What We Do Matters
NOTE: I am blogging more frequently during the 2024 General Conference, as I did in 2019. These are only my reflections, and in no way are they comprehensive. To keep up with happenings of the UMC General Conference, I invite you to stay connected HERE.
In 1986, my father, Kenneth Smith, was elected serve as the Lay Leader of the Central Texas Conference. He was elected to serve two years because our conference, for years, had ben out of step with the quadrennial cycle of the United Methodist Church. We were changing our Lay Leaders exactly between General Conferences, and there were limitations as to our effectiveness by doing so. My dad agreed that he would do well with the two year cycle.
Because of his visibility to the members of the annual conference, he was elected as the first lay member of our General Conference delegation in a year when the first elected lay person was the chairperson of the delegation. I had just been ordained as a (transitional) deacon, the year before my father’s election, and I was excited to join him as an observer/guest at the 1988 General Conference in St. Louise, MO.
That’s when I knew that General Conference matters. While there was much camaraderie with celebration, there was always this uneasy tension around the issue of human sexuality. Those who have heard my story about Mark, my best friend in high school, will know that it was during this time that I was on a journey toward greater understanding of homosexuality … later LGBTQ+ concerns.
The 1988 General Conference felt good in many ways that year, but I felt the hardness around excluding people. Then the last two weeks burst upon us and I can tell you that NO PREVIOUS GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH CAN COMPARE WITH THE POSTPONED 2020 GENERAL CONFERENCE HAPPENING IN 2024!
It was in the first regular session of the General Conference of the newly formed United Methodist Church in 1972 where the language was inserted into our Social Principles in the Book of Discipline: “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” That was the capstone upon which all of the other restrictive, harmful legislation was written quadrennium after quadrennium.
After 52 years of living through General Conferences where the knifes of separation and exclusion continued to cut deeper and deeper, this capstone statement has now been removed from our Social Principles, and the giant arch of heterosexism has fallen! The newly revised social principles were approved yesterday.
Not only did we remove that harmful capstone statement, we ADDED the following: “Within the church, we affirm marriage as a sacred, lifelong covenant that brings two people of faith, an adult man and woman of consenting age, or two adult persons of consenting age, into union with one another and into deeper relationship with God and the religious community.”
And as the General Conference continued to break down barriers and to build up fresh expressions for how a newly revised United Methodist Church will move forward, we have had other developments that shrink the distance between us.
Two significant steps had to do with the Order of Deacons and how we are called (even in our financial life) to seek justice.
Deacons are, in fact, ordained clergy who, from the birth of that separate order in the United Methodist Church in 1996, have been restricted from sacramental authority. The General Conference has seen how sacramental authority (consecrating the elements of holy communion and officiating baptisms) is essential to build up the church and our witness in the world. Our own Deacon, Pastor Jessica, will share her thoughts within the next 2-3 days on her blog linked HERE.
Addressing racism, sexism, colonialism and patriarchy. While I was unable to write down the specific motion to amend, a delegate rose to add to the report of our General Council on Finance and Administration that the United Methodist Church will fund ministries of justice that break down racism, sexism, colonialism, and patriarchy.. This moves us toward being a more justice-seeking denomination.
While the church is still grappling with the financial losses due to disaffiliations and unrest, the spirit of hope is alive, and the Holy Spirit is leading us as a denomination to a new day. It is a new day based, not on who we can exclude, but on how we draw the circle wide. It is a new day founded on the powerful love of God.
Today, in the last morning of worship for this General Conference, we heard a powerful message from Bishop Tracy Malone, who serves as resident bishop of the East Ohio Annual Conference, and then at the end of worship, the band started singing Love Train.
People around the world, join hands! Start a Love Train! A Love Train!
And as they sang this same refrain over and over, people held hands. Then they began dancing in place. Then they moved out into the aisles and … you guessed it … formed a love train.
What we do at Annual Conference matters, and when we do it well, the Love Train is formed. So I end with the invitation for you to witness the joy that was shared in that moment RIGHT HERE!
What we do as a church matters! You matter! All those who have been excluded and marginalized matter. And when everyone matters, the world will never be the same!