The Good News: Memorial Well Represented at District Leadership Conference

Clergy and laypeople from Churches from all over the North East District gathered in Ocala on September 13th for an annual day of connection and learning together. Memorial, who was the church the farthest away from the event, had the most members of any church in attendance with 18 traveling down to Ocala! And four lay members of our church family were there serving in their roles as District and Conference Leaders:

Jessica Scott is introduced, by DS Rev. Dr. Simon Osunlana, with the other Co-Lay Leaders of the North East District.

• Sarah Flint serves as the chair of the Creation Care Task Team for the Conference

• Jessica Scott is a Co-Lay Leader of the North East District

• Mary Negron is the President of the United Women in Faith for the North E0ast District.

• Jim Mitts serves as the Disaster Coordinator of the North East District.

Sarah Flint representing Memorial and the Conference Creation Care Task Team.

Our District Superintendent, Rev. Dr. Simon Osunlana, greeted the group and offered some words of welcome. The theme of the conference was looking at evangelism with new eyes and seeing how we could all be better at telling our stories and the story of Jesus. Rev. Osunlana reminded those in attendance that, " The message of Jesus is transformative! There is no need to disguise it or transform it - It just is the message." About being United Methodists, he further said, "Our theology is needed (right now). It's one of grace and the unconditional love of Christ."

One of the invited speakers, the Rev. Bill Bown from the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference invited the group into a deeper discussion on evangelism. He opened his session with this definition of evangelism: It's anything you to help another person move closer to God, or into a Christian community.

He acknowledged that evangelism can be scary and even annoying to people, which is why some avoid is all together.

" If it (evangelism) doesn't scare us, it scares everyone we come into contact with,": he said.

But Rev. Brown said that evangelism is more important now than ever to help, "overcome the epidemic of loneliness and invisibility in our world by connection," and walked the group through some new, successful ways to look at evangelism and also some tactics to avoid.

Rev. Michael Beck was another invited speaker, and he was joined by Derrick Scott, III (Campus to City Wesley/ Studio Wesley) and Rev. Caitlan White (Stetson Wesley) to talk about the evolving use of evangelism with young adults. They reminded the group how the ways of reaching a new generation are changing along with that generations view of connection and church. While it seems younger Christians are only interested in digital connection, the campus ministers said that is not what they are experiencing. They see young people looking for face to face connection and churches who are living into the call for social justice.

The remaining time at the conference was spend in worship and in fellowship over a meal. it was a wonderful day for meeting other United Methodists, and everyone came away with fresh ideas about evangelism to put into use at Memorial.

Be on the lookout for more training and leadership events from the North East District in the future.