Thoughts on Annual Conference

Back in the office after being at Annual Conference last weekend.

This is my fifth year going to conference here in New England. About 4 miles before the exit, there is an office building with a sign promoting their facilities which says "If you worked here you'd be home now" on one side and the other side says "If you worked here, you'd already be at work" on the other. Then there is the banner about office space being available. This sign has been there every year for five years (and probably longer). If this was my building and after five years I still had space available I might begin to wonder if maybe my marketing campaign wasn't working. I get tired of seeing the signs and I only go by once a year. I don't think it's as effective as they hope it would be, but they keep trying. As they say, insanity is trying the same thing over and over again hoping for a different response, and this sign is clearly doing that. What "signs" do we have in our churches?

They say that having children is the greatest sign of hope for the future, because people would not want to bring children into a situation in which there was no hope. I often get the same feeling at annual conference. Every year we see and hear about the decline of the church (although there year there was no report from the statistician), but we keep ordaining new members. This year I believe there were 13 local pastors received, six provisional elders and one provisional deacon, and 1 deacon and 7 elders were ordained. If there was no hope for the future, we should stop receiving in new ministers, but we don't. In spite of all the rhetoric of decline, each Annual Conference I am enlightened by these strong signs of hope for the future of Methodism.

On the same note, at clergy session, one person noted her concern that of those received into provisional membership for elders in the last two years, all of them have been men. I understand the issue she was raising. My closest friends and mentors in the ministry have all been women, and I recognize the special issues that fall on my female colleagues that I don't have to deal with. But at the same time, I am also offended by that statement. My call is not less than because I am a man. It is also not greater than either. I cannot help that I was born a white male, I do recognize the privileges this gives me, but I also recognize the call that I was given by God. I too have a place in this church. What she also did not acknowledge was that last year all of the persons ordained were women, and this year, of the eight people ordained only one was male. Let's recognize the triumphs and not just thump on the negative.

It's still amazing to me how technologically backward the church is. At what should be the biggest event, we still don't have real-time availability of information, like resolutions or even the videos. When I attend conferences I can buy a DVD of the event literally minutes after it is over, and they can make changes to documents and have them appear as they are begin discussed, but we somehow can't here. We're also voting like it's the sixteenth century by raising ballets in the air. In Linda's classroom her students are able to wirelessly vote on what they think the right answer is, and yet we are using paper ballots held up in the air.

I would find it very hard to believe that there is not a wireless voting system that could be used. It would certainly be more effective and efficient than having people stick their hands in the air and guessing which had more, especially on close votes. It's little wonder that our churches are technologically behind, and hesitant to move forward, when even the conference is behind. I do want to congratulate them on streaming annual conference this year, although the one time I tried to get on I was unsuccessful. I am also in constant amazement how few other people are working on laptops or even PDA's during the conference.

And one other thing, I understand that there are last minute changes to some things, but please please please, let's be as prepared as we possibly can with our documents so we are not wasting time making changes or updating things, and when we do have to make changes let's put them up on the screen. None of these documents were created on a typewriter so they should all be available electronically for projection. Let's just set a rule for next year. If you do not provide an electronic copy for projection, you do not speak. This is especially important for resolutions which did not make the printing of the conference book.

Finally, is just my constant frustration with Annual Conference's structure. I don't think I will surprise anyone by saying I'm not a fan of meetings. There are times when they are truly productive and useful, but large amounts of time are usually completely wasted and to be honest I have better things to do with my time. As someone once said, "meetings take minutes, but last hours." I feel the same way about Annual Conference. There are definitely things that have to take place, be discussed and voted on, but I find most of it a waste of time. There are better things that we could be doing with the gathering that could deeply impact the local church. Why don't we combine it with the School of Congregational Development and offer those workshops during that time? Make it more like a real conference in which there are learning sessions, side sessions on issues to be discussed, etc. I appreciate the learning sessions they have now, but I can't attend because they are done during meals and I have my girls with me during the meals.

And speaking of which, child care also needs to coincide more closely with what is actually going on. As it stands now, I have to leave each session early to get my children because child care ends at a specific time which does not coincide with what is actually happening. So either the bishop needs to keep on schedule, and tightly control it, or the child care centers need to be more flexible.

Finally, one thing for speakers. If you say something is going to be short, please make it short. Don't take five minutes to tell me how short it's going to be and then ramble on for another twenty minutes.