Oystein Pritz. Are you out there? Countless camp friends - they should really have their own category - those friendships you make for a week that are so intense, but you mostly never talk to again: Star Berry, Kerri Sessions, Jen Lee, Sarah Kerley, Casie Salmon, Becky Parker..., the Italian exchange student who stayed with us for a month when I was in 9th grade, Michaela Tafuni. The really intriguing Jacob DeSoto from Junior High. Where are you people?

2. High-school Friends - I've only maintained unbroken contact with a very few friends from high-school, but thanks to the wonders of facebook, I've now reconnected with many more old friends. Some, a handful, I'm surprised I ever lost contact with, since we were pretty close in high-school. (I'm talking about you, Candice Torres!) Others, I was never really friends with in high-school to begin with, as far as I remember, but unlike others who hate getting requests from these folks, I enjoy it. To me, it says, "Hey, we're thirty now, high-school was a long time ago, we're adults, and we can make the connections we wouldn't make then." I can accept that, and appreciate that. There's also a couple of people that I've liked becoming friends with because they just grew up into such different people than I expected. One person, in particular, has just been such a kind, sweet person to me, and I never would have guessed that would happen a dozen years ago.

3. College friends - My roommate my freshman year of college and I really did not get along our first semester. But we got over it, became very close, and have been good friends ever since. We still visit each other whenever we can. I have a handful of very close friends from college that I keep in touch with outside of facebook-type exchanges. The longevity of these friendships, the strength of them, above and beyond both high-school and seminary (unexpected) friendships has often surprised me. In seminary, for example, a basic common purpose, and ending up generally all working in the same field, makes it seem more likely to stay in touch. But in actuality, it's my Museum-Studies-friend and my lives-on-a-reservation-in-Arizona friend who I stay in better touch with.

4. Seminary friends - I loved Drew. I love my seminary friends. I had a hard time settling in at Drew my first year. I graduated from college a year early, and I missed the friends I would have been graduating with a lot. I kept to myself a lot my first year. But eventually, I became friends with a really wonderful group of people. We don't always keep in great touch, especially since I spent the first 4 years of my ministry farther away than most of the rest of them. But I love the chances I do have to see them, and I'm proud of all the neat things they're doing in their respective ministries, including one who leads speical multimedia worship, a campus ministry chaplain, an associate general secretary at a UM agency, one who's incorporates a fitness program into a spiritual disipline for her congregation, some working on doctoral degrees now, a pastor taking leave to spend 4 months in Nigeria, friends working in social services, serving in Idaho, Arkansas, etc.

5. Colleagues - Over the last six years, I've realized that one of my favorite things about being United Methodist is the connectional system and the unique collegiality that afford me as a UM Clergy person. I know not all UM pastors feel this way, I'm sure, but I know many do just treasure times where we get together. I really enjoy attending annual conference, district days, even mundane meetings, because of the people I get to be around. Lately, I'm enjoying a newly started young clergy group connecting under-40 clergy in my soon-to-be-new conference. I enjoyed my probationary covenant group, and the district clergy women's group I used to meet with monthly, and some of my dearest friends in the world are also my colleagues, deepening our relationships.

Harder Things

A couple of years ago, I wrote that the hardest thing in ministry was announcing to a congregation that you were moving on to a new appointment. I can now add a little bit to that: it's even harder to do when you're leaving quite a bit sooner than anyone (including yourself) anticipated, and when you have to share that you've requested the move yourself.

Today, it was announced at FLUMC that I will be moving back to the North Central New York Annual Conference, where I have maintained my membership while serving here in New Jersey. This move comes as a result of a lot of struggle, prayer, and discernment on my part. When I came to this appointment, I felt like I was being appointed to just the right place at just the right time, and I certainly don't think I was wrong about that. I've just been surprised to discover that my journey here will be much shorter than I first thought it would be, and that perhaps the plans I've had in mind for myself weren't the things God had planned for me. (Go figure! As a pastor, you'd think this part wouldn't be so surprising all the time....)

I've told folks here what I want to make very clear: my asking to move home is about just that - home and feeling a sense of homesickness for my family and conference. You don't have to know me for long to know that my family is extremely close-knit. For all our different interests and paths, we mostly live close together, and spend a lot of time together. New Jersey and Central New York aren't that far apart, but I very much miss, for example, getting to see my gorgeous nephew all the time:
What has been particularly wonderful is the graciousness that people show in the situations when you most need it. I've been dreading making this announcement. I knew it would be shocking to announce a move after just two years of ministry in an appointment. I knew people would be shocked, and expected that some people would be hurt by my news. But what I encountered today was just grace and understanding, which I needed very much. I guess everybody understands what it's like to want to go home, and I was greeted by so many kind words and wishes today, such a gift to me. As my SPRC chair was announcing the news (brand new in her role, poor woman!), I was thinking: "Hey, I'm holding myself together pretty well. Maybe I'll say a few words myself too." So I got up to speak after she was done, and immediately realized it was a bad move on my part, as a instantly started crying. Ah well. I'm still glad I added my own words from the heart. I've invited my folks here to relocate to CNY with me, but so far no takers.... ;)

So, in July, I will become the pastor at The First United Church of East Syracuse. This congregation is a blended United Methodist and Presbyterian Congregation, a congregation that came together because of a fire that burned the Methodist Church to the ground in the late 60s. Three days after the fire, the two congregation began worshipping together at the Presbyterian Church, and they've never gone back! When a new church home was built in the 1973, it was home to a united congregation. I have some learning ahead of me for sure, as I explore how blended congregations work and brush up on some Presbyterian history and polity, things we might have touched on in Church History in seminary but are sadly now forgotten! In a "small world" situation, Rev. Matt Labriola, a retired pastor here in my congregation in Franklin Lakes, co-officiated a wedding at First United a couple of years ago, so he and his wife have already been to my new appointment and even brought me a bulletin today from there time there. How strange!

