I haven't written much about the Methodist half of my job lately. In fact, I have been a little bit remiss in maintaining the blog since Commencement on May 17. Since graduation, I've been catching up on some reference questions and trying to get ready to process some interesting collections this summer. I still intend on posting some information about the Class of 1959, who celebrated the 50th anniversary of their graduation this year.
This week, I attended the Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in South Carolina. An Annual Conference is a confusing term, for it is a geographic region, a meeting, and an organization. The South Carolina Annual Conference is an organization that includes all of the United Methodist congregations in the geographic area of South Carolina, and that meets once a year. All ordained Methodist clergy - elders and deacons - are members of the conference, and they are appointed annually by our bishop to serve the churches in the state. They, together with local pastors and lay representatives from all of the churches, meet once a year (or more often, if a special session is called) to conduct the church's business.
I am a lay member of the South Carolina conference not because I'm the conference's archivist, but because I have been selected by my local congregation. However, my local congregation selects me largely because I'm the conference archivist and it's helpful that I attend.
So, what does this organization do? Well, there's a lot of sitting in meetings. We hear reports from various conference boards, commissions, and committees. We talk about ministry plans for the upcoming year. This year, there was a lot of talk about new church starts, and most of the worship leaders were ministers involved in starting new churches. We also talk about our work in supporting the conference's retirement homes, the children's home, ministries for people with special needs, and for our four colleges. We allocate money in our budget to support these, and also to pay for important items like retirement pensions, insurance for clergy, and for global ministries. We give awards - and the commission I work with recognized a number of churches for their work in preserving church history. We also proposed naming a church in Chesterfield County a historic site of South Carolina Methodism. There's time for worship, and for fellowship.
The fellowship is especially important because clergy are actually not members of local churches - their church membership rests in the Annual Conference, so in a very real sense, the Annual Conference is their church. Most of the clergy know each other - many have been coming to Conference for years - or decades. Many of them attended seminary together, served in neighboring churches before being sent to churches far apart, or have served on conference boards together. Conference is the one time each year where they are all together. It sort of makes some of us in the laity feel like we're standing around the edges watching the fellowship. One retired minister who attends my local church - who has known me since I was three years old - told me on Monday that this was his 60th consecutive Annual Conference, and also his last. I pause here to reflect on how the conference, the state, and ministry in general have changed since he entered the ministry some 60 years ago.
And in fact, that's the main reason I attend the conference: to act in a limited way as a collector of information, of stories, and of memories. I talked with at least three district superintendents about church records, and with several lay members who have done research in the archives. I do my bit of advocacy for the archives and for historic preservation. I sort of stand out at conference because of my age - until people look at my nametag, they often think I'm in the clergy because there aren't many youngish lay representatives. Someone in the elevator recognized my name on my nametag and offered that she had expected that the archivist would be a little older. I've been attending conferences myself since 1993, when I was one of Wofford chaplain Talmage Skinner's student workers helping to run the behind-the-scenes logistics. This was my 7th year as a lay member, which is amazing considering I'm not even 40 yet. Part of my job is to collect materials that document the session, but also to collect those things that don't always get written down.
So that's Annual Conference in a nutshell.
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