Wider Church Roundup: SNEC Annual Meeting Reflections

I’ve spent the last month or so reflecting on my experience at the Southern New England Conference Annual Meeting.

I enjoy these wider church events because I never know who I’m going to meet, or what I’m going to learn, or what I’m going to bring back to Westwood.  This meeting was no different.  I ate meals with clergy colleagues from across the conference, I spent time in worship and business meetings, and I got to peruse the marketplace, where I picked up a couple of books I thought might be interesting.

I also got to meet Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock and have him sign a copy of his new book. 

His keynote address on Saturday reminded us we are only successfully moving forward when we move forward together.  And his amazing sermon on Sunday morning (https://vimeo.com/event/6181947) reminded us to stay focused on the youth among us as we move forward in church and in life.

But what was most interesting to me was the conversation around the final votes needed to legally merge the three historic Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut conferences into the Southern New England Conference.  You can read more about the background of this vote in my blog post from last month.  https://www.firstparishwestwood.org/post/wider-church-roundup-snec-annual-meeting-and-worship 

And from the outside, this looked like a procedural matter.  The historic conference boards approved the resolutions, as did the board of the SNEC.  But all has not been well in the Southern New England Conference.  The process of becoming one conference out of three has had a bumpy road, not the least of which was the COVID pandemic that disrupted all of our lives just a few months after the official inception of the SNEC.  But we’re also still trying to connect over our new shared identity, and we haven’t done the best communicating through this process.

A key point in this conversation surrounds the fate of the Silver Lake Camp and Retreat Center, a beloved and sacred space for many within the conference, particularly our youth. 

Though I wasn’t involved in this conversation before I arrived at the annual meeting, I heard from many people who were frustrated, not only by the conference’s decision to sell the camp, but also by the process used to make and communicate about that decision.  Many decided to channel their frustration into this merger vote.  Ultimately, the first of the three votes needed to merge the three conferences failed, and the remaining two were withdrawn. 

You might rightly point out that the conference merger votes have nothing to do with the camp decision, at least from a business point of view.  But, as one Area Conference Minister put it to me, when people don’t feel heard, when people feel frustrated and powerless, they will pull whatever lever they can to disrupt proceedings until they feel have been heard.  As I watched the proceedings unfold, I was reminded of the conversation in Westwood about building a new fire station.

There were a lot of heightened emotions in the room as we discussed and voted on the resolutions.  But as one of our moderators reminded us, conflict isn’t inherently good or bad, it’s what we do when in the midst of conflict that matters.  In my conflict mediation skills training, one of the most important lessons we learned was that there is nothing better you can do when in conflict than listen to each other, and make sure everyone feels heard and understood.  My hope is that we made steps in that direction through our conversations at the annual meeting.

This annual meeting showed that church work can be beautiful.  And it can be very messy.  And it can be both at the same time.  That’s true at a local church level, at a conference level, even at a national level.  And in the middle of a mess, it’s what we do that matters more than the mess itself.  How we move forward rests on how we treat each other, listen to each other, support each other, and love each other.

Which means the conference has work to do.  I came away from this meeting recognizing that I love our conference, and our conference leadership, and the hard work they do to support ministry among us and with us.  Every conference staff person I know is a wonderful person and a wonderful leader, and I celebrate the pastoral presence they bring to our shared community.  The same is true of the conference board members I know. 

But I also recognize the conference has given these leaders a charge after this meeting: we need to build more on our shared identity before we can claim we are ready to truly be one conference together.  Our leaders need to show us how they are listening to the concerns our churches and our people are bringing forward, and make sure more people are involved in the process along the way.  And once we’ve done that work, we can return to the business at hand with fresh minds, fresh perspectives, and a stronger community.  I’m eager to join them in getting started.

Pastor JT