Welcome to my UM baggage - Part 1

My story begins with an election in a church. I was somehow chosen to serve as the president of the West Ohio Conference Council on Youth Ministries in 1999. I quietly served this position from then until graduating from high school. Towards the end of my term, I chose to put my name in a pool of individuals from which the delegation for West Ohio to General Conference 2000 would be selected. At the time, I had only a vague idea of what it was that I was getting myself into.

Throughout the fall of 1999 and the spring of 2000, I attended several gatherings of the delegation after being elected to the group that would represent West Ohio at General Conference. I began to get a clearer perspective on what was going on as tensions between members of the delegation began to factionalize more and more along the lines of what I now know as Progressive and Evangelical perspectives on theology. Men and women who were very polite over breakfast muffins and coffee could turn into passionate enemies when certain topics were raised or certain legislation was discussed.

As general conference approached, the division in our 30 person delegation became even more apparent and appalling to me. I did what I could to be civil to everyone in the delegation which often threw everyone for a loop. Those on the left thought they knew where I stood on the issues that were to be discussed but those on the right weren’t quite sure.

There is nothing in this world that can prepare a small church, county seat town dwelling teenager for the experience that is General Conference. While there were fewer people at the conference than attended my high school, hardly ever were all of those students in one place all trying to be heard at the same time. My annual conference meeting often would be larger than the meeting at General Conference but there was something intangible, something heavier in the room at GC that can’t really be explained. I would call it tension but that word only begins to approach the angsty mess that floated in the air of the conference center.