In the (other) News

It seems that crying in front of 600 people constitutes ‘human interest.’

I was interviewed by the local paper yesterday, for a story they plan to do on the changing Conference Boundaries. They talked to someone in the Conference office about the details– which for many of my non-Methodist readers are probably still a little hazy,* and asked her for someone to interview for a ‘human angle’ on the story. She suggested me, because, in her own words, “you don’t get much more human than Becca.”

Aw.

When the story goes to press, I’ll be sure to link you to it.

 

*attempts to explain are under the ‘more’ tag.

here’s my best (brief) explanation. The Methodist Church has Conferences at several levels. There’s the global body, General Conference, which meets every four years (and just met in April) to set policy and such, smaller regional bodies called Jurisdictional Conferences (all of the north east and mid-atlantic are one jurisdiction), which also meet every four years to elect bishops and determine the boundaries of the smaller bodies within them, and smaller bodies called Annual Conferences. Annual Conferences (synods for Lutheran and diocese [dioceses?] for Catholics) meet every year (clearly) and are comprised of all the clergy and a lay representative from each church in a particular geographic area. It is important to note that clergy are members not of local churches but of their Annual Conferences, so the conference is quite literally to me what the church is to a congregant. My Annual Conference, Troy, is comprised of all of Vermont and the capital region and Adirondack areas of NY. Our conference is quite small in both geography and population, and struggles to maintain itself, and so the Jurisdictional Conference is going to ‘redraw’ our boundaries and those of our neighboring conferences to create fewer conferences (and therefore fewer bishops and smaller administrative overhead). The vote before Troy Annual Conference was whether we would recommend that all of the churches and clergy of Troy AC together join a new conference, or recommend that the churches and clergy in Vermont join with the New England Annual Conference while those in New York join with other conferences in upstate NY, thereby cutting half of Troy AC off from itself, effectively sundering those personal and professional relationships. We voted the latter, and it is from that separation that my grief comes, although I am quite excited about the prospect of forming new conferences in two directions. I just wish we could all go together.

Did that help at all? probably not. Oh well.