Now that I've been through a pastoral transition, I think I have some better ideas about what to expect and a better sense of what I want to and can accomplish here before I go. I'm looking forward to my new appointment, and I'm looking forward to enjoying everything about my next months here in Franklin Lakes.

Bishop's Convocation: David Lowes Watson

In mid-October, I attended the Bishop's Convocation in my home conference, North Central New York. Our speaker was David Lowes Watson, a retired clergy person, seminary professor, and a Wesley/Methodism scholar. I really enjoyed the event (I always enjoy time with my colleagues), and I particularly enjoyed Watson's presentation. He was funny (frequently using the words 'naughty' and 'twit' to describe people in his stories) and smart, and had all of us, I think, pondering the role of the pastor and how it has changed, and what it should be.

Watson talked about the contemporary heresy: We try to isolate God in the instant present. (Think of a digital watch - it gives you only the instant time, with no sense of time before and time after.) We've "so personalized our discipleship that we've made God something that depends on us," he said. We're anthropocentric, and consumeristic. And church in a consumeristic culture is "almost lethal." Democratizing of the church has resulted in people determining the gospel.

He talked a lot about salvation, starting with Oswald Chambers' statement that we are "condemend to be saved." Watson talked about not universal salvation, exactly, but the idea that salvation, who is and who isn't saved, just isn't our business. That's not our task. Our task is preaching the good news. End story. He described salvation as "giving up your resistance to God." Discipleship, though, can't be the "door to salvation" without resulting in keeping people out. "If there is one empty place at the heavenly table, there will be a terrible silence." He defined hell as "the place where mysteries (ie pain, evil, injustice) are currently on hold." "We are born into a world that is being saved whether we like it or not. So we must either accept or reject [being saved.] The real miracle is that God finds us even mildly interesting."

Speaking more specifically on the role of the pastor, he said that we have to be realistic: not everyone will become a disciple. Not everyone in our congregation will be a disciple not matter what we do. He urged pastors, then, to spend more time with those who will be disciples. This was a matter of some debate around our tables, but I think I understand his point. "Our task is not to bring in the kingdom, but to announce it," he said. We are "journalists of the gospel." Great image.

Disciple-making, he said, is really the work of the laity, which we (pastors) protect them from and take away from laity. He talked about circuit riders and class leaders in early Methodism, and noted that the clergy person preached the gospel and administered sacraments, while it was the class leaders and other lay leaders who were responsible for the day-to-day discipleship and pastoral care. We've mixed up our roles and put too much on the clergy, without respecting the laity enough to give them responsibility, and so everythings suffers as a result. Clergy: called to preach the gospel. Laity: called to lead church in discipleship. Pastors need to pastor. You don't go to the dentist to talk about the weather, but to have your teeth fixed. So people shouldn't expect pastors to talk to them about nothing - but to have them be pastors!

***

I really appreciated Watson's words about clergy and laity and their roles. What do you think? Do we expect anything of our lay people? Are we trying to be the disciple-makers as well as the gospel-preachers? Should we be, or does that role belong to the laity?

One of my favorite books in preparing for ordination was Pastor, by Bishop Willimon. It was extremely helpful to me in being able to articulate the meaning of ordination. But I remember that the titles of the chapters were all "Pastor as ________." Pastor as priest, interpreter of scripture, preacher, counselor, teacher, evangelist, prophet, leader, character, disciplined Christian.... Can we be all of those things? Should we be? Of course, to a degree, yes. But are their limits on what we're meant to do/be? Where are those boundaries?

I think these questions are so important because, let's face it: clergy are an unhealthy, burned out, and often ineffective lot. Why are there so many ineffective pastors? Why are we so unhealthy? Why do so few survive decades in the ministry? I wonder if part of the problem is that we've lost sight of what we're called to do: preach the good news. Maybe when we start to make that too complicated, we're really just creating a big mess. Thoughts?

One Year Later

One year ago, (on August 29th, to be exact) I moved to Franklin Lakes, NJ, to begin my second appointment. Today is the one year anniversary of the official beginning of my appointment here. In some ways, I can't believe I've already been here a year - the months have gone by so quickly. In other ways, I feel like this has been a long year - the first year in a new appointment is full of so much learning, meeting people, familiarizing, transitioning - this year has been so full that it seems like I must have been here longer than a year already.

This is only my second appointment - my first year here has been much different than my first year in Oneida. The learning curve in a first appointment is huge. Here, I come with knowledge and experience, even if it isn't decades of ministry yet. But I'm also in a much different place and, in some ways, a much different congregation. I'm serving outside of my annual conference of membership, North Central New York, the area I grew up in and lived in for all of my life, outside of time at school. I went to seminary at Drew, but actually living in the community in Northern New Jersey is quite different from attending school on a somewhat secluded campus. Greater New Jersey is a different conference from NCNY in many ways. It is more diverse in membership and clergy membership, it covers much more urban areas, it is more 'politically active' in the denomination, etc. These are just a few surface differences. Of course, there are practical differences - I know most of the clergy and lay folks active in the conference in NCNY. In GNJ, I'm still trying to get to know the folks in my district, much less folks in the whole conference. These things take time.

My congregations are in many ways similar - roughly the same sanctuary architecture, almost identical congregation sizes, same difficulty in paying apportionments, same struggle reach young people, same issues of slow decline, wondering what has happened, thinking about days gone by when the Sunday School was packed with kids and you always had enough people to help with events.

But they're also very different. Bergen County is more affluent, more educated, more traveled, more urban-focused than Oneida. People work, from what I can tell, a crazy number of hours each week, added to commute times that are generally significantly higher than in CNY. One of my colleagues who works in congregational development looked at the demographics of the area for me, and his figures and comments confirmed it - people here are most likely to look for how a church fits into their schedule than anything else. Offering options, offering different times, shorter times, more time options - these are all important to a congregation in this area. This summer, we introduced an early morning communion service - and though it is still a small service, it is casual, and shorter, and I think we're meeting a real need with it. One of our focus areas this fall in that service will be rest and Sabbath. My goal will be to talk about rest and Sabbath without making people feel guilty that they don't take enough Sabbath!

