District Conference Celebration

This afternoon was just incredible for me. It was the Heartland North District Conference Celebration at North Spring. We did business, heard from Buckner, a part time student charge about the Baby Grace program, which was started last year as a mission to teenage mothers at Fort Osage High School; and we had beautiful music from the bluegrass/gospel group Right Choice out of Faith UMC Grain Valley. And then a "son of the district," Steve Cox, preached a very memorable and biblically sound and proddingly appropriate and authentically delivered sermon, on Luke 5:1-11... we often are like the disciples standing to the side of the crowd that pressed in on Jesus by the shore of the Sea of Galilee--- it is not that there is no one that needs and wants the hope and grace Christ gives, it is that we are working in the wrong place, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. I wish we had recorded it. Really.

Steve is one good guy. He is our conference director of connectional ministries in the annual conference, and as I said today, much that he does goes unattributed (that is simply the nature of his work), but not unappreciated. He is a servant minister, trying to anticipate the needs of the conference's new direction in order to be out in front of facilitating response. The http://www.5practices.org/ website has come together only through Steve's work. He is a fine writer, too. And he really is a son of the district. He grew up at Cowgill, served Grain Valley and Oakland, and then of course First: Blue Springs for many years. His mother is a member at First: Excelsior Springs and his daughter and son in law and grandbaby at First: Blue Springs. I am very grateful for his leadership, and especially for his preaching today.

This picture was taken just after the celebration. This is Steve talking to the current pastor at Cowgill, Amanda Ross. Amanda is a daughter of the Heartland Central District out of the Fairmount church. Now a student at Saint Paul, she recently left her work at the Hotel Phillips in order to be a part time local pastor at Polo and Cowgill. I had the pleasure of hearing her preach before the charge conference at Polo earlier this fall. She has a heart for the ministry; the brains to figure out how to resource herself around things she needs to know; and simply has a winning way about her that her church folks really appreciate. I am glad we had a good place for her to begin her ministry. I am glad that Cowgill still nurtures not only its own children and student pastor, but also offers tutoring for the town children as well. I am glad, very glad tonight that this is not an isolated case in our district.

I am a proud d.s.