Connection helps UMs
accomplish much

“Dry bones, live!”
God told Ezekiel to call out to the dry bones he found scattered in the desert to make them live again. Ezekiel did call out to them, and the dry bones became connected to each other. When the connections were complete, the dry bones stood up and walked on the desert floor.
At the District Conference, I used this scripture to challenge the helplessness and hopelessness I hear expressed as I travel around to our churches. (Remember that I said that we’ll have no more of that feeling!) Now we have returned to our homes from annual conference, and the image that lives for me out of Ezekiel is that the bones were able to be resurrected because they were miraculously connected to each other.
In contrast to my husband, the Rev. John Wright, I am a new United Methodist. I chose to become a United Methodist 35 years ago, and I was the first to break from long lines of tradition on both sides of my family. John’s family can claim at least eight generations of United Methodists on his father’s side and plenty of United Methodists on the other side.
I chose to become a United Methodist for many reasons. As the years have passed, I have come to appreciate more and more a reason for being a United Methodist that didn’t mean as much to me when I was young. Now I prize being part of the connection, as we call it.
I have experienced the connection at every level of the UMC’s life—local, district, annual, national and international—and at this stage of my life, I consider participating in those levels of connection a true privilege. I know it sounds weird to those who hate attending “all those meetings,” or who wonder “why we waste all that money” on coming together.
On a personal level, like other pastors I relish the chance when we gather for annual conference to see people with whom I have served in local churches and pastors who’ve been friends through the years because I went to a United Methodist seminary. In attending events at Mount Sequoyah in Arkansas or Lake Junaluska in North Carolina or General Conference, I am connected again to colleagues serving around the nation and sometimes even other parts of the world. Being reminded of all those connections in ministry with others refreshes me for the journey ahead and helps overcome what can be perceived as isolation in ordained ministry.
More importantly, I am constantly reminded that we can do so much more connected to each other than we can do apart. Our dry bones can lay baking in the hot desert sun of helplessness and hopelessness when we concentrate on what or who we don’t have in our churches. The Spirit’s power constantly present with us can go ignored as we sink into spiritual paralysis on our own. But it doesn’t have to be that way if we remember who we are as United Methodists.
Thanks be to God for the connection in every form we have it! On the district level, we are going to get connected this year through the Congregational Transformation Process. On the annual conference level, we are going to get connected through New Church Development to create new churches and through the Katrina Appeal to help suffering people and churches in Louisiana and Mississippi. I can’t wait to get started.
“Dry bones, live!” Live connected to Christ and to each other.