Annual Conference Summary

I was tempted to put the heading as "Exciting things that happened at Annual Conference this year..." and then leave the body of this post blank, but that would not be quite as true as the humor would suggest...

Annual Conference is a once a year meeting of all the pastors and equal representatives from churches and districts. We have around 1,400 pastors (all don't make it) and an equal number of lay people... so around 3,000ish people show up. Seems to me that there were less this year... but still a honking lot of people.

We meet at Lakeside, Ohio... a beautiful location, but lousy do work in as the facilities are WAY too inadequate and it is so darn beautiful that you never want to actually BE in sessions to do the work you are supposed to be doing. For the past couple of years there have been petitions to move our meeting to a conference center in Columbus. I have mixed feelings about that... as Lakeside is really pretty... but it is hard to get any real work done.

There are worship services, lots and lots and lots and lots of reports, and we do some legislation... and then there are some reports, and ordination services... and did I mention the reports (from every stinking committee and ministry every created?), recommendations from our conference to government leaders, the larger United Methodist Church, etc.

Honestly, I get really cynical at Annual Conference. There were a couple of years I got so SICK of all the politics and infighting that I left... one year I went home the first day and didn't come back.

So this year something really strange happened.

It was a kinder, gentler conference.

Now, don't get me wrong, some of the debates were the only things to keep most of us awake. Secretly, many people (in both camps) enjoy them as, at least they are interesting. The debate is usually over homosexuality, and it often gets VERY heated. And people (usually in the more liberal camp) do demonstrations, etc, to get noticed and it usually feels very manipulative to me... (not the the more conservative camp is any better... they are just rude). And I understand why. It is a tough and heated issue.

But this year, much to (I think) all of our surprise, people were... well...civil.

Maybe even a bit more Christ-like.

This year... well... we seemed to put our guard down a bit.

There was more honestly.

I liked it.

I think Jesus did too.