annual conference has come and gone. i spent a total of a day and half doing the conference thing. some of the sights and thoughts from conference.
this is monica, she's one of my bud's from the child care training stuff i used to do with tsu. she's now a local pastor with a two point charge in the cookeville district. definitely one of my fav people in the conference, we did a ton of hanging out with tsu stuff, now we only get to hang when there's a conference event.
in blogger conversations, i chilled out with fellow blogger mark youngman, he's husband to periodic hiatus blogger jenny. he's off to a new appointment at chapel hill umc, a progressive small town church. anyways, we chatted about a bunch of stuff and then ran into each other throughout the day... i don't think he was too happy when i took his pic. you decide. also caught up with one of my youth from hermitage umc, abbie, she was there as a 2xpk. it was great to catch up with her.
i toured the place, first umc murfreesboro has a new building, i was more familiar with the old downtown square church building. took a tour of the youth rooms, pretty cool set up with different themes for each room. there were many booths set up with different ministries around the conference. one i found interesting was umm... for some reason i felt their display was trying to over compensate for something, or at the very least needed a womans touch.
in the "how adults act like youth" category. it didn't take much effort to find some delegates, lay or clergy, hanging out skipping a session. funny how if these folks were teenagers we'd herd them into the sanctuary. talking to some of the clergy, there is apparently a grassroots effort to wear bow-ties on tuesday. feel free to continue the grassroots movement.
i dropped by the cokesbury store. i tried not to buy anything, but i was powerless. apparently i had a need to bash the american Christian church. bought "red and blue god, black and blue church" by becky garrison, "the gospel according to america, a meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted idea" by david dark, and "revolution" by barna. i was sold at some of the chapter titles. not sure when i'll get around to reading them, but it should be interesting reading.
i did hang out for some of the reports and resolutions. i think someone needs to teach roberts rules of order to the greater public if we are still going to use them. greater concensus that i saw was that most folks were confused throughout the amendments, substitutions, questions on the substitutions, etc. the bishop though was pretty funny throughout, not quite sarcasm but a certain good sense of humor. to be noted, jay was the geek of conference sitting front and center during conference. kay, his wife, told me that they had to in beginning, it was the only place there were spaces (just like sunday worship). apparently you get to see and hear some of the side conversations better which made for more entertainment. me, i sat in the balcony.
i really enjoyed the closing communion and setting of appointment service. not sure why this service was so different from other communion services, the commitment liturgy, being served by the bishops assistant (who's a good friend), being amongst so many conference friends, praying for a new year of ministry.. i'm not sure, but it all felt powerful for me.
