Conference Season and Circles of Grace
As a connectional people, Methodists love to get together. Whether through conferences, clergy and lay gatherings, retreats, committees, potlucks, classes, or small groups, it’s life together that brings us the radiance of the Christian faith.
I have a particular fondness for the yearly gathering of United Methodist layfolk and clergy in our area called Annual Conference. My first was the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference, 16 years ago.
At Annual Conference we worship, remember those who have passed, discuss church openings and closures, care for important legislation that impacts congregations and structures in our area, tend to matters of clergy status (including commissioning and ordination), learn and grow together, and connect in many other ways. We’ll share more about Annual Conference throughout this conference season, especially as the Oregon-Idaho conference gathers in Tigard from June 20-23.
It was that first Annual Conference that continues to be most memorable. I always loved my local church, Seattle First UMC, but it was not until Annual Conference that I discovered the joy of our Connexion. There, I met laypeople and clergy from across Washington and Idaho who were involved with all manner of similar and different initiatives in their local churches, who loved worship, and who were committed to joining together to create greater impact.
As a youth page for the conference, I helped the clergy and lay members complete their work. I met dozens of other youth from across the region. Some were also pages, some youth members to the conference, some pastors’ kids (or a combination thereof). In just days, these people became My People. It was with the witness of My People that I experienced the first crystallizing moment of my call to ministry.
Before that conference, church had always been the stable, loving place that I needed as I grew into adolescence. I admired my pastors deeply but did not have a sense that I wanted to be a pastor. It was not exactly a career path encouraged by my Northwest high school teachers and guidance counselors.
Two things happened at that Annual Conference that changed my awareness of my call.
The first: I discovered Asian people could be clergy. No one had told me I couldn’t pastor or be in ministry because I am Asian. However, having grown up in the white church context and with no example to the contrary, my imagination did not stretch far enough to think that someone like me (who ate food like I ate and had an immigrant family like my family) would be appropriate for such a role. Even the Chinese Baptist Church that I attended each Saturday had a white pastor.
At the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference, I was surprised to meet Asian American clergy who were not only pastors but also respected leaders in their churches and in the conference. My imagination widened and new possibilities emerged, though it wasn’t until I met Bishop Grant Hagiya (elected into the episcopacy later that year) that I really believed it.
The second: my experience of the Commissioning and Ordination Service. Near the close of the service there was the ministry equivalent of an altar call. We were invited forward to pray with a District Superintendent if we, too, thought God may be calling us to ministry. I was enraptured by the moment, balanced on the edge of my seat in the way way back of the worship space where our gaggle of youth sat. The people I’d just met – now My People – saw my curiosity and all but pushed me out of my seat to go forward.
Tumbling to the front, I stood before District Superintendent Ron Hines with uncertainty. Extending his hands, he asked me if I wanted to pray. I responded somewhat nonsensically (I’d never done this kind of thing before in all my northwest Methodist years). He clasped my hands in his and began to pray.
At that moment, numerous others quietly circled round. Multiple sets of hands gently descended onto my heads and shoulders. As we prayed, I wondered who on earth these people could be; who on earth could be there with the weight of their hands saying, “Yes, we see this in you, too.”
DS Hines finished his prayer. I turned around and saw laypeople and clergy, adults and youth, people I had just met and people who had seen me grow up in my local church. Their presence around me was a circle of grace affirming where I felt God calling me. I was astounded to have them there.
Wherever my call has taken me – Seattle, Little Rock, Redmond, Houston, Portland – I have continued to gain strength from this moment and from each circle of grace formed by numerous others who provide strength and affirmation in each context. I continue to be astounded.
The practice of my call is an echo of that circle of grace: those communities who stand around me. My work today is to help us draw our circle of grace so wide that none stand outside of it, to help others claim the wholeness of belonging, and to announce the astounding truth of the reign of God.
Thus, my prayer for you this week, First Church, is that you would remember where you stand in this circle. In the moments ordinary and extraordinary, you are not only prayed over and affirmed and strengthened by those around you, but you are also an important part of the circle of grace that prays over, affirms, and strengthens others.
Years after my experience at that first Annual Conference, I read “Blessing the Ordinary” by treasured poet and artist Jan Richardson in her book, Circle of Grace. I’ll leave you with an excerpt of this blessing:
Let these words
lay themselves
like a blessing
upon your head,
your shoulders,
as if,
like hands,
they could pass on
to you
what you most need
for this day,
as if they could anoint you
not merely for
the path ahead
but for this
ordinary moment
that opens itself
to you.
With love and gratitude,
Pastor Karyn