I am fortunate to serve on the Host Team for General Conference 2016. For those of you not fluent in United-Methodist-ese General Conference is the United Methodist Church’s global gathering. It is held every four years for us to revise our rule book (awesomely called the Book of Discipline) and to deal with other business of the global church.
This May about 5,000 people will come to Portland to participate in this process. I am on the team that is coordinating the host part, which is stuff like greeting people at the airport, staffing the prayer rooms, and running registration at the convention center. Our whole goal is to be welcoming and hospitable. We want to live out the Christian values of welcome and love in the way we help people get here and make them comfortable. It’s fun to be part of the nonpolitical side of the event. I’m learning a lot about my denomination and getting to work with amazing people.
I have a lot to be thankful for from this experience, but the highlight has been my two partners in crime, Brett & Tim. We are each the head of an area of the host team. Our areas and tasks are different, the ways we work are different, our methods of communicating are different, and yet we are a solid team who have each other’s backs. It is so very rare in my world for pastors to work together as equals on a project like this.
I have learned things from both Tim & Brett in the time we have been part of the host team. Working with a respected colleague and observing their process provides so much insight and chances to improve my own work. Laughing with them (and maybe not a little crying too) has made this huge task more manageable. I am thankful for this opportunity to learn and to be part of a team. While I don’t ever plan on doing something like General Conference again, I will be looking for ways to partner with others and to continue to learn from them, here in the Sellwood Faith Community, in my annual conference, and in the other places I find myself.
-Eilidh
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| There’s still time to volunteer for General Conference: http://westernjurisdictionumc.org/gc2016/ |
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