Do you have special memories of when your family comes together for food, fellowship, and to celebrate or acknowledge something significant…a birthday, anniversary, holiday, wedding, baptism, birth, death, or a milestone moment in someone’s life? A variety of traditions often accompany these events, even if the details vary from family to family. As time passes and generations come and go, these gatherings are a reminder that our seemingly common connection is anything but common…it is vital to our understanding of who we are and whose we are.

Next week the United Methodist family in Tennessee and Western Kentucky will hold their Annual Conference “get together” in Collierville, TN. This event will cover ALL of the previously mentioned events in some form from Sunday evening through Wednesday morning on the first four days of June. We will also tend to more tedious family matters…budgets, ministry reports, resolutions, nominations…the “business” of being the Church.

At the heart of it all is our desire to serve and please God. This is often overlooked or underemphasized amid the details, standing rules, Book of Discipline requirements, and orders of the day. Perhaps the best approach is to remember the means of grace that John Wesley lifted as ways to honor and respect God, and one another. Prayer, meditating on the scriptures, partaking the Eucharist, fasting, and Christian conferencing.

The means of grace are often lived out by following two pathways, works of piety and works of mercy. Finding the balance is key in managing the works of the Church. We can get too caught up in our personal piety that we overlook mercy. We can also become so heart-driven that we fail to remember that we have standing rules and church laws for good reasons. They hold us accountable, keep us liable, and offer a framework that challenges us to do our best as followers of Christ.

I am looking forward to the family gathering next week. I believe we are still in a time of recovery from the denominational drama of the past few years. But with recovery comes renewal. It doesn’t happen quickly. It requires being still, listening, receiving, pondering, and usually making some changes. Thus, channeling the means of grace becomes the essential conduit through which we live, and move, and have our being.

The means of grace are the ways God can reveal our way forward, our next best steps in hastening, strengthening, and confirming that Christ is alive in us so that grace pervades in and through the lives of His disciples. May it be so in our efforts to become who and what God calls us to be!

Forward in Faith,

Rev. Dr. David Weatherly

If you missed our Invitational video to Annual Conference, click HERE to view it.