What's The Call working on? And how can you get in your two cents?
HOLY CONFERENCING. Whoa, it must have been a hit at Annual Conference. After the Rev. Randy Frye offered 10 guidelines to help United Methodists learn to discuss and disagree in love, about 400 readers downloaded the "Holy Conferencing" document offered in the June 18 e-mail edition.
OK, so now that you have it, how are you using it? Any holy discussions going on in your churches? Anybody using the 10 guidelines in heated disputes over pew pads or immigration? Are the guidelines helping, or not? E-mail to let us know – anything about holy conferencing – and maybe there will be a resulting story.
OFFER THEM CHRIST. We would like to think we do stories on congregations that offer Christ all the time -- because that's what it's all about, isn't it? Well, maybe we do, or maybe we don't do it enough. In any case, we've just come home from an Annual Conference with an "Offer Them Christ" theme. The conference Powers That Be want more and more stories about Christ-offering churches, especially those with high totals/percentages of professions of faith. So if you are one of those -- or if you wouldn't mind sharing your Christ-offering ways – please e-mail us soon. Offer us story ideas.
VIRGINIA STORIES. Several weeks ago, we got our balance-seeking, journalistic feelings hurt when a reader accused The Call of slighting coverage on the four of 12 districts located in Virginia. Na-uh, we said. But then we went out of our way to invite Virginia churches to send in news, and we chased Virginia members right into the bathroom, if necessary, to make sure they were represented in our columns and stories.
Well, have you noticed the results?
There will be plenty more stories from the Old Dominion state, too, including an "At Lunch" column with the Rev. Brian Burch of Wytheville District in the July newspaper, and a story on a prison ministry in Abingdon District for a future e-mail edition. What we need for you to do is keep e-mailing those Virginia stories and photos, especially for "District Roundup" and the coming Offer Them Christ series.
Now, just watch. The Tennessee churches will start complaining ...