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Commentary
GEN-X RISING: Conferencing time Andrew C. Thompson, Jun 9, 2010
Andrew C. Thompson
By Andrew C. Thompson UMR Columnist
Early summer marks the time when pastors and laity from local churches throughout the United Methodist connection gather in annual conference sessions.
It’s a practice that dates back to 1744, when John and Charles Wesley met with leaders of the early Methodist movement to talk about doctrine and organize their mission.
The original idea of annual conference was centered on three questions: What to teach? How to teach? What to do? (Or as they put it at the time, how to regulate doctrine, discipline and practice.)
The conversations that took place ranged from discussions on justification by faith to how best to relate ecumenically to the wider Christian world.
Annual conference sessions today look different, as anyone who has experienced them can attest. But the early Wesleyan impetus remains no less valid.
The questions need to be asked anew: What should the leaders of the connection be preaching, teaching and doing? Our consideration of these matters should guide our conferencing together.
I raise this issue in the midst of what I see as a widespread desire to reform and reshape our conferencing. In recent times, annual conference can seem more like a business meeting than anything else.
I take it as a positive development that many bishops have attempted to downplay the more bureaucratic aspects of their annual conference sessions. Some are separating the “executive sessions” of clergy and lay delegates from the conference proper.
There is necessary business to be done in executive session, of course. But the separation of it from the other parts of annual conference can help to turn the conference focus toward worship, leadership training and the mission of the church.
The central place of worship in many conferences has also been re-emphasized in recent years. It is now commonplace for some of the best preachers in Methodism to be invited to preach multiple services in a given session, offering sermons on evangelism and discipleship in a way that invites the Holy Spirit in and equips the saints for ministry.
Conferences in many places have also furthered this equipping work by developing workshops for participants to gain ideas and skills to strengthen the ministry of their local churches back home. Leaders in my own annual conference have made a concerted effort to organize young adult pastors and laity in a particularly helpful form of connectional ministry.
There’s no reason all these reforming moves can’t be extended in the interest of molding annual conference sessions into forums for celebrating God’s work among us and invigorating the joy of our leaders for the work God is calling all of us to do.
One major way to continue making the business of the annual conference less about “business” would be so simple it is overlooked: namely, to eliminate the often tedious and almost always needlessly divisive practice of debating and voting on “sense of the conference” resolutions.
There is, of course, a limited place for debates of a legislative character. In the years prior to a General Conference session of the whole United Methodist Church formal petitions can be passed and sent on for consideration the following year by the entire connection.
But in intervening years, simple resolutions are voted upon only to disappear into the records of the conference journal. What lasting good is served by devoting precious time and energy voting to such debates?
Further remolding of our conferencing could accentuate elements of worship and equipping even more. Imagine the possibilities for a model of conference that is framed by two themes: “Praise and Worship” and “Preparation and Witness.”
All our current acts of worship could fall under the first heading, strengthened by increased opportunities for the celebration of Holy Communion and top-notch preaching, perhaps by the bishops themselves!
Under the second heading, leadership training could be strengthened through a greater development of teaching sessions that would serve as a catalyst for participants’ return to local churches for ministry and mission.
The way things have been does not have to determine the way they will be. And with that recognition, all our annual conferences can find new life.
The Rev. Thompson maintains a blog at www.genxrising.com. e-mail: andrew@mandatum.org.
Andrew C. Thompson
