This year marked my fifth consecutive time attending a session of the Central Texas Annual Conference. Once you attend a quadrenium’s worth of annual conference sessions you learn that the session before General Conference is the session at which delegates are elected to the upcoming sessions of General and Jurisdictional Conferences. This was my second time voting on delegates; I felt much more prepared this time around, I actually knew what General and Jurisdictional Conferences were and I actually knew the people I was voting for and why I was voting for them. I also knew that my name was on the ballot, something I did not foresee coming four years ago.
Annual Conference began with worship and teaching on Sunday night, but for me it began earlier in the day with the amazing opportunity of getting to ride with my friend Tom Harkrider and picking up our Annual Conference guest speaker Rev. Adam Hamilton. I had the most amazing time as we rode from DFW to Waco. I learned a lot about Adam and his ministry not just at Church of the Resurrection, but across the entirety of the UM connection. I was also greatly inspired and encouraged with the opportunity to discuss my call to ministry and my own thoughts about the state of our church with Adam.
The day got even better with worship. I had the privilege of getting to be a part of the processional and lead the opening litany. We then heard an amazing word about leadership from Adam and then to close the service I had to remember back to my days of being an acolyte as I had to fill in for the younger acolytes who left early because it was past their bedtime when the service ended. After worship I hung out with Tom, Adam, and many other members of our Annual Conference. The best part of the evening was walking back into the hotel between Bishop Lowry and Rev. Hamilton.
Monday morning began with the individual lay and clergy sessions. During the lay session I assisted in leading a time of dialogue and Holy Conferencing amongst the new cluster groups that are a part of our new conference structure. After this session was over we officially began the business session of the Annual Conference, since this was a voting year we began with taking a ballot and then Adam gave another amazing presentation on worship. After Adam’s presentation we dismissed for lunch which meant I had to wait several hours to hear the results of the ballot.
We opened the afternoon session with the results from the first ballot. Bishop Lowry read the lay results first and said there were three elections (this is a very rare occurence!) and I became very excited when the third name was read because it was mine! I knew going into Annual Conference that I had a pretty good chance at an election, but I had no idea I would be elected on the first ballot!
My experiences on Sunday and Monday made this annual conference session my most favorite by far. Tuesday and Wednesday contained many of the familiar reports and worship services including the ordination service, which is my most favorite one to attend of the entire year. The laity elected all of their delegates by around lunch on Tuesday and after 18 ballots the clergy finally elected the last of their alternates as the Bishop was saying Amen to close the conference.
The entire delegation (GC, JC, and alternate delegates) met briefly at the close of the conference; I was somewhat overwhelmed as the reality of what my election meant. This will be a very exciting year as I journey to General and Jurisdictional Conferences. I haven’t blogged in a very long time, but I hope to be more consistent over this next year as I think this experience is something that definitely needs to be shared. I invite all who are reading this to please comment or contact me with your thoughts about what will be happening over this next year, and please, if I haven’t updated in a while let me know!
