Jurisdictional Conference (quite late)

This has been sitting around for a while so I decided I’d finish it and post it.

Last week A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of leading the Kansas East delegation at the South Central Jurisdictional Conference in Dallas, TX. I didn’t have the time to blog while I was there and haven’t really had the inclination to blog since then. Barry Dundas from the Kansas West Conference did a really nice job covering jurisdictional conference on his blog, so I’d point you there if you want good daily summarys.

As most of you know we elected and consecrated three bishops: Earl Bledsoe from the Texas Conference, Mike Lowry from the Southwest Texas Conference, and Jim Dorff from the North Texas Conference. All of the current bishops will remain in their current assignments and the newly minted bishops will serve in North Texas, Central Texas, and Southwest Texas respectively. Bledsoe was elected quickly on the third ballot, Lowry on the eleventh, and Dorff on the twenty-third. It was frustrating to some of us that six of the last seven bishops elected have been from the state of Texas and that we haven’t elected a woman to the episcopacy since 1996.

There was some unexpected nastiness involved in the whole process. Rumors started to spread, especially when there was only one bishop left to elect, that Candidate X was involved in the Confessing Movement or Candidate Y would have 24 years to serve as bishop (when they actually had much fewer). This was probably the most disheartening part of the whole process. The best part of the process were the times when the Kansas area delegations and sometimes folks from Nebraska, Missouri and elsewhere surrounded one of the Kansas West Conference candidates Cheryl Bell and prayed some of the most fervent and heartfelt prayers that I have ever been a part of.

During one of the worship services a soloist gave a beautiful rendition of “My Life Flows On (How Can I Keep from Singing?)” which elevated the song to among my favorites.

Another task of the jurisdictional conference is to make assignments to the directorates of general boards and agencies of the United Methodist Church. I made the decision not to return for a second quadrennium on the General Board of Discipleship and instead will serve on the board of General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns. I’m excited to learn more about the pan-Methodist and Latin American/Caribbean Autonomous Affiliated discussions especially.

My jurisdictional responsibilities will continue as I serve on the Episcopacy Committee. The first meeting will probably be sometime in January or February. This committee meets throughout the quadrennium to help address episcopal concerns. It also is the one that goes into seclusion after the final bishop is elected in 2012 and hashes out where the bishops will go. I’m pretty excited about this responsibility. The committee is just a really gifted group of people, although I certainly lost some respect for one or two of them as jurisdictional conference went on. That will pass though. I imagine, although I don’t know for sure, that I am the youngest person in the SCJ to serve in this capacity, which is a pretty cool thing. I have expended tremendous time and energy to show that young people can contribute to general church administrative and program work with remarkable competence and this is another opportunity to impress that fact upon people. Foremost, it is another chance that I’ve been given to use the gifts that God has given me.

-Luke