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This page provides information related to changes in conference activities and leadership. If you have questions or comments, please share them with the Ministry Cabinet via a comment page.
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by Rev. Scott Harkness, Assistant to the Bishop for Transition
Note: Highlighted underlined text represent links to other documents. Click on them if you want to read them.
“Major storm clou.jpg) ds building over our Annual Conference!” This was the forecast given in the Conference Leadership Team report to the 2009 Session of the Annual Conference. They looked to the near horizon and saw rough weather ahead. If you were there you may recall some of the dark storm clouds mentioned...
The threatening storm whirls around our system of clergy deployment. There are more clergy with guaranteed appointment than churches able to afford them. Huge questions have surfaced about our system of guaranteed appointments, clergy qualifications and effectiveness, escalating health insurance premiums and other costs related to clergy compensation, shrinking and aging congregations, our ability and commitment to start new faith communities, clergy and congregational morale, and more.
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By Rev. Scott Harkness, Assitant to the Bishop for Transition
In 1984, the year of celebrating the bicentennial of The United Methodist Church, Kenneth Wyatt painted a picture depicting an elderly John Wesley bidding farewell to his general superintendent, Thomas Coke, as he is departing for America. The painting is called Offer Them Christ. There are all kinds of things that Wesley could have said to Coke as the boat is shoving off. He could have given him administrative advice. Wesley could have cautioned Coke about some of the obstacles that Wesley himself had met in America. But, what he said was simple, basic, fundamental: “Offer them Christ.” This simple admonition, at the heart of Wesley’s ministry that had literally transformed the fabric of Britain’s emerging industrial-age society, was now given to those leading the Methodist movement that had been transplanted in the colonies across the sea.
And when 60 preachers gathered in Baltimore at the Christmas Conference, 1784, to organize the Methodist Episcopal Church in the new nation called The United States of America, they asked a question that John Wesley had asked at the first Methodist Conference in London in 1744: "What may we reasonably believe to be God's design in raising up the preachers called Methodists?" The response was the same in 1784 in America, as in London: "To reform the nation, more particularly the Church: to spread scriptural holiness over the land."
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Loren B. Mead provides a compelling case for congregations in his book, Transforming Congregations for the Future, published in 1994. In his preface he discloses his assumption that local congregations do matter. |
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By Rev. Scott Harkness, Assistant to the Bishop for Transition
“The Annual Conference is here for the local church.”
Ever hear this claim before? What do you think?
There are differing opinions about whether it is true or not. It is true that Annual Conference leaders make their plans believing and hoping they will equip the local church for ministry. It’s also true that local church leaders wonder why the Conference needs so much of their budget, requires them to buy expensive insurance, and moves pastors that are making good things happen (or don’t move those that aren’t).
If you’ve been a Methodist for a number of years you may recall the days when the relationship between the local church and the Annual Conference seemed much more symbiotic – those days when District Superintendents came around quarterly for charge conferences; local churches were both determined and able to pay their apportionments in full; and the Annual Conference offered regular leadership training for church officers, lab schools for Sunday school teachers, huge events for youth and thick packets of resources and information mailed out every month.
You may also recognize that those were days when “church” was woven into the fabric of American culture and the machinery of the denomination was geared to keep the institution humming.
But times have changed. Institutions in general have fallen out of favor and a culture that once cradled the church now looks upon it as a stranger. How can the local church be relevant in these times? How can it speak to this age in tones of God’s compassion and justice and still be heard? Is it possible for United Methodist churches in Oregon and Idaho to be healthy and vital and effective in making world-transforming disciples of Jesus Christ? Do they even want to?
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by Rev. Scott Harkness
After reading the Refocus 2010 article “Focusing on the Local Church” you probably still have a lot of questions about the new ways the Conference plans to work with local churches… including yours. The Ministry Cabinet and Appointive Cabinet also have questions as they work at finding effective ways the Annual Conference can fulfill its purpose of equipping local churches for ministry! While details are still being determined, some basic elements of a Conference strategy seem to be emerging. |
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