Wednesday, June 15, 2011

East Ohio Annual Conference- Tuesday Report

Each day at annual conference, we open our day with worship.  This is generally my favorite part of conference because it is usually designed creatively and executed excellently.  The service focused on the poverty and hunger that is hidden all around us.  I learned that the second meaning behind the “If we are the body...” theme is that we must engage in work with the poor.
The guest preacher that morning was Jorge Acevedo, pastor of Grace Church in Flordia.  Grace church is a multi-campus church that worships over 2,000 in a mostly impoverished area.  They truly live out the mandate of working with the poor because the congregation itself is also poor.  Rev. Acevedo joked that his spiritual gift was that of “agitation.”  In fact, he said that this is precisely what the Holy Spirit does.  God wants to wreck your life by disturbing your comfortable life with a call into life-giving ministry.  He argued that the church exists for no other reason than to show God’s love.  Living out this calling comes in three stages-
“We love our neighbors by giving immediate aid”
“We love our neighbors by giving ongoing advancement”
“We love our neighbors by giving continual advocacy.”
The challenge to doing this is that many churches have lost touch with their communities.  The people inside the church do not look like the people of the neighborhoods.  When questioned by Bishop Hopkins how to do this, he encouraged churches to strip down to the basics and admit your flaws.  If the pastor can admit to struggling with control issues, if your lay leader can openly discuss her alcoholism, if your choir director can cop to her quick temper, people will learn that this is a church where you can feel safe to bring your whole sinful self to God.  Its exactly when we pretend we are all prim and proper that people are turned away.
Later in the morning we heard about the vital ministries a number of other churches in East Ohio were doing.  Fresno UMC noticed that people had access to clothes and food, but not to cleaning supplies.  Thus, they launched “Martha’s cupboard” to give people access to cleaning supplies for both their bodies and their houses.  Another church learned to get over their fear by allowing an outdoor rock concert to use their bathrooms in the evening.  After turning it down the first year for fear of theft and vandalism, they finally opened their hearts and learned how rewarding it could be to allow the community in.
We then received reports from a number of committees and boards within the wider church.  One of the particular concerns expressed was the need to recruit and retain young clergy.  Only 4% of clergy are under the age of 35, and the median age of clegy in East Ohio is 55.  Several new initiatives were announced to help recruit promising young candidates through tuition assistance and paid internships.  I do hope more focus will continue to be given on mentoring and providing support for we young clergy once we are actually in the pulpits.
In the afternoon session, we received and voted to accept a resolution advocating for passing anti-human trafficking laws in the state of Ohio.  The area of Toledo has had the most per capita arrests for modern slavery in all of the US.  While I don’t have time to go into details, modern slavery is the 2nd largest criminal enterprise in the world and involves individuals forced into sexual or physical labor by force, fraud or coercion from human traffickers.  It is estimated that over 27 million people are still enslaved today.  Please let me know if you want to know more and we will have a presentation at IUMC.
Scattered throughout the day’s business sessions were 3 more ballots to elect clergy and lay candidates.  Through the days voting, the laity were able to select 11 of their 14 representatives, while the clergy only managed to elect 5.  While their are certainly no political parties in the church, some candidates do receive endorsements from the faith and justice coalition (representing progressives), the evangelical fellowship (representing conservatives) while the vast majority are unaffiliated with either group.  Through the current round of balloting, in my humble opinion, the laity group seemed to be leaning to the progressive side while the clergy group was leaning more conservative.  Once the election process is completed, I’ll try to go into more detail.
In the evening, we had the honor to see five people ordained into lifelong ministry in the United Methodist Church.  One individual, Paul Wilson, was ordained as an elder and serves at Ridgewood UMC and Pearl Rd. UMC.  Our outreach committee is currently exploring an opportunity to partner with Pearl Rd. in some ministry in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood.  
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Linda McCowen, a frequent IUMC pulpit guest, was ordained as a deacon.  We have the honor this Sunday of having Rev. McCowen lead worship with us.  As this will be her first service since being ordained, we should feel especially blessed to be witnesses to it.
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In conclusion, I wanted to leave you with the most thought provoking statement of the day.  It is both exciting and scary.  I hope it causes you to rethink what we do in church- 
“We are the body of Christ.  Therefore Christ is judged by what we do”

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