Annual Conference In-Person, the Best of Times and the Worst of Times

The South Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church is both a meeting and an organization of United Methodist churches. Our boundaries are those of the state itself. The annual gathering resembles a board meeting where reports are presented, decisions ratified, officers elected, and budgets set.

If that were all we did at the SC Annual Conference, then the nominations, reports, and budgets could be distributed electronically; and the meeting could be held virtually or in-person over the course of less than a day. Virtual meetings, as we have learned in recent years, have advantages and disadvantages. For an Annual Conference, in person is best.

We are not a single organization. We are hundreds of congregations located in hundreds of locales. We need to meet face-to-face. That’s the way it should be.

And we are the Church. We are God’s people gathered who worship, pray, sing, and who literally applaud men and women who exemplify Christ in extraordinary ways. We laugh. We lament. We hug. We laugh some more. That’s the way it needs to be.

We share confidence in the coming of God’s reign and mutual belief in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We demonstrate in myriad ways our conviction that the Church (Christ’s Church, not just the United Methodist Church) is one body of diverse people in diverse settings serving God’s world in connection with one another. One of Methodists’ top-ten words is “connection.”

The 2023 Annual Conference, held in Florence, SC, June 4 through 7, was, to quote Charles Dickens, “the best of times, it was the worst of times.” We went four long years without an in-person Annual Conference. I was thrilled to share those long-awaited embraces with friends, lay and clergy. Four long years unable to have those precious face-to-face conversations with fellow Christians who have engaged in hard struggles with illness, injury, loss, and strife.

Four long years without singing Charles Wesley’s “And Are We Yet Alive.” Four long years without men and women receiving ordination in the same room with a thousand fellow United Methodists. Four long years without singing “For All the Saints” as we memorialize clergy and their spouses who have passed away since we last met.

He droned like a bell tolling the dead.

We held virtual meetings for three years, voting and doing what had to be done. Each year, I stood alone at my desk on Zoom as the names of the deceased were read. But there’s nothing like being together as Church.

The pandemic no longer controls us. We finally convened for real.

The 2023 Annual Conference also evoked the second clause of Dickens’ 1859 A Tale of Two Cities. “…it was the worst of times.” We voted on disaffiliations from the United Methodist Church. Until June 30, 2023, we constitute about 950 churches. But at the close of the month, 113 of our South Carolina churches will cease to be part of the denomination. Voting to let them part ways with us was wrenchingly painful. I sat, hung my head toward the floor, and wept as the name of each congregation, along with its town and district, was called aloud. The man who read the list read it rapidly. That’s a lot of names, towns, and districts.

He read the list quickly. But he droned like a bell tolling the dead.

That moment would not have had such emotional impact for me if I had heard the list read aloud at home using Zoom. But I was there. I was present in Florence with hundreds of other United Methodists while the names of the churches, their towns, and their districts, were called aloud. That’s the way it needed to be. And I was there.