Annual Conference: A step onto foreign soil

I once heard that great leaders do not need to provide the answers, at least not all the time. They should be generous in providing questions that are agents of change and conversation. This is comforting to know, as I have many questions and I am following a path to leadership in ministry that has been paved, graveled and flowered with various questions about the church and our global world.

My first step...
It is unrealistic to assume complete certainty when you enter the unknown or a foreign place. Ther is an existing language and way of handling matters, that is better not to judge but to simply experience or get a taste of. The beautiful thing when stepping onto any foreign terrain your basic senses are on full alert to anything to help you make sense of it. My mind lends itself to the way people comunicate, how they treat each other. I am constatnly searching for what it is that makes people find common ground. The conference proved itself to be very interesting in terms of communication between people. How does a church body make decisions? What does "all" mean? What are we communicating to our youth members? These are all valid questions that find their way into my heart.

However, what I'll take away from the conference were found in a collage of simple moments.

The first piece...
A sermon given by Rev. Charlotte Abram asking us, "What do we want on our tombstone?". On every tombstone their is a dash in between the year of birth and the year of death and it is up to us to decide, what will we fight for? What will we stand up for? She gave the example of a Ku Klux Klan rally, where protestors of the Ku Klux Klan started to beat a KKK member. A brave soul emerged from the crowd and threw herself on top of the KKK member, she was African American. When the woman was asked why she did it she said, "It was the right thing to do." What we choose to fight for and what we choose to stand up for are defining moments in our life but Rev. Charlotte said we dont need to worry about, "where to walk because God is leading our footsteps and all we have to do is take that first step".

The second piece...
A group of Youth got up to the microphone and made their requets known for a more inclusive church. As a collective body of young people some of the requests were more modern music, an ability to serve on committees so their thoughts and ideas are made readily known to church elders. Their final pronouncement was, "we are not the future of the church, we are the church". Its so clear that there needs to be a stronger presence of youth, ages 18-35, in our church families and communities. It was inspiring to meet so many people working towards this but also to see the long road ahead if we want to get anything accomplished in inspiring youth.

The third piece...
One of the most important areas I witnessed was conflict. Conflict in discerning how to provide money from the budget to our camps. It was the first time I witnessed a debate involving the leaders of the UMC. Some of the debate made me want to pursue a career inside the church and some of the debate made me think I was more suited for extension ministries. Of course, my future does not rest solely on the opinions and spoken words of others. If anything it solidified my opinion that if the church plans on existing and being affective it must set its sights on being inclusive in every sense of the word. Inclusive for young people and even, dare I say it, for Ku Klux Klan members as well.

As I walked out of the Cornhusker with my head full of ideas and notions about the UMC, I boarded a plane taking me to Washington D.C. for a Bread for the World conference. A faith organization aimed at eliminating poverty and hunger.