General Conference is over.
For the life of me, I can't really tell what they did, except do away with the guaranteed appointment and the Judicial Counsel will weigh in on that. So they cut the general agencies budget but also added a couple of line items. How does all this effect the local church? Since only about 2 cents on the dollar go to the agencies, not much.
So was this a lot of smoke and no fire? Did we advance the kingdom of God or only make it harder to serve in full-time ministry?
On Sunday, I tried to explain the importance of General Conference to my Sunday School class, but after giving the context of the UMC structure, there wasn't a lot more to say. Did the groups that proposed restructuring not do their homework or is the system so cumbersome that well-intentioned people can't effect change through restructuring?
The future of the Church in the end rests not on General Conference, but on faithful witness of each of us in our local churches, schools, hospitals, retirement homes, missions.
Grace, Kathy
Kathy, you are SO right. And the system is becoming too cumbersome for anyone to understand what is going on. I think it all comes back to individual acts of kindness, fairness, loving your neighbors, etc. etc. and not just trying to make the system better by being bigger. Nona
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