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2020
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The Kerusso – June | 2020
Kerusso (Greek): “To publish, proclaim openly: something which has been done.”
Journey 2020 | Opportunities to Connect, Worship, and Learn As we shared last month, the Cabinet of Superintendents has decided that for reasons of financial frugality and safety, we will not be hosting a face-to-face Journey meeting this year. Most of the four previously scheduled Journey sessions would have been impossible to hold, given the governmental restrictions in place at the times and locations in which they were slated. While things are beginning now to change, and governors are tracking through re-opening phases, there are still just too many complexities and unknowns to be able to host a face-to-face meeting in June in North Carolina. Given those decisions, and having been inspired and encouraged by the insightful work of churches and pastors around the country who have labored to creatively connect during these last many weeks, we are going to host this year’s USA Journey meeting electronically in late July. Meeting live via an electronic connection for several hours can be a bit of a challenge for a couple of reasons. First, it takes a lot of stamina to stay engaged to a computer or TV screen for hours at a time. And even more challenging is spanning four different time zones. Asking questions such as “What day of the week?,” and “What time of day should we start?” prompted us to decide to host three shorter sessions rather than one long one.
For those and other reasons, Journey 2020 will be broadcast live from the Heritage Learning Center at EMC Headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana on Sunday-Tuesday, July 26-28. The Sunday night session will be mostly Word and Worship, with a few other segments along the way, but all compacted into 90 minutes. Then the Monday and Tuesday sessions will both be just an hour long, with a little bit of teaching, but mostly made up of praise and progress reports from around the conference, as well as a report from our International General Superintendent and a closing time of prayer with all of the Conference Superintendents. While attending this year’s Journey will be much easier than packing up and heading several hours to a central location, we still very much want it to be a centerpiece of connection and accountability, so we will be working on how to record attendance on the part of our credential holders. Every church leader and member is entirely WELCOME and encouraged to connect with us over those evenings, but participation is required as a part of our ministerial service as credential holders. The sessions will be broadcast via internet-based video platforms. We are working on those details, and will have all of those technical issues ironed out well in advance of the late July sessions. There will also be some short regional, live Zoom meetings with pastors during the days of Monday and Tuesday, so look for that information to come as we settle on connection times for each of our eight geographical regions. All you will need to know will be sent in a direct email to our entire EMC family by way of our connectional database, CCB. We are very excited, and are looking forward to connecting in this way.