A Year From Tomorrow

On June 19, 2010 - one year from tomorrow - we become a new conference and area. Twelve months, 365 days, 8760 hours...okay, you get the point. On June 19 we will "gather together to ask the Lord's blessing" on a new conference and a new area.

So here's what's ahead from New ACT's perspective. The good news is we've organized most (but not all) of our Planning Teams and given them authority to develop the structures needed for the first couple years of our life together. These teams are working diligently and purposefully and will begin to funnel proposal to New ACT as early as this summer.

New ACT is also about ready to authorize six Critical Question Teams to begin working. (There's still time to join one of these teams. Please think and pray about doing so!). These teams will begin to tackle the "big picture" issues our new conference will face over the next several years:

• Spiritual Formation: How shall we grow in our relationship with God?
• Ministry: How shall we be the body of Christ within the world?
• Discipleship: How shall we live in accordance with the example of Jesus Christ?
• Local Church: How shall we engage, equip and empower?
• Leadership: How shall we encourage and develop leadership?
• Outreach: How shall we build and sustain relationships with our neighbors?

In the months ahead I see New ACT focusing on two crucial strategic tasks:

1. helping Planning Teams align their work with the New Conference's Vision and Purpose.
2. developing some principles to guide the creation of the "Plan of Union" legislation New ACT is charged to submit to the June 19, 2010 organizing session of our new conference. This document will contain enabling resolutions creating initial conference structures, staffing and policies.

One more area New ACT will be looking at is how to help us both grieve the loss of our current annual conferences and begin building new relationships. More about these issues in a future posting.

As always, your comments are welcome and helpful.

The Path (part 2)

Saturday New ACT met in regular session on site with nearly six hundred youth at 4 Word 09. The 4 Word steering committee graciously invited New ACT to join the youth in worship. It was powerful. The music was awesome but what really moved me were the personal testimonies offered by worship leaders. As I shared with New ACT later in the day, these testimonies helped remind me how we must all look for God in the stuff of our real, everyday living. The energy, spirit and vision of our youth inspired New ACT's work.

And I really appreciated the enthusiastic cheer that went up when a worship leader reminded us we'd soon become one conference. 4 Word was the first experiment in bringing North Central, Troy, Western and Wyoming together. The youth cut a path and showed us how it could be done. They continue to lead the way. Go youth!

Let me focus in on one of the things these youth demonstrated Saturday: our new path is also an ancient path. Sociologists have this theory regarding change called "path dependence." Simple put, it states innovation is not always about doing something completely new, but about doing old (even ancient!) things in new ways. Innovation is as much about reclaiming as it is about re-inventing.

I think of Jeremiah 6:16: "Thus says the LORD: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls."

I saw this lived out by our youth in their worship Saturday. We sang new songs with new tunes and old hymns to new settings. Youth read ancient scriptures in contemporary translations. They engaged in the time-honored New Testament practice of "giving testimony" by sharing personal stories of the challenges of following Jesus in the classroom, at basketball practice and online.

It all spoke to me and drew me to God. I'm so glad to share the path with these youth as we journey down new and old roads together.

The Path (part 1)

As I've reflected on the work of building a new conference, the old adage, "if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there" has often popped up in my head. That's why I've understood our "vision and purpose statement" (and especially the process leading up to it) as so important. We need to know where we're going; any road won't do.

A parable of sorts from Michael Frost's Exiles: Living Missionally in Post-Christian Culture captures this. Frost invites readers to imagine they are Roman road builders working on constructing a highway through what we now call Wales in the year 410 C.E. The road system of ancient Rome is definitely one of the wonders of the world. It allowed Rome to move armies, goods and ideas across its vast empire. Rome was Rome because of its roads.

In the parable, Frost invites us to consider how we'd feel when a messenger arrives from Rome with shocking news: the Vandals and Visigoths have sacked Rome. Rome is no more. "You and your team of construction workers are cut off from home, having created a now obsolete Roman highway."

Frost argues this is where we 21st Christians find ourselves: building roads to nowhere, roads whose purpose is now past. "We have been building churches for an era that has slipped out from under us (page 7)."

My big, driving dream for the New ACT process is we'll help United Methodists in Upper New York begin to develop the "roads" we need into the future.

I could run with that metaphor for a couple more pages, but I bet your imagination is charged enough now that you can finish this blog post yourself. Maybe just mull over these questions:
1. What paths have we been on as Upper New York churches/conferences that are now obsolete?
2. What does the road to the future look like? What new directions, practices and communities do we need to build?

Next Steps

Saturday (March 7th) is our next New ACT meeting. We'll meet at the Liverpool UMC from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. If you're in the neighborhood, you'd be welcome to join us. Meetings are always open.

The agenda is packed as always, but we'll begin with worship. No other place to begin. Holly Nye (Conference Minister from Troy AC) and Bishop Hassinger (Episcopal leader of the Albany Area) will shape and lead this time. Usually we spend a good hour (and it's always good) worshiping together. When we are connected with our God, we are able to do God's work.

As I said, the agenda is packed, but in my mind the most important item after worship will be developing guidelines to organize the work of planning teams. These teams will be responsible for developing various pieces of our new conference. I imagine we're going to need a couple of dozen teams made up of persons from across the Upper New York region. I hope you might be open to joining a team. Check uppernewyork.org in a week or so for details.

In the meantime, please pray for New ACT as we work together this Saturday. And (if I may be so bold) please pray for me as the convener. Pray God will grant me good listening ears, a kind and careful tongue, a belly capable of laughter, a heart able to beat in sync with God's and eyes able to see beyond my own hopes, dreams and fears.

Grace and Peace,
Bill

Sap to Syrup

Last Saturday (2/21/09) about two o'clock New ACT adopted a Working Vision and Purpose Statement. This statement will serve as both compass and yardstick for United Methodists in Upper New York as we plan for our new conference. It's intended to guide us into the future we seek and ensure the work we do to build our new conference measures up to our hopes and dreams.


I told New ACT members the work we did to draft this statement was a lot like making good maple syrup. To make syrup you take sap from many different trees, gather it in a big cauldron, and boil it down into something sweet and healthy. Our Working Vision and Purpose Statement is New ACT's attempt to boil down the contributions gathered this past year from various sources around the Upper New York region. This information was prayerfully and carefully reviewed using an intentional process of discernment grounded in prayer, Scripture and holy conversation. Despite the urgency of the "ticking clock," New ACT waited until this statement looked and felt right for our new conference.


Of course, the old adage "if you get four United Methodists in a room, you'll wind up with five opinions" is still true. No one expects every aspect of this statement to ring true for everyone. It's intended to be a first word, not the last. We expect this statement will change as United Methodists in the Upper New York region gain further insight and understanding.


We've also written this statement primarily to help "missionary planners" do their work, not appeal to"potential converts." All good communication is audience-specific and this statement is addressed to lay and clergy leadership at all levels. To reach a broader audience, leaders will need to do some translation. But that's not new for us. Just as our denominational mission statement to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world has been translated into Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors and Rethink Church, so you and I will find new and innovative ways to reach persons in the neighborhoods around our churches.


The final and perhaps most important thing I'd say about this statement is it's intended to help us prepare for the future, not define it. Our statement is a transitional tool to help move forward during this in-between time. As our life together emerges, we'll need a new and better statement. In other words, this syrup has a shelf life of about fifteen months! But in these days, my hope and prayer is it will sweeten and nourish our work together.

Please be in touch as you are led. - Bill Gottschalk-Fielding