UMC Holds Fourth Convocation for Pastors of African American Churches
Some 650 United Methodist clergy gathered for the Fourth Convocation for Pastors of African American Churches, at Atlanta, GA., January 4-7, 2004. The biennial conference, now viewed as a popular leadership and training event, was based on a theme from Luke 24: “Tarrying for Power, Living in Power.”
"Power is in the relationship with Jesus Christ in the sense that you are able to surrender yourself and your understanding to his understanding, so that the questions that are answered are out of your relationship with Christ, (and) so that you may convey the messages to your people in word and in deed,” said Bishop James Swanson of the United Methodist Church (UMC)’s South Georgia Annual (regional) Conference.
According to the United Methodist News Service (UMNS), Swanson and the other keynote speakers at the convocation encouraged the pastors to look for the “power outside yourself” in leading their ministries. Speakers emphasized the theme, based on a scene in Luke where the disciples are asked to tarry in the city until they have been clothed by power from on high, and challenged ministers to take their commissions seriously.
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"It is not simply a matter of seeing just a need and saying that since pastors are not meeting a need, I am going to go to seminary and meet that need," said Swanson, according to UMNS. "We believe that anyone who is in representative ministry has to have had an encounter with God in which God says, ‘I need you and I am going to use you.’ There needs to be a sense of an unction (anointing) from God, and you have to continue to cultivate it and experience it."
Bishop Linda Lee explained that at times, people may have to tarry in a position that is hard to manage so that the minister may experience both the death and the resurrection of Christ.
"God positions us, sets us up and arranges things for us," said Lee, who leads the Wisconsin Annual (regional) Conference.
According to the UMNS, the UMC has less than 3,000 African American churches – fewer than a tenth of the 36,000 U.S. churches.
"We are not quite 10 percent, and when you are in this context in terms of numbers, you can find yourself alone and isolated in terms of religious cultural expression,” said Rev. Vance P. Ross, a staff member of the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, the event’s sponsor.
Several of the speakers also used the “desert imagery to describe how pastors of African-American churches sometimes feel isolated and alone within the United Methodist Church,” according to UMNS.
"That can feel arid, that can feel dry and desert-like. In order to have a sense of bloom and a sense of ‘homeness’ and belonging, there are times we come together, not to enforce the de facto segregation, but to have power to overcome de facto segregation,” added Ross.
"Because we know of arid dry places, we need to be able to get somewhere in the presence of God to be empowered not just to go through the desert, but to make the desert an oasis place, a place where things that should not grow do grow and blossom.”
