Where Love and Joy Dance

 How apt that this past week’s lectionary was from I John 4, a beautiful passage on love—the love God has for us and the love we ought to have for one another.

Love is the bedrock of the Christian life.

And love is what I am experiencing in Charlotte at General Conference.

For years, General Conference has felt more like a battleground than an experience of Christian conferencing. Voices were silenced. Lives were demeaned. Hope was dashed, over and over again.  

But something is happening in Charlotte. At first there was a timidity of spirit, but then an open-heartedness to one another grew and even in the midst of differences, joy has bubbled up in contagious ways. Truly, the Holy Spirit is in this place.

What’s changed?

One of the best lines I ever heard in a church meeting was when a group was moving through a difficult topic but slowly aligning in consensus. Someone disagreed with the direction and said, “I just need to be a devil’s advocate and say…” Someone else said, “The church is the last place that needs an advocate of the devil.”

Differences of opinion and diverse voices are so vital for healthy conferencing. But those who just seek to disrupt, divide, and disorder do little to build up the Body of Christ.

Continue to pray for the delegates, who are working hard to respond to the Spirit’s leading, who are listening intently to one another,  and who are helping us realize the future of our beloved denomination.

And may this gracious spirit pervade our local churches, so that all who walk through our doors will find a place of welcome, where love and joy dance together down the aisles.

Prior to the Start of General Conference

I write from Charlotte, North Carolina, where the Council of Bishops has been meeting prior to the start of General Conference. Over the next few days, delegates, volunteers, and observers from around the world will arrive as the long-awaited General Conference begins. 

There is a pensive hope that pervades our meeting, hope that we are nearing the other side of the chaos and contention we all experienced during a difficult season of disaffiliation. 

How many of us have brought tender hope to the start of each General Conference, only to have that hope crushed in painful ways as the delegates reaffirmed or tightened restrictions about the role of LGBTQ+ people in the life and ministry of the church? 

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” 

Today, on the eve of the start of General Conference, I am drinking from the well of infinite hope. 

I am hopeful that this General Conference will be an experience of God’s grace beyond what we have ever experienced. 

I am hopeful that this General Conference will provide a witness to the world that there can be unity in the midst of diversity. 

I am hopeful that this General Conference will be spiritually enriching for the delegates and all who are assisting and watching. 

I am hopeful that this General Conference will remove the harmful language about LGBTQ+ people, so no one will question whether they are welcomed in the household of faith. 

I am hopeful that at the conclusion of this General Conference, we will be a new church, with a renewed sense of identity and purpose. It has been a long pregnancy. The labor has been particularly painful. But there is a birthing in our midst and we are the midwives. May we be attentive as we listen for sighs too deep for words, for the stirrings of the Spirit, for the movements of new life seeking to see the light of day. 

And then, when the last person leaves the convention center and returns home, may we all participate in raising this new church to be a strong presence in every community around the globe. The world is in need of the generous grace and deep love found in Jesus Christ that is the
bedrock of United Methodism. 

Please cover the delegates in prayer as they begin their work. May the Holy Spirit sustain and guide them in the days to come.

The Ones Who Aren't Here

 I and so many others are frantically preparing for General Conference, that once-every-four-years United Methodist meeting that we had to postpone due to COVID. At this meeting, delegates determine church policy for the next four years which will order our shared life and ministry.

I love my friendships across The United Methodist Church. There is an orientation to life and faith that we share as United Methodists that has fostered deep and lasting friendships for me. But oddly, as I sit in prayer for the upcoming meetings, it is not the faces of my friends that rise up within me nor the issues the delegates will tackle. Instead, the names and faces of those who have left the denomination are the ones that swirl with the Spirit in the space of my prayers.

Even though we held deep differences—in particular about the role of lgbtq+ people in the life and ministry of the church (and even though their beliefs have been soul wounding to so many of us) I can’t help feeling the void their departure has left.

This is in part because I do believe in the power of our sacraments. It is through baptism and communion that we come to experience God’s generous grace. The bread is broken, but we are together made whole. The water we place on our forehead to remember our baptism reminds us that God loves us and claims us, but not we alone! Through these experiences, we are united with others, whether we like it or not. They are our kin in Christ and we are theirs.

Because of this experience, I can’t “other” another. I can’t dismiss them. I can’t pretend they don’t exist. I can’t wish for a church without them in it.

The Church’s witness is lessened when we are unable to live gracefully among ourselves. Our diversity ought to be revered as a blessing that opens us more fully to the image of God that is imprinted on humanity. It isn’t easy work. It is hard. Really hard. We have to be willing to be changed by our encounter with another. But this is what leads us all to a holier and more whole place.

I look forward to the ways the Holy Spirit will show up at General Conference, and the people we will be at the end of our time together. But today, I am sitting and reflecting on the ones who won’t be there.