I'm also different here too. The difference goes beyond even a first-appointment, second-appointment difference. I find myself, in many ways, back at square one when it comes to discerning God's call on my life. Obviously, I still feel called to the ministry of ordained elder! But for so many years, including most of my time in Oneida, going through the candidacy process and seeking ordination was the way I was answering God's call. Now, I'm ordained, and that part of answering my call is thankfully completed. But now what? I believe God is always calling us - and I'm struggling to discern God's purpose now, and how I respond to that. I'm struggling to balance what I want to do with what I think God might want me to do. What does ministry look like for me in the next 5 years, 10 years, 1 or 2 years? I feel like these are open-ended questions right now. I'm used to having a plan and answers, and I don't have many right now, and it is a position I'm not comfortable in. So, I'm discerning.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to more first with this congregation, like teaching my first class (here) of confirmands this fall. I'm enjoying the recent wave of baptisms - six this summer, I think. I'm excited to be working on the Lay Leadership Nominations Process and actually know who people are this year, and feeling like our team is really matching people and ministries in some creative ways. I'm excited about our fall worship focus, using themes from Bishop Schnase's Five Practices. I'm anxious to try and move forward together, try some new things together, and see where we end up.

Reflections: Jurisdictional Conference

Friday I returned home from a week at Jurisdictional Conference and the preceding NEJCYM (jurisdictional youth) event, the Nor'Easter. I've been seriously bad at blogging - seem to have lost my rhythm! But I'm hoping to be more consistent for the rest of the summer. Some highlights:

Nominations - Nominations to General Boards and Agencies and to Jurisdictional teams (Tables in the NEJ) happen at Jurisdictional Conference. I had the honor of being one of four nominating committee members from my episcopal area, a task I had also done as a lay delegate in 2000. The process can be extremely confusing, sometimes very fast, sometimes very slow. It operates almost like a sports draft. We draw numbers to determine picking order, and then take turns assigning people to agencies with available slots. Some agencies have bigger boards than others, and some spots (like Connectional Table) are highly coveted. When we get through everything, we have to look at our work and see if we were inclusive - is there a balance of men and women? Clergy and lay? Are all the nominees white, or are we racially diverse? Are their young people on the boards? Then some 'trades' happen to balance things more carefully. Areas make changes and compromises. I think we did a decent, though not perfect job. My real area of disappointment is that not a singe youth (age 12-17) was placed on a board from the whole jurisdiction! I raised this concern twice, but no one was willing to give up a spot an adult was nominated to to give youth a voice. We did have eight young adults (including two stellar young adults, Kurt Karandy and Stephanie Deckard, from my Annual Conference) nominated, out of 100+ available spots.

Worship - I enjoyed worship. Mark Miller and his crew, who led worship at General Conference, provided music for us. Fabulous as always. What I love about Mark's music is his ability to go from an upbeat contemporary, gospel, or global praise tune that he's half making up on the spot, to a pulling-out-all-the-stops organ prelude and fugue, which he has memorized of course, without even seeming remotely fazed. Safiyah Fosua was the primary preacher, and she was also excellent. A real highlight was a sermon by retired Bishop Roy Sano. You can read the text here, if you scroll down to page six. The theme, Extreme Church, Extreme Expectations, was not a theme that really resonated with me, but we made do ;)

Elections/Interviews with Episcopal Candidates - We had a full day of interviews with our candidates - 13 of them in all. It made for a very long day. I wonder how much the time of day affected how I felt about a candidate. The afternoon candidates were the hardest. Post-lunch is just such a hard time to pay attention! Every small group asked every bishop two questions: "When you retire as bishop, for what do you want to be remembered?" and "What moves you to tears? Laughter?" By the end of the day, the candidates were clearly tired of these questions! We also asked many others - about making disciples, connecting with young people, leadership in merging conferences, favorite bible characters and verses, a really full candidate. The difficulty was in electing only one new bishop - several candidates seemed equally strong to me, and I had a hard time really 'ranking' my preferences. Ultimately, though, Bishop Peggy Johnson was elected relatively quickly. In Greater New Jersey, Bishop Devadhar remains for another quadrennium. In my conference of membership, NCNY, Bishop Marcus Matthews, now in the Philadelphia area, will come to replace retiring Bishop Violet Fisher.

Boundaries - Significantly, we voted at NEJ to approve the 2010 merger of Troy, Wyoming, Western New York, and North Central New York annual conferences. Our four conferences have been working hard to prepare for this vote to come to the NEJ for many years now, and it was gratifying to finally have this decision made official. What was even more exciting is that we spent virtually no time debating the proposition. It wasn't that people were avoiding the discussion, at least to my perception, but that there was a sense of trust in the process we'd worked with, a sense of moving of the Spirit, and, hopefully for many, an excitement about this new venture. We don't know yet how all the details will work out, but we're ready to move to the next step.

Youth Work - Preceding the conference was the Jurisdictional Youth Event, the Nor'Easter. We spent a day at Hershey Park, and three days worshiping, workshopping, and business-meeting. During a discernment process for sending folks to work with the Division on Ministries with Young People, some interesting conversations took place around race, age, and gender, and how these issues should or shouldn't figure into who we send. Do you think sexism is an issue that young people have to worry about/confront/experience less today than in previous generations? The Jurisdictional Youth encompasses a lot of young people with a wide variety of theological perspectives, of course, and it was certainly interesting to watch how different young people express their faith and deal with differences in points of view.

Did any of you attend your jurisdictional conferences? What were highlights for you?

