This week I will be participating 239th session of the Baltimore-Washington Conference. This will run from Wednesday through Saturday at the Inner Harbor Hilton Hotel in Baltimore. The theme of the conference, presided over by Bishop LaTrelle Easterling, is “All About Love.” This the first time that the session has met in person since May 2019.
I have always looked forward to annual conference sessions. The sessions involve good discussions, terrific worship, and the chance to peruse exhibits and bookstore items as well as to carry out the usual business of the annual conference. I particularly appreciate the chance to be with friends and colleagues I don’t get to see very often. It is also a great time to meet new people and get a sense of how God was working in other congregations and other places around the annual conference.
Since United Methodist pastors are moved from one congregation to another over the course of their careers, the annual conference provides a sense of continuity and community for clergy. As much as I feel connected to a particular congregation while I am there, it is the Baltimore Washington Conference where I hold my “membership”.
The conference session this year will be particularly sweet since the time apart has been so much longer than usually. It will be great to be together for worship and “holy conferencing.” I look forward to the ordination of several persons that I have known and mentored over the past few years. At the same time, it will also be a time of sadness since there are friends and colleagues that will not be present this time around, either because of death or other circumstances that have taken place in the intervening years. And this year there will be one church I previously pastored that will be leaving the United Methodist Church through disaffiliation.
There is a hymn by Charles Wesley that has often been used at the start of these annual conferences for the people called Methodists. The first stanza captures my thoughts for this week:
And are we yet alive, and see each other’s face?
Glory and thanks to Jesus give for his almighty grace!
Grace and peace,
Rev. Steve Larsen