Connected for Good

Hi, friends, and welcome to the Weekly Dulin Podcast, a brief weekly reflection from Dulin United Methodist Church in Falls Church. Here, we take time to think together about faith, community, and what it means to live as disciples of Jesus in today's world.

Hello, Dulin Church. It's me, James Henry, your pastor. And it is another opportunity for us to meet for a Dulin Weekly Moment or a Dulin Weekly Podcast, depending on how you listen to this or watch this as the case may be. When this is going out to you, it will not be a live experience. It is an experience that will come out to you when I am away.

Myself and Alan Chin, who is our lay delegate to Annual Conference, we will both be in Harrisonburg, James Madison University, JMU, which for the first time is the place that we host the Virginia Annual Conference. And you may say to yourself, what does this have to do with me? And guess what? We're going to get to talk about that for just a minute. United Methodists are people of connection.

One of the things that Wesley wanted to see among people is that we encourage one another, we build each other up, and part of what he thought was very important was holy conferencing. Now, I have mixed feelings about whether or not annual conference is truly a holy experience or not, but in as much as everything in this life is holy, it is holy conferencing. And because you are listening to this and are in some way connected perhaps to Dulin United Methodist Church, you are connected also to the larger connection of the annual conference. You're on the Northern Virginia District in the Virginia Annual Conference. You are part of the Virginia Annual Conference, which takes in a fair portion of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which is part of the Southeastern jurisdiction, which is all of the annual conferences that are sort of in the Southeast Of The United States, which is part of the general United Methodist Church altogether.

So going to annual conference is my way of being a delegate there as a clergy from a clergy perspective engaged in leading the church and Alan is going as your lay representative as a person who represents Christ as a member of Dulin Church. What are the things that are important to Dulin? And we anticipate and we trust and trust ourselves to Alan's representing those interests in the way that he votes, in the way that he engages. He's essentially our missioner, a missionary from Dulin, United Methodist Church to the Virginia Annual Conference to speak on our behalf, to recognize our concerns. And to do so in a way that he sees fit to do because that's what representative democracy works, how it works in general.

Essentially, we go to James Madison University this year, we are going as a connectional bunch. We are recognizing how connected we are. It may feel like Dulin Church is all alone. It's the way you experience United Methodism as participants in our life together. But we're bigger than that.

We're part of the Virginia Annual Conference. And so for Alan and for me, it's an opportunity to see that connection at work. So we gather in a way to remind ourselves that we're not alone, That we're part of a bigger connection. And part of being part of that bigger connection means that we can do some things in the larger world that individually as a church we might not be able to do. You know, we can chip in with lots of other people who who help to fund the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

Did you know that when you give money to any one of the various funds that are a part of the United Methodist Committee on Relief. So for instance, when we have a hurricane, there's usually a new line item created by the United Methodist Committee on Relief and that new line item, if you give a $100, a $100 goes towards that. And why is that? Because the United Methodist Connection funds United Methodist Committee on Relief and all of its administrative functions. So that any gift that is given directly for whatever hurricane or whatever disaster or whatever mission that is happening in the world, 100% of what is given goes toward that mission, that recovery effort, etcetera.

It makes a difference. And that's part of being in the connection. Now, be honest with you, I've been going to annual conference. The first annual conference I ever went to was in 1983. It was also the first time I was a licensed local pastor being appointed to serve a church.

And back in those days going to annual conference was an arduous possibility for a young person going. There's the United Methodist Book of Reports for the Virginia Annual Conference which details all of the reports. And back in my day when I first went to annual conference, they would ask us to read the reports before we went. And then someone would often stand up. Some would just highlight the reports, but some would stand up and read us the report verbatim.

And it could be rather tedious. Now at annual conference, we also worship together. We study the Bible together. They offer opportunities for us to connect with some of the ministries that happen beyond the local church. For instance, they're usually representatives of all the United Methodist Colleges in the Commonwealth Of Virginia that we help to sponsor.

Some of the seminaries send folks as well. There are opportunities to support other ministries and learn about ministries that actually exist. The conference level, the Virginia conference level of the United Methodist Men or United Women in Faith or the United Methodist Youth Fellowship at the conference level. All of those things are places we can find out about when we go to annual conference. Forty years into going to annual conferences, annual conference can lose a bit of its luster.

Voting and listening to reports, even though they don't just read them to us anymore, there's often a multimedia experience, can be long and tiring. And when you've been a part of the conference for as long as I have, some of the people that you used to see at Annual Conference have retired. Some of the elders who were truly elders to me have gone on. Sometimes they come back to Annual Conference, but sometimes they're not around anymore, so they don't. All of these pieces make Annual Conference an interesting place to gather.

We transact business, we set the budget because that directly impacts Dulin as well because when we set a budget, then every church is expected to pay a portion of it. We are apportioned a piece of that to help support, to pay the bishop, to pay the district superintendents, to pay for missions that we do around the world, to help support United Methodist Committee on Relief, which I mentioned before, to support higher education in the United Methodist tradition. All of those pieces, all of those pieces are there and reflections of what could be, what is in a larger world. So when you watch this, Alan and I will be at annual conference. Depending upon when you watch it, we might be in session.

We might be worshiping. We might be eating a meal together. You know, I don't know. Any one of those things at Annual Conference. But that's where I am.

And it's a reminder that we're a part of something bigger than we are. And that's probably got its pros and its cons, but that's a conversation for another day. We are not into perfection in the sense of anything being truly perfect. Although John Wesley would want us to say that we are going on to perfection in this lifetime and he meant perfection and love, not moral perfection because he did not believe that was humanly possible in this life anyway. But again, for another day, for another conversation, thanks for joining me today.

If this answered some questions about Annual Conference, great. If it left you asking even more questions about why Alan and I are at Annual Conference, you will see Alan this coming Sunday. He will be helping Reverend Dave Lowe lead worship this coming Sunday because I'll be off with our Appalachia Service Project group headed to Greenbrier, West Virginia to make houses home, bombers, safer and drier. But that's what I'll be talking about next week in our Dulin Weekly Moment and Dulin Weekly Podcast. Thanks so much for joining me.

I wish you all the best until the next time I see you.