Lay Leader Reflections

Hidden in the Disruptions

Hello friends, I’m writing this from one of the most beautiful places that I know on earth, Grand Lake, Colorado, founded in 1879. Nestled in the Rocky Mountains it is Colorado’s largest body of natural water and is 389 feet deep and the small quaint town’s altitude is 8367 ft above sea level. As late as the 1930s people still arrived by stagecoach. This is a place that you can’t help but feel close to God, and not just because of the altitude. It is truly one of those places where you are immersed in the majesty and splendor of creation. And this year, thanks to a positive Covid test, it became the best and most amazing, place to quarantine. Being isolated from those I came to visit, while disappointing, has turned out to be a form of spiritual retreat and an amazing blessing. Its provided time to reflect on Annual Conference, allowed discernment of next steps for our work as Laity in the next year, and time to simply listen to the Holy Spirit.

I think most of us left Annual Conference with a mixture of thoughts and emotions. The outcome from the Clergy session left us with a sense of brokenness and disappointment in contrast to the Laity session’s energy and hopefulness. We heard difficult realities about our Annual Conference’s clergy compensation and at the same time celebrated the amazing work in our local churches and districts that’s underway toward anti-racism. And we continue to wrestle with what it means to be called to be an inclusive church.

I’m grateful for these contrasts in our Annual Conference and for the ‘disruptions’ they pose (if you haven’t heard Derrick Scott III’s comments from the opening plenary on disruptions – you need to – they are powerful). Through these disruptions we can chose to grow both personally and collectively as the body of Christ.

If you haven’t already, I hope you will find some time in the next few weeks for re-nourishment of your body, mind, and soul. And that you too, will seek the blessings hidden in the disruptions we face. Without them, we likely would stay with the status quo and to use a bit of physics - in a dynamic world, that leads to atrophy and decline. And that’s certainly not what God desires for us. We are called to be Christ followers – active people of faith, hope and love. May the love that knows no boundaries or can be overcome by any of life’s disruptions, be yours today and always!

Blessings,

Alice Williams
Co-Lay Leader, Florida Conference