Endorsed Candidates for the Episcopacy

In a few days, I will be heading to Harrisburg, PA for the Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference. UM Portal recently published a list of candidates endorsed for the episcopacy. Electing bishops is one of the primary tasks of the jurisdictional gathering. In our jurisdiction, I believe we are electing just one bishop this time around. Other jurisdictions have many more elections, and the process can be quite lengthy.

A few observations about the list of candidates:

The North Central Jurisdiction has two female candidates, and the Southeastern and South Central Jurisdictions each have just one female candidate. The jurisdictions also seem to vary in their degree of racial/ethnic diversity among candidates as well.

Candidates in NCJ and SEJ all (almost) have their own websites! Candidates seem to list several endorsements on their pages from many individual endorsers, in addition to listing biographical/resume information.

(In the NEJ, campaigning for the episcopacy is against the rules. I wonder if a website would count as campaigning? Of course, campaigning can take place in some indirect, discreet ways, but generally is frowned upon.)

What are your thoughts, if any, about these candidates? What are you looking for in a bishop?

2008 Annual Conference Reports

**Update** - Actually, somehow I missed that my own adopted conference Greater New Jersey is also up there year in worship attendance. (The only one in the NEJ.) And Revmommy points out in the comments that North Georgia is apparently up in worship as well, technically.**

It's that time of year again, where my Metho-nerdiness shines through: the 2008 Annual Conference Reports are up at umc.org. (Well, many of them are up anyway.)

I've skimmed through all the posted reports and noticed some common themes, and as always, I like to check out the statistics for membership, worship, and Sunday School.

What I noticed this year:

• Most conferences are ordaining and commissioning far fewer folks than they are retiring.
  
• Missions and outreach seem to be prominent areas of focus at most annual conferences. Most conference take multiple mission-oriented offerings. Many conferences seem to engage in days of service or hands-on times of action during the conference sessions. Nothing but Nets was mentioned in many conference reports.
  
• Relationships between US conferences and African Conferences were mentioned in many reports, and most US conferences are supporting giving to the Central Conference Pension Fund, a hugely important endeavor.
  
• My friend from seminary, Susan Ledbetter, apparently had a baby! Funny to read about that in an annual conference report! Her daughter, Sadie Joy Ledbetter, was baptized at the Arkansas Ordination Service - pretty cool! Congrats Susan and Justin!
• Mergers are happening in North/South Indiana, approved by 77-79% of the conference members, and (probably) in my area, where NCNY, Wyoming, Western NY, and Troy will probably merge into one conference, also sending part of Wyoming into Central PA and Vermont into New England. Our area's merger will actually impact the majority of conferences in our jurisdiction!
• Topics voted on in resolutions: Iraq, war, immigration, Israel and divestment, LGBT rights, etc.
  
• A focus in worship on themes raised at General Conference: the four vision pathways, Three Simple Rules, etc.
  
• Bishop Schnase observed in his area that sometimes conferences don't experience "measurable growth" but do experiences "observable change." What do you think of that statement?

In terms of the statistics for membership, worship, and Sunday School, I'm afraid that as usual, most conference reported drops, sometimes significantly. I don't think the numbers tell us everything. But they're certainly food for thought. I was proud of NCNY for only being down 19 people in worship attendance! I know it's still a decline, but I think that's the smallest decline I've seen in years!

Here's some highlights of where growth seems to be occurring:
New York - Sunday School attendance is up
Peninsula-Delaware - Sunday School attendance is up
Central Texas - Sunday School is up, Membership is up
Holston - Membership is up
North Alabama - Sunday School is up
North Carolina - Membership is up
North Georgia - Membership is up, Sunday School is up
Red Bird Mission - Membership is up
California-Pacific - Worship is up
Oregon-Idaho - Sunday School is up

What do you make of the fact that of those conferences reporting so far, only one is reporting an increase in worship - and that one is Cal-Pac in the Western Jurisdiction!? I bet not many would have guessed that. But it seems like a lot of numbers this year aren't from the places I'd expect them.

Overall, Sunday School attendance seems to be taking huge hits. Is that true in your local experience? What's notable to you in these reports?

from Bishop Willimon: Empowering a New Generation of Leaders

Just read this post at Bishop Willimon's blog, which concludes:

"[This] story is far from unique. This is what happens when we really focus ourselves upon the priority of a new generation of Christians. I’m recommending that next year our entire Annual Conference be focused upon the single priority of empowering a new generation, that any reports be made exclusively by those under forty, and that every church send lay delegates who are all under forty. [New, young leaders] are in every congregation. We must notice them, nurture them, and empower them for God to use them in giving our church a future. By God’s grace, we will!"

What do you think of the Bishop's proposal? I like the concreteness of the plan - very specific things that will be done to empower young people, young new leaders. But I'm undecided. What would your session of annual conference look like if all or most of the lay delegates were under 40? What would it feel like if presentations were made only by those under 40? How active is the under 40 crowd in your conference sessions already?

My own annual conference, like many, I'm sure, tries hard to support young people. Every year, for example, thanks to Bishop Violet Fisher, we take an offering to support our youth attending the NEJ Mission of Peace. This year, we have two young women going to Zimbabwe, at a cost of $4500/person. The conference gave over $8000 in a love offering for their trip, virtually completing the fundraising efforts for these young people, which is a huge gift. The bishop has a policy of always having a young person seated with her on the dais during sessions, and she usually takes time to personally speak about each of them, since she has come to know most of them personally. Our conference secretary makes sure young people are part of his team taking minutes and following the action of conference. We actually consistently elect at least some young people to General and Jurisdictional Conference. These are just a few of the little ways our conference tries to nurture young people. But for every positive, there is vast room for growth, and more intentional behavior. We have many young members of conference, but still a small segment overall. Many churches still seem unaware of the conference youth ministry programs, despite our annual presentation of what we do. We've been working hard to get the word out about what we do. And, our Young Adult Ministries have been virtually nonexistent in the conference. We're working on that, and I'm excited about some possibilities, but it hasn't been given much attention or support in the past.

