This past week during Sunday morning worship I lifted up General Conference during the time of prayer.\u00a0 After worship I was asked about General Conference.\u00a0 I tried my best to not only explain what General Conference is but what was being debated and decided at General Conference this week.\u00a0 Towards the end of the conversation someone asked me, \u201cWhat difference does General Conference make for us here in Clarkston?\u201d<\/p>\n
I must admit I struggled answering this question.\u00a0 I spoke about the elimination of guaranteed appointments, the restructuring of the general agencies, the social principles, and other issues.\u00a0 But I soon realized that very few of these things matter to the majority of the congregation.<\/p>\n
I am a General Conference junkie (I have the live stream on as I write this), and it would be great if more people in my church cared about General Conference, but the reality is that they don\u2019t.\u00a0 While the worship and stories that come out of General Conference are inspiring, a majority of the petitions passed make little or no difference in how a large part of the church I serve will live out its mission.\u00a0 I know that there are some issues, especially around the ideas of social justice, that matter a great deal too many people, both laity and clergy.\u00a0 But in the minds of many in the local church, a majority of the issues revolve around administrative issues and make little or no difference.<\/p>\n
As a lifelong United Methodist, pastor, and General Conference junkie I want to tell my church members that General Conference does matter, but when hours are spent debating the structure that many of the members of my church will never experience, I wonder what difference General Conference does make to the local church.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t the answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past week during Sunday morning worship I lifted up General Conference during the time of prayer.\u00a0 After worship I was asked about General Conference.\u00a0 I tried my best to not only explain what General Conference is but what was being debated and decided at General Conference this week.\u00a0 Towards the end of the conversation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":1082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-conversation"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/gc2012-floor.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-hd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}