This week, I felt my heart strangely warmed.
On Tuesday evening, I went (somewhat) unwillingly to Charge Conference. I confess to having lost patience with some of these denominational forms. I’m not alone. We all tend to grumble about these things. But there, in the least likely of places, the Holy Spirit showed up, manifesting as holy conviction and illogical joy.
Terry Fleming, our district superintendent, spoke eloquently about tortoises and hares, humility and perseverance. Somewhere in his message, I experienced the truth of God being spoken over my life. It wasn’t a comfortable truth. I sensed a personal call to confession for a kind of pride that has been masquerading as faithfulness.
Heather Glover sensed the Spirit, too, though for her it showed up as gratitude. Heather is a poster child for our discipleship system, having been spiritually raised up from a life of addiction through Celebrate Recovery and Mosaic’s leadership incubator program. She now serves as our Director of Adult Discipleship. This was her experience of her first-ever Charge Conference, in her words:
Charge Conference, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is when the church leaders come together with the District Superintendent to approve the budget and church leadership for the upcoming year. Sounds like a hoot, right? I mean, anything with conference in the title will surely strike fear in the heart of any fun loving individual.
Never mind the mention of a line item list of the budget.
But WAIT! Let me tell you what Charge Conference means to me.
Charge Conference means that my God went before me and prepared a place for me at the table. I know this because when I walked in the room, no one batted an eye. Why? Because I belonged there. One of those line items in the budget list was my salary. Another was the budget for my ministry area. And I am the very first Director of Adult Discipleship at my church, EVER. My God went before me and made a way, against all odds.
Charge Conference means that God’s grace IS sufficient. It is by God’s grace alone that I am at this place in my life. From lost, addicted, and wandering far from God, to doing the Lord’s work. I don’t have a job. It’s a vocation. A calling. And I didn’t look for it. It fell in my lap. That’s what God’s unmerited favor looks like. That’s grace.
Charge Conference means that I am a part of something much bigger than myself. And it means I have the privilege and honor of being a leader among leaders.
I thoroughly enjoyed attending Charge Conference. I hung on every word that my fellow leaders, my pastor, and the DS spoke. And I left with a spring in my step, singing praises to my God. I will never take for granted the formalities in life that should otherwise bore me to tears. I have experienced a life of chaos, void of all formalities, and absent any sense of belonging. This is pure joy by comparison.
Lord, forgive me for failing to keep my eye fixed on you, for failing to look for you in the unlikely places, for failing to believe you can show up anywhere.
Even at Charge Conference.
(The title of this blog — and the line about being “strangely warmed” — references John Wesley’s journal entry on the night he experienced a spiritual awakening while attending a study of Romans in a home on Aldersgate Street in London.)