How do we best empower a new generation? What would be your strategy for going about that? What do you think of Bishop Willimon's proposals?

Annual Conference Reflections

Sorry for the blog silence. I've been quite a delinquent blogger lately. I've just returned from NCNY's Annual Conference. The internet access wasn't great (neither is my laptop battery), which makes blogging difficult. I remember after being a delegate to GC in 2000, coming to annual conference a month later and thinking that it was rather boring in comparison. I didn't have that overwhelming sense this year, although I can tell you that hardly any items had debate around them. In fact, we didn't even debate over the budget this year, which has to be a first. How did this happen? The finance team gave us ice cream and cookies right before we voted on the budget. An excellent strategy. :) Some thoughts on the high points:

CCYM -I just finished my fifth year as the conference youth coordinator, which sounds weird to me. I can hardly believe that. When I began working with CCYM in 2003, I have to confess that I wasn't really enjoying my work. It took a while, a long time of transition. But in the last couple of years, due to many factors, I've come to really love working with the youth of the conference. When I was in high school, I actually planned on studying and working in youth ministry. It was only during the transition to college that I felt a call to pastoral ministry. I became somewhat disenchanted with youth ministry. But in the last couple of years, I've really found my joy in youth work again. The young people in NCNY are fabulous. Every year, they lead a worship service for the conference, and every year, they touch hearts and souls with their gentle wisdom. Every year I think: I wasn't so brave, so bold, so articulate, so... when I was that age. Our CCYM has been through some tough times as we prepare for a probably merger with three other annual conferences. In the midst of these changes, our youth continue to do the work of Christ, setting an example for young and old to follow.

General Conference Report - Our delegation focused our report around the Three Simple Rules that were a thematic focus in Fort Worth. We each got a couple of minutes to highlight what we saw as essential action at the conference. For Church and Society 1, I spoke about the Social Creed Litany.

Bishop Fisher's Retirement - We celebrated the retirement of our Bishop, Violet Fisher. Bishop Fisher has done a great job in leading our episcopal area in a time when we really needed some strong spiritual leadership. She commissioned me and ordained me. I'm glad I got to complete my process with her - I know some of my colleagues who will be (likely) ordained in the next year or two are feeling a sense of loss of having their journey to ordination divided between two bishops. Given that we are going to head into a merger, our new bishop will likely be a seasoned bishop. Bishop Fisher came to us as a newly elected bishop, and we certainly enjoyed our time with her.

Ordination - I love attending the service of ordination. (See also Wes Sanders' comments about ordination here.) I just love watching others go through what was for me the most meaningful day of my life so far. I have now also officially handed away my title of "youngest elder" to my friend Richelle, who is eight days younger than me.

Sharon Fulmer - This year at our memorial service, we said goodbye to Sharon Fulmer, our Director of Communications, who died last month after a long illness, but who had been working with energy right up to the end. My friend Heather, who drove with me to Fort Worth, filled in for Sharon, covering the Conference for NCNY, and she and Sharon spent a lot of time chatting and joking on the phone, just a few days before Sharon died. Sharon encouraged us to have fun and enjoy ourselves (and sent us with a bottle of Advil.) We invite folks to stand to honor their loved ones when their names are read at the memorial service. Nearly every person at conference stood when Sharon's name was read. She was just that kind of person - made you feel so special. Was so loving. A great, fun spirit. She will be dearly missed.

Since NCNY and GNJ hold annual conference at the same time, and my membership is still in NCNY, I wasn't able to attend GNJ conference. Every once in a great while they fall on different weekends, so maybe next year I'll get to check out how another conference does their work together.

General Conference Wrap-up Reflections: Points of Joy

As a (I think) last post about General Conference, I want to share some of the moments that brought me joy - because despite the exhaustion, and despite the disappointments and emotional lows, there really were times of great joy and hope as well, and I really do love being at General Conference.

*The Connection - Really, the greatest joy for me of being United Methodist is the connectional nature of the church. I love going to events like GC because I love seeing so many people from so many parts of my life all in one place, all brought together by the church we still love even when it is so hard to stay part of it! I saw friends from undergrad, colleagues from my two conferences, NCNY, and Greater NJ, including getting to spend time with my once pastor Bruce Webster, another NCNY delegate who is now retired and living in Florida. I got to see most of the GBCS staff, which I especially enjoyed since I had to miss my last board meeting. I got to see friends from seminary. I got to spend time with some methobloggers, like dogblogger. There was hardly enough time and enough meal slots to get to spend a little time with everybody. But I so enjoy the being together. And that's not even counting the time I got to spend with those in my delegation, who I got to know so much better, and those new folks I met, connections in committees and meetings that I will value for years to come. For me, that's the greatest joy of General Conference.

*GBCS lunch with Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver - Rep. Cleaver is a powerful speaker and preacher. I took some notes during the lunch, but none of them are making much sense to me two weeks later! He did say something about if God is bigger than us and inside of us, then shouldn't God be showing through us? Here's a link to a GBCS article about his message that is more helpful! I thought he was very inspiring.

*Address by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia - Hearing a president speak in person is a pretty neat event all around. Plus, Sirleaf in particular was a joy to hear. She spoke with purpose and authority. She was funny, and gracious. At the close of her speech, all the bishops greeted her, and one bishop snapped her picture with his cell phone - hilarious!

*Music and Worship, but I already mentioned that!

