Diary of a Young Pastor

What an interesting week this has been - it is the first time in my life I haven’t been at the Wesleyan General Conference.  It is also the first time that General conference has been held while I am an acting pastor in the Wesleyan Church.  This week, some interesting things happened:

• Joanne Lyon elected GS - I am so excited about this!  With as much emphasis as our district puts on women in ministry, I can only see this as a good thing.  I’m thankful for her work for the church in the past, and am excited to see how her work as GS goes.  I have no doubt that she will do a great job and raise the bar for our other GS’s.

• Memorial 567 passed giving the Wesleyan Church a historic stand on an extremely important social issue: immigration.  I believe I called this during my sermon at the Mountain Area Camp Meeting.  Sadly, I don’t have an official copy of what the memorial says, but I believe the gist of it is that we now take a stand in defense of an illegal immigrant seeking to become legalized, and that the process for legalization, with its waiting periods and huge financial setbacks, are immoral.  I call this “historic” because we haven’t taken a stand on a social issue of this magnitude since our stance as abolitionists during the civil war.

UPDATE: Thanks to Darrin (see: comments), I’m pleased to give you the actual immigration statement:

• Memorial 103 passed which will “demote” a church from “established” to “developing” if the church has no evangelistic program and/or has failed to report a convert in the past 2 years.  I have mixed feelings about this one.  I like it because it pushes me as a pastor to seek evangelism, and encourages the people to be involved…but I’m worried about the “measuring rod” of salvation.  What is considered a convert?  A new convert?  A restored convert?  I’ll probably write an entire post addressing my feelings on this later — to much to say right now.

• Memorial 102, which changes the amount of covenant members needed to be considered an “established” church from 12 to 25, passed. And, in doing so, my church at its current state with 17 covenant members will drop from “established” to “developing”.  I see this as a mostly good thing.  In my eyes, this is the Wesleyan Church moving away from a “small-church” model to a “big-church” model, which - in this pastor’s humble opinion - is a good thing.  However, I’m not sure about how my people will feel on this one.

When it is all said and done, I believe that biblical based decisions were made at General Conference ‘08.  And, as a pastor, how can I argue with that?

More later.

~pastor matt

p.s. - here’s to hoping that I will be a delegate in 4 years….:)