Off To Annual Conference!

This week, Debbie Cooper, our United Women in Faith President, and I will be driving 8 hours to Billings, Montana to attend the Mountain Sky Annual Conference meeting. We will be joined by our Lay Leader, Gary Dyer, who will be attending the conference online.

This is something all United Methodists do every year: gather together for a time of worship, inspiration, and business. Lakewood United Methodist Church is part of a sprawling network of churches we affectionately call the “United Methodist Connection.” This is a connection that bridges us to churches in other states and even other countries across the globe.


The Mountain Sky Annual Conference is one of many that exist in the US and across the world. While in Montana, we will hear from our Bishop, our Lay Leaders of the Conference, the leadership of Conference Youth and many others. We will discuss legislative items like our budget and other items like whether or not our conference will continue to invest in fossil fuel oriented businesses. We will worship together. We will recognize those pastors and pastor’s spouses who have gone on into God’s loving embrace.

We will also gather together in Holy Conferencing, discussing the future of the church with people all across our connection. We will celebrate new churches that have been chartered and prayerfully say farewell to those that have closed. We will discuss how to meet the challenges of being the church in a society wracked with political turmoil and civic and cultural disengagement.

We will celebrate new leaders entering the process of becoming clergy, and our time together will culminate in the ordination of a new class of Methodist clergy who will be sent to serve churches in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and at least one in Salmon, Idaho.

I hope that you will pray for the Annual Conference and all who are gathering in Billings to serve this week. And I look forward to sharing updates from the Annual Conference alongside Debbie and Gary at next Sunday’s abundance report.

If you find this intriguing and want to learn more about what it takes to be a part of a gathering like this, come and find me when we get back!

I will not be with you in worship this Sunday, so I will next see you in worship on June 21!