*Young People from NCNY - I was blessed to have two young people also on the NCNY delegation with me. I consider it a gift to me to watch them experience General Conference for the first time. They both had chances to speak on the main floor of conference, and I marvel at their confidence and boldness, which I definitely didn't feel when I was a first time delegate a couple of years older than they are. They both seemed to throw themselves into everything with complete commitment. It broke my heart to witness them experiencing such painful times and painful behavior by the church, something they'd probably not witnessed in quite this overwhelming way before, but their presence in the church also fills me with hope, because despite their experiences and maybe some disillusionment, here in the UMC they both still are, sharing their unfolding leadership.

General Conference Wrap-up Reflections: Human Sexuality

I'm finally home from General Conference, and beginning to recover enough to put some thoughts together. I'd hoped to write much more than I did, but the schedule just really made that impossible for me - I don't know how other folks got so much blogging done. I have several different sets of things I'd like to write about, so I am going to try to take them topic by topic for the next few days, and hope that by the time I'm done, you aren't wishing you'd never hear of General Conference again!

The voting related to issues of human sexuality happened on Wednesday, April 30th, which happened to be my birthday. I figured depending on how the voting played out, I could have a really good birthday or a really bad one...

I went into General Conference expecting our official stance on human sexuality to remain unchanged again for another four years. I didn't expect change to come this time around. But once I arrived in Fort Worth, there just seemed to be a sense in the air that things might be changing. Just a feeling I was getting. A movement. My childhood pastor and now colleague, Rev. Bruce Webster, was NCNY's representative on Church and Society 2, the legislative committee dealing with all the sexuality-related petitions (or the vast bulk of them at least.) He reported that things were going well. In his sub-committee, the recommendation came 14-6 to change the language of the discipline to reflect the deep disagreement we have in the church around sexuality. Then in the full legislative committee, the vote was the same - the majority report would recommend a change of language on the full floor. Not to be fully inclusive, just to acknowledge that faithful Christians disagree about homosexuality and how it fits into Christian practice. To my recollection, the legislative committee hadn't recommended anything but retaining the same language since 1996. And so I started to get a little hopeful.

When the conversation came to the main floor, I dared to get even a bit more hopeful. We adopted a petition against homophobia and heterosexism. That may not sound like much, but I thought it was hopeful. The conversation surrounding the majority and minority reports also gave me hope - the process of amending both reports led me to believe there were enough votes to make a change.

But, in the end, by such a close margin (55-45%, less than a hundred votes separating out of 992 possible votes), we voted against saying we disagree about this issue. What irony! 55-45 that we don't disagree.

The next day, we had a witness from members of the GLBT community, supporters, friends, family, etc., and delegates. I really can't do this witness justice. I invite you to watch it here (simply listed as 'witness' under the archives of Thursday, May 1). I had gone back and forth in my mind about whether these witnesses were effective or not from a strategic standpoint, based on the demonstrations on the floor of conference in 2000 and 2004. Do these witnesses make moderates more or less likely to have a change of heart? I'm not sure in general. But this witness, this holy witness seemed needed, and deeply moving.

Things that strike me:
- During the witness, when you include the gallery of visitors, together with delegates and bishops, it seemed there were many more people standing in support than not.

- The narrow vote margin (less than 100 votes separation) leads to speculation. If only US delegates had voted on this issue, I suspect the recommendation of the majority report would have passed. We are global church though. How do we exist as such with such cultural differences? The Discipline allows for some differences in Central/Regional Conference, but the US is not yet classified as a Regional Conference, and has no place for differences that might be US-specific.

- IRD's blog originally referred to the witness as people "storming" the floor. I think that blog post title has since been edited. It would be hard to characterize the witness as people storming the floor.

- During the parliamentary debate, it seemed that many of those who wanted us to retain our current language of 'incompatibility' would make recommendations of how to vote right before voting took place in the guise of asking a question for clarification. This tactic was so blatantly used that people were literally groaning aloud every time someone came to the mic and said they didn't understand what we were voting on. I have deep respect and love for many of my friends and colleagues who feel differently about issues of sexuality than I do. But using these tactics, the things I witnessed, I cannot respect.

- Many of my parishioners told me they read about the church retaining its position in the newspaper this weekend. I was so grateful for the various comments I received on Sunday morning. People expressed disappointment in the decisions made, and one woman told me how she chose FLUMC in part because it was clear that people with a variety of lifestyles were included in the leadership of our church - that was important to her. I had young people asking questions and wanting to know more. I appreciate how engaged they were in what was going on.

- Rev. Jeremy Smith at Hacking Christianity has several good GC-related posts, including these three posts that I would recommend for some reflection/analysis of our decisions, especially the third listed.

General Conference: Can We Stay Together?

Saturday, I had another delegation meeting for the NCNY delegation to General Conference. The UM Reporter blog has a good set of interesting articles out right now about General Conference. John over at Locusts & Honey has a conversation going about this pastoral letter from Foundry UMC. And I've got General Conference and our future as a denomination on my mind and in my heart.

At our delegation meeting, we talked about the Pre-General Conference Briefing that delegation heads attended last month. They reported back about church leaders really hoping that we can focus on ministry concerns at General Conference, specifically "four areas of focus: developing principled Christian leaders for the church and the world; creating "new places for new generations" by starting new churches and renewing existing ones; engaging in ministry with the poor; and fighting the killer diseases of poverty such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS." I would love if General Conference and our work focused on these issues, with other matters as small aside issues. But, having been to General Conference before, I'm skeptical.

Can we stay together? Work together? Move forward from this place? That's what's on my mind. Our deep disagreements over human sexuality issues, and, at core, theological understandings, scripture authority, biblical interpretation - these divisions are killing us as a denomination. Sometimes, I think both 'sides' wish the other sides would just leave the denomination. Sometimes both 'sides' say just that. Sometimes, 'liberals' (I know, labels, labels, but for lack of better words) wish 'conservatives' would just realize that eventually our position on issues of same-sex relationships will have to change. Sometimes, conservatives wish liberals would just realize it's never going to change. Any way you look at it, I feel like we're all losers in this situation.

