Celebrating Christ’s call to ‘follow me’


Servant leadership

One of my first official functions when I came to the Corpus Christi District was to participate in the Brush Country Awards Celebration. Last Saturday I participated in the same event for the portion of the district that we call Corpus Christi, South. Altogether at those two events we have had about 800 people in attendance honoring the servant leadership of disciples across the district. Both events were outstanding!
Two things were unique about this recent celebration. First, the district Board of Laity created a new award that we tried out for the first time, the “Young Disciple Award.” It is given to people between the ages of 12 and 18. We had excellent response to this award and will recommend it for the future.
Second, we met in the Fellowship Hall of First UMC, Corpus Christi, instead of the gymnasium, where First UMC was housing evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. The location change bothered no one and was actually better for our picnic-at-the-beach theme because we had a lovely view of the ocean during most of the dinner. In addition, we donated $1,500 from the sale of dinner tickets to First UMC for expenses related to their hospitality for the evacuees by foregoing the fancy hot meal we had planned for a nice box dinner prepared for us instead. No complaints were heard about this simple way to serve the needs of others by our tiny sacrifice. After all, the reason we were gathered was to honor the servant leadership in our midst.
With the $845 offering taken that night for the United Methodist Committee on Relief, to date the District Office has contributed $1,345 for annual conference relief and $2,000 to UMCOR for national relief.
In my greeting to the body early in the event, I told the story of a pastor asking me, “How’s your job going?” Before I could answer, he said, “Well, I guess it’s really just a lot of administration.”
I immediately felt defensive, as though administration isn’t actually ministry, and tried to explain what my job has to do with people. Here’s how I would frame my response now:
Just as pastors have the privilege of entering into people’s lives at the time of greatest joy and deepest crisis, I have the privilege in this role of entering into churches’ lives at times of greatest joy and deepest crisis. Just as pastors have the privilege of serving as partners in ministry with members of their congregations, so I have the privilege of serving as a partner in ministry with pastors and members of 44 congregations. These privileges are awesome and humbling.
As a superintendent, I was awed and humbled at these two district events celebrating servant leadership, knowing that the sea of faces before me actually represented so many more disciples quietly heeding Christ’s call: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24 NRSV).