Preparing for Annual Conference 2024 Are you ready?

BY REV. DR. DERREK BELASE

The 181st session of the Oklahoma Annual Conference is just one week away. Are you ready? There are many ways you can still prepare for your time if you are conference member coming to Oklahoma City.

• Visit the Annual Conference Information Hub to access all of the information you will need.

• Download and read the PreConference Workbook, which has all of the reports we will be voting on as well as many great reports about ministry happening across the connection, especially here in Oklahoma.

• Watch the 17 minute preconference briefing to get the latest information from conference leaders.

• Read the audit report from the Council on Finance and Administration, which is not voted on by the conference but contains important financial information you may be interested in.

• If you have not already done so, take a special offering this Sunday to benefit Lydia Patterson Institute and to honor Bishop Nunn’s service to the Oklahoma Conference. You can bring the special offering with you to the annual conference or you can give online

• If you have time, read paragraphs 120 to 143 (Part IV, The Ministry of All Christians) in the 2016 United Methodist Book of Discipline to be reminded yet again of our common witness as followers of Jesus Christ in the Wesleyan way.

Finally, you are encouraged to pray for your time as a member of the conference. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide your deliberations and decisions.

If you are not a member of the conference, you can still prepare in the same way. It takes all of us in the connection to make the connection viable and vital. The Discipline reminds us that “Our connectionalism is not merely a linking of one charge conference to another. It is rather a vital web of interactive relationships” (¶132). When we prepare for and gather in our conference session, this vital web comes alive. It takes all of us to serve the world, which is FOREVER our parish. Thanks be to God.