Is there a way beyond our division? I'm no fan of confrontational arguments on my blog as you might know, so I'm not really looking for whether you think ordination/holy unions/etc. for gay and lesbian persons is OK or not. We've all done our "drawing lines in the sand." We've all heard the arguments for and against. What I'm wondering about it: do you see any possible way we could move forward from where we seem stuck as a denomination? I guess if we could answer that question, we'd not be stuck here anymore. But I'm looking for a little inspiration. Or do you think things are just too far gone?

The United Methodist Church is such a theologically diverse denomination. That diversity is so frustrating sometimes. I can't deny I've occasionally wished for a denomination where everybody thought mostly like me! Seriously, if we had more common ground, I feel like we could spend our energy for God in such more constructive ways. But I've also been richly blessed by our theological diversity, even in my frustration. I'm not willing to give that up so easily. What do you think?

Greater New Jersey Bloggers

Since I now enjoy relationship with two annual conferences, in addition to my NCNY bloggers list, I'm also adding a list of bloggers from the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference of the UMC. If you're a GNJ blogger, let me know, and I'll add you to my list. Here's who I know of so far:

Chris Heckert - Chris is a clergy member of GNJUMC, and Assistant General Secretary for the Advance at GBGM, blogs here about GBGM trips, mission stories, etc.

Joe Tiedemann - Joe pastors two churches, a long-standing church and a church-plant congregation. He blogs at Life in the Way.

Eric Helms, associate pastor at Grace UMC in Wyckoff, just started a blog, Eric's Blog.

Greg Milinovich, associate pastor at Clinton UMC blogs at agentorange (where you'll also discover that Greg's an artist - who knew?)

***updated to add:***

Pastor Blue Jeans, another Greater NJ clergyperson, blogs at Forever in Blue Jeans.

If you know of other GNJ bloggers, let me know and I'll add to my list.

Another question: Youth Ministry

Another question for you all:

I’m teaching a workshop about youth ministry for the district this weekend. My personal experience with youth ministry is mostly at the conference and jurisdictional level (I'm the conference youth coordinator for NCNY) – I have, actually, comparatively less experience with the youth ministry of the local church.

If you could make sure people knew one thing about youth ministry, what would it be? What are the most important things to know about youth ministry?

I suspect many people want to know what to do with small membership youth groups. What do you do when you have two, three, four kids? My own initial youth group experiences were in a group about this size. My youth group leader, who was the pastor, let us focus mostly on fellowship and having a good time. As long as we could come and have fun, we stuck with it. Eventually, we grew into something larger, and could make bigger plans - trips, mission projects, devotional time.

What do you do with small number youth groups? Have you grown a youth ministry from small numbers?

My Work Week

I've written a bit about pastors and work-week schedules before, though not in much detail. But I just finished reading Coffeepastor's post about his schedule, and like Cheesehead, who responded with her own post, I thought I'd do the same. (By the way, Cheesehead mentions 'sleeping in' until 7:30 in her post, and I feel I need to have a serious talk with her about the meaning of sleeping in.)

My schedule has changed a bit since moving to a new appointment in New Jersey, although not drastically. And my schedule has never been very particularly structured. But here it is:

1) Days off: This is something I struggle with a lot. I try very hard to take Fridays off, and if Friday doesn't work, I take Wednesday off. The truth is, I almost never take an entire day off. Inevitably, I find myself doing some ministry-related work, reading, emailing, sermon preparation, etc. I think this is in part because as a single pastor, I have a great deal of control over my time. When I decide to work (or not) usually doesn't impact anyone but me. And I don't feel like I'm overworking (at least not most of the time) because I feel like it all balances out in the end. So there that is. I'm trying to be better about keeping a day completely off. But it's a struggle.

2) I don't have set office hours. I tried to keep hours in Oneida, and no one would ever stop in during those hours intentionally, or I would end up missing my scheduled hours all the time anyway, so it seemed pointless. My predecessor here didn't keep office hours, so I was happy to continue in his footsteps on that. I'm a night owl, and I sleep in until about 9am unless something else comes up. I usually do a bit of work at home - responding to emails, etc., and then head into the office around 11am.

3) At the office, I start working on my weekly responsibilities. At the beginning of the week, I work mostly on my sermon, my sermon blog/Sunday School lesson, long term worship planning, etc. Towards the end of the week I'm thinking about bulletins, powerpoint presentations, and children's sermons. I've actually been trying really hard this Advent to get my sermons at least started well in advance. So far, I've got at least part of all my Advent sermons completed.

4) Visiting isn't something I do on a specific day. I try to do this when I have a good window of uninterrupted time, or as needed. Some weeks I don't make any visits at all, and some weeks I make several.

5) Evenings - Like visiting, some weeks I have no meetings at all, and some weeks I have them Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. Thursday nights are for bell choir and choir, both of which I am in.

6) Weekends - I'm the conference youth coordinator for NCNY, and also a General Conference delegate, and these commitments, as well as some special church events, keep my weekends pretty full. Often this is why my Friday day-off plan doesn't work. But these weekend events are also some of things I love doing the most.

***
I got to the end of writing all that and almost didn't post it after all. I was thinking, who wants to read a detailed description of my work week? But then I started thinking about what my work week means for my ministry and what conclusions I can draw.

- I notice how rarely my schedule brings me into contact with people outside the church world, or outside United Methodism even. John at Locusts and Honey recently posted something along this line.

- My church schedule also rarely brings me into contact with people who are not white, not middle/upper class, and not fairly well-educated. This is especially true in my current location. I preach about the gospel message of God's love of the poor and oppressed, but I don't actually spend very much time with the very ones I have said the gospel is good news for.

