Conference, finally.

Friday June 6^th Morning Session

Today I’m finally getting to my Annual Conference post. I know it’s sort of out of date and probably completely irrelevant to most of you. If I don’t do it, it will bug me for weeks. So here it is. I’ll put it behind a cut on LiveJournal to save your Friend Page space. What follows is a word for word (except for the ones I can’t read) re-typing of my notes/thoughts & ponderings from the weekend. I may add in some notes, if so they will be in red.

Annual Conference is underway. It’s opening worship.

Things are off to a roaring start. I spilled coffee all over the floor. A slanted floor. I spent the last five minutes wiping coffee off the floor. I have to comment here. This was quite embarrassing. I was on the last row of my section. The coffee ran all the way down to the front row. I barely got napkins and got to it before it was all over a woman’s purse. I did sit back down in the same seat for the rest of worship. I didn’t go back to that section for the rest of the weekend, though.

The Resolution on the War in Iraq was taken from the Consent Agenda – which I expected. But it was withdrawn by the authors – did not expect that. The reason for this was explained the next day. The Bishop is going to host 3 discussions on the war with whoever would like to attend. I plan to attend the one in Decatur. Should be interesting.

Now we’re into the Lay Member Orientation. This year they moved the Clergy [Executive] Session to a different room. I stayed in that one last year. I guess I can’t do that this year. So far the Clergy Session lasat year was much more interesting than this one. I really hope they let someone else speak before this is over. This is terribly boring. (I read for a little while.) A few other people have spoken. It’s still pretty boring.

Friday June 6^th Afternoon Session

(We ate lunch at Waffle House. I could eat there everyday. And die at 38 weighing 576 lbs.) Holy crap, it’s hot in here! Glad I brought shorts for tomorrow. It’s too hot to think straight. Full, hot, & sitting still – bad combination.

The following are notes I made while our speaker, Lovett Weems, was talking.

Hoi poloi – Greek word used for crowds listening to Jesus. (In the Bible, of course.)

Start with the presumption of Grace. (I wish I’d written more here. I’m not sure what he was talking about, but it sounds good. Anyone else remember?)

If our church closed today would anyone miss it – other than our members? (This is a great question to ask a church. In other words, what are you doing outside of your church walls? How are you impacting your community?)

Well, I left for a little while. (Jamie wasn’t feeling well, so I took him back to the hotel.) I missed about an hour of the Afternoon Session. When I got back Lovett Weems said something that I thought was great. Right on the money. I didn’t have my notebook. I didn’t write it down. Now I can’t remember what he said. I think it was something to the effect of “We’re chasing away the people we need to be attracting.” (Wow that is the truth. We write off those who need God’s love the most as lost causes or unreachable. God doesn’t believe in lost causes. I don’t either.)

It’s time for the Ordination Service. Bishop Willimon is preaching: Nooma – wind/spirit; I like that word. We should worry more about those on the outside. (I think I mis-attributed this quote. I gave credit to Lovett Weems. Apparently, according to my notes, Bishop Willimon said it. It was a theme of Lovett’s talks as well. Source credit aside, this is one of the great faults of the church. We worry too much about our members. We worry too much about what goes on in the church. Jesus himself said, to paraphrase, it’s not the healthy who need a doctor. The sick need a doctor. Ministry to and for church members is important. I know I need Bible Study. I need fellowship with other believers. But that’s kind of like well-care. When it comes to our health, if we’re healthy we continue to eat well, we exercise {Bible Study & worship respectively}, but we go to the doctor once a year for our check up. The rest of the time the doctor works on sick people. I’m not advocating going to church once a year. I guess to keep the metaphor going, we who are healthy help the doctor care for the sick. It’s our duty as healthy people to show others that they can get healthy.) The shepherd was more worried about the 1 lost sheep than he was about the 99 who were “too uncreative to get lost.” John 3 – “The wind/spirit (nooma) blows where it will.” Come Holy Spirit! I really like listening to Willimon preach. For a really smart guy (Yale Divinity School) he can break a message down where anyone can get what he’s saying. I’ve heard sermons from smart guys before and left scratching my head. Not with Willimon. I just wish he wrote like that. Then I would actually read that book for our Wednesday night study. Ha! Just kidding Eric!

June 7^th Morning Session

It’s much cooler today. Business, business, business. A lot of talk this morning is budget stuff. Budget, salaries, pensions, health insurance, etc.

Lovett Weems talked about the necessity of reaching young people. When asked how the church can do that he responded: 1) Listen 2) Go back and do something.

That’s it, that’s all of my notes. I didn’t get to write much on the second day. I was sitting right up front wedged between my pastor and our Lay Member (I was the alternate Lay Member). It wasn’t a great environment to write in.

All in all it was a great weekend. I satisfied my “Church Nerd” needs for a little while, and I got to hear some wonderful words of encouragement and direction. Plus I got to see a few old friends and spend time with current friends. Good times.

Also, during Annual Conference we raised over $27,000.00 for Nothing but Nets. If you’re not familiar with the organization, click on the name. They raise money to buy treated mosquito nets for impoverished countries to diminish the spread of malaria. It only costs $10 per net, so we bought over 2700 nets. Good stuff.

For a more thorough recap of Annual Conference check here.