Devotional from Pastor Dave May 1, 2024

I appreciate all of you who have been praying for and keeping up with the news from the General Conference of The United Methodist Church that has been meeting these two weeks in Charlotte, NC. The conference concludes this Friday, May 3. There have been inspiring worship services and a healthy, hopeful spirit of camaraderie and cooperation in their work. They have already accomplished much, and they still have much work to complete. But I wanted to share three things with you that I think are especially noteworthy.

First, on the third day of the conference, Thursday, April 25, the delegates overwhelmingly approved a plan for the denomination’s regionalization. Historically, the UMC has been very US-centered, but the growth in the church is now mainly in regions outside the US. Regionalization would make the US one of several worldwide regions and would put us on more equal footing with our UMC brothers and sisters in Africa, Europe, and the Philippines. It would allow each region to adapt some of their policies and practices (around ordination requirements, for example) to their own missional contexts. Because this is a change in the church’s constitution, it will require at least two-thirds approval of all the votes at the annual conferences before it becomes official.

Second, someone that many of you may know, Lori Sluder, was consecrated as a deaconess this past Monday. A deaconess is a laywoman who is endorsed by the United Women in Faith (formerly the United Methodist Women) for full-time servant ministry in the church. Lori was the church secretary here at Signal Crest from 1994 to 1996 while her husband Mike served as the church’s first associate pastor. Since 2011, Lori has served as the executive assistant to the bishops who have served Holston Conference. Since 2018, Lori has also been involved in ministries that serve those impacted by human trafficking. We thank God for the ministries of deaconesses and home missioners (laymen in similar work), and especially for Lori’s answering God’s call in her life.

Third, earlier this week, the conference approved full communion partnerships with the Episcopal Church and the Moravian Church. Full communion is not a merger of the denominations but rather is a recognition of the validity of each other’s ministries that allows for clergy in one denomination to serve in the other denominations. We already enjoyed full communion with the Lutheran Church. These ecumenical partnerships are especially helpful in providing pastoral leadership in areas that may be underserved by one of the denominations. This partnership awaits concurrence by the Episcopal Church’s own general convention, but its approval by the UMC this week not only brings us into closer cooperation with denominations with whom we share so much historical and theological DNA, but it also reflects the unity of spirit for which Jesus prayed in John 17.

Please continue to keep the work of the General Conference in your prayers as they wrap up over the next few days. You can read the latest reports or watch the livestream at www.resourceumc.org or through the Holston Conference’s website at www.holston.org.