- My weeks are pretty full and busy, but most of the things I work on are week-to-week needs. Writing a sermon, responding to pastoral care needs, taking part in committee meetings. Just doing the regular 'work' of the church takes up so much of my time. I feel strongly that we need to be thinking more long-term, need to be talking about vision, need to be looking past just maintaining things, but I find it hard to find the space to do that without leaving other responsibilities undone. How do you make space to think big? Is there room in the way we do church for discipleship? Real ministry?

General Conference: Delegation Meeting Reflections

Last weekend I headed up to NCNY for a General Conference Delegation meeting. We had the pleasure of having a conference call with retired Bishop Joseph Yeakel, who served as bishop of the New York West Area before I knew what a bishop was. Bishop Yeakel is known around the connection for his exceptional knowledge of UMC polity and order. If you've been to General Conference, you've likely seen him sitting behind the presiding bishop, acting as the fount of knowledge he is when it comes to questions of decoding the Robert's Rules, etc. Bishop Yeakel spoke to us, and especially to first time delegates, about what to expect and how to prepare for General Conference. He also answered our questions about what big issues to expect (besides the usual suspects), etc. I really enjoyed his conversation and insight.

Some notes I made on the conversation:

Bishop Yeakel reminded us that there's a difference between being a member and a delegate. We are members of Annual Conference, but delegates to General Conference. Being a delegate means that our responsibility is limited to the event, the time of GC itself. We go as individual delegates. I know this is not always the view held in other delegations, but in NCNY we have always emphasized that we vote as individuals, not as a block.

The bishop said, "We’re not the church John Wesley thought he was starting." He talked about Francis Asbury, how Wesley would have appointed Asbury to the role of the first bishop in the American Methodist movement, but that Asbury instead (or in addition, I guess) wanted to be elected by his colleagues. So, Bishop Yeakel talked about us having a "polity quadrilateral." We are:
1) Conciliatory. Conciliar. We meet in council.
2) Connectional, legally and by covenant.
3) Itinerant church. "We're not called to be called. We're called to be sent." That's a powerful statement.
4) Episcopal. Not a hierarchical or separate order. But bishops are chief connectional officers. The only person who can interpret what’s in the ‘Book of Covenant’ (the Bishop's preferred term for the Book of Discipline) is the bishop of the area where topic is in question (and Judicial Council, in review.)

Bishop Yeakel also talked about the types of legislative responsibilities we would have at GC:
1) Constitutional. Only legislation that becomes effective only after referendum to Annual Conferences.
2) Temporal economy/organization and administration: 'immediate' and complete control at over this at General Conference.
3) Normative law, like Social Principles. This is our best understanding of our life together, but not legalism of second category. Includes narrative portions of discipline.

Concluding our time, the Bishop said, “There’s a part of each one of us that is a political animal, and hopefully the grace of God can work through that too.” Hopefully indeed!

The Methoblog, NCNY Bloggers

The Methoblog has been having some stressful times. If you joined the blogroll in the last few months, make sure to resubmit your site for inclusion.

I think I will soon be making a small blogroll with the growing number of NCNY bloggers.
We've got:

-Aaron Bouwens, one of my fellow ordinands, blogging at Lord If I Know.

-Andrew Glos, another pastor from NCNY serving here in GNJ. I think he's still officially in NCNY, so I'll claim him for the bloggers - he blogs at Cadences of God.

-Kurt Karandy, a CCYM alum, freshman at American University, future pastor, blogging at Curt Comments from Kurt.

-My pastor friend Richelle, who is actually a pastor younger than me (by 9 days), newly blogging at Work in Progress.

-Wes Sanders, a student at Binghamton University, who attended Exploration with me in November, blogging at Imparted Righteousness.

-**My friend Richelle just let me know that Alan Howe, another elder in NCNY, is blogging at Nexus Notes.

-**Also just found BJ Norrix's new blog, Thoughts from Dr. BJ.

If you know of any other NCNY bloggers, let me know!

Adjourned Session: A New Conference?

Yesterday I attended an adjourned session of the North Central New York (NCNY) annual conference. The agenda? Vote on a recommendation to Jurisdictional Conference to merge four annual conferences in New York: NCNY, Western NY, Troy, and Wyoming. Through the wonders of modern technology, we were meeting at the same time as our sisters and brothers across the state also having adjourned sessions, and we were able to see them live (OK, with a 60 second or so delay) and worship together(-ish) and vote together(-ish). It was an interesting experience for sure!

We've been talking about merger for at least the last four years. A number of factors bring us to this place, but suffice it to say that most of us on the Boundaries Task Force felt that merging together was a strong choice for the future of the UMC in the New York State area. It's a risk, of course. Membership in the UMC in the Northeast is declining. Merging will give us more collective resources, but unless we really change the way we're doing things at some critical and basic levels, we'll just continue to declined together. So it is a risk, but also an opportunity for real change, real discipleship. We voted, and decided: YES! We're recommending to Jurisdictional Conference a merger, to take place in 2010. The NEJ has to vote on our recommendation, but we feel optimistic.

Here's some notes from worship:

Bishop Fisher –
Listening for God’s Call in a New Day
Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-10

God said, Go. Abraham said, Where? God said, I will tell you when you get there. Abraham believed, trusted. “and I would include Sarah” – when do we have to trust when we are not even the ones directly receiving the message? (my question)

Remove things that are obstacles from you moving toward your promised land.

“We fail at faith because we fear to risk.”

Bishop Hassinger –

A hope that we can be God’s faithful people

We have stayed in a land that has become comfortable

Not a true promised land, but it’s been “ok”

Focus on survival and maintenance.

People of God have never remained settled for very long

Hard to move from what is even when we know it isn’t what ought to be

Three Reminders from Hebrews

1) We can discern God’s call when we engage in truth-telling – face truth about current situations. Truth-telling was catalyst. To speak and hear the truth.

2) New future requires risk-taking vision. No GPS in wilderness. Every new awakening has begun in the Northeast.

3) Trust in God. Not trying to control every part of plan ourselves.