Annual Conference

I grew up in the Alabama-West Florida Conference.

I attended my first conference at Huntingdon College in 1976 while I was just 15 years old.  I was a youth member representing the Andalusia District.  It was an eye opening experience for me.  I had never seen church people fight and debate like I did that week in sweltering heat in Montgomery, AL.  I also never felt more accepted by a group of youth than the dozen or so youth that were voting members of that conference.  Little did I know at the time that I would end up as a freshman at that little United Methodist college in the fall of 1978.

While I was student in seminary, I had some significant experiences in Western North Carolina.

First, a student appointment in Belwood, a town of 500 in the country between Morganton and Shelby.  Then I came back as a camp director for about 18 months in that same community.  While I served the church, I was encouraged to join the Western North Carolina Conference, and would then start going to Annual Conference at Lake Junaluska each summer. Little did I know at the time, my first appointment out of seminary, and then twelve years in a row after a stint in Japan, I would call that same community home.

It is now Annual Conference week at Lake Junaluska.  Though we meet later than we used to, and conference is not nearly as long, it is still a week (actually 2 1/2 days) to remember.

I was ordained twice on the the stage at Stuart Auditorium by Bishop Bevel Jones early in my career.  In that same auditorium, we remember our clergy friends who have gone on to glory.  I can truthfully say that I know more of them now that I once did.

We wish our peers well as they retire--and there have been quite a few from seminary days that have ended their time of service in recent years.  And for as long as most anybody can remember, on Sunday we receive our appointments from the bishop.

This year on June 24th, Bishop Leeland will say that my "appointment is fixed" and I will be picking up and moving to Terrell, NC on the edge of Lake Norman on July 3rd.  It is no surprise, like appointments were decades ago. But it is always a poignant time to know that I serve as a member of a covenant body that gets sent like the early disciples, like those under the charge of John Wesley, and Francis Asbury, and a bunch of bishops afterward.

We Methodists are an odd lot, and a little antiquated, when you think of the large number of megachurches and independent churches that know nothing of a bishop or what it means to be itinerant.

On the other hand, it would be great to capture some of that "antiquated" fire that drove Wesley to ride thousands of miles across England on horseback, or Asbury to evangelize the American frontier.

For them, the Annual Conference was crucial to the vision.

So, here we go again...


Location: Waynesville, NC 28786, USA

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