A Witness, Part 1

 I'm a member of our Annual Conference's delegation to General Conference - I'm a reserve delegate.  Our delegation traveled around the state (and Garrett County, Maryland) to worship with the people of the district and to offer a time to ask quesitons and share concerns.  At each of these meetings, during worshiip, two members of the delegation shared a witness about how we have experienced God in our breathprayer: Return, Renew, Restore.  

Below (and tomorrow) is what I shared yesterday as my witness.

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Jeff read a passage earlier today that the delegation found helpful when we spoke to Sue Nelson Kibbey about prayer.  Listen to versus 16 and 17 again (from Acts 15):

After this I will return,
and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen;
    from its ruins I will rebuild it,
        and I will restore it,
so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—
    even all the gentiles over whom my name has been called.
Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.’

I have to admit that I was not enamored with the passage at first.  To me, the idea of God returning implies that God has left.  I’m much more willing to believe that we have left God, and that we need to return.  Or turn around.

Have you ever had God nag you so much that you eventually had to turn and go a different direction – the direction in which God was leading you?

I volunteer as the AC Director of Lay Servant Ministries.  In late 2020, there was a need for a Conference wide Certified Lay Ministry class.  The courses to become a CLM are intensive, and they take some time.  Some districts had been able to hold the classes, but not most of them, so the need for a Conference class was real.  So I said I would see what I could do about it.

Truthfully, I didn’t want to do anything about it.  I knew it would be hard work, and that it would take a large amount of time to develop the course and to figure out how to make it accessible in a pandemic and to students all across the Annual Conference.  For a couple of months, I kept trying to think up ways to get out of my commitment.  To find someone else to do it.  But God kept taking me by the shoulders and turning me back to the idea that I needed to do it.

Well, you can procrastinate enough that the only solution to a problem is to do what you don’t really want to do.  I turned to the path I thought God wanted me take, designed the course using a model from the Greenbrier district, read the books I needed to read to teach the course, and opened up registration. 

Lots of students signed up.  As of today, three cohorts of students have completed the 10 month course, and another cohort has just started.  I can’t tell you how much of a blessing the students have been to me. They come to this class with an awareness of their call, even if they don’t know everything about it yet. They know their gifts, and they are willing to do hard work.  I’m so grateful God led me to this, turned me to this, because the students have been such hope-bringers for me, and I’m certain for those with whom they minister.  I thank God I turned, and I thank God for what God has built.  I thank God for the hope.