The 2006 Session of the North Carolina Annual Conference is now history. An official, high-points recap of the conference, by Mr. Bill Norton, can be found inside this newsletter. This is a very unofficial commentary on what one pastor takes to be the most interesting parts of this year’s conference.

This conference should have been named the 2006 Charles M. Smith Session of the North Carolina Annual Conference. After all, it was Rev. Smith, who is the executive director of Conference Connectional Ministries, who led the charge to move the conference from Fayetteville to Greenville. As it turned out, the Greenville Convention Center proved to be a suitable, even good, location for the conference. To its credit, the Greenville location increased attendance at this year’s conference.

At a couple of points in the conference, Bishop Al Gwinn displayed uncommon courage. In his State of the Church Address early in the conference, he declared: "Human life continues to decrease in value: Children are victims of violence that is inconceivable to most. Every day in America alone 2,482 children are confirmed as abused or neglected. Babies continue to be aborted with the same lack of conscience with which they were conceived. The elderly are put away as easy as an afterthought. Hundreds of innocent people are dying every day because of ethnic cleansing and political ideologies. Objective truth is so seriously questioned today that for many there remains no true North in terms of the compass of morality." Later in the conference, he boldly apologized for the Friday evening speaker’s use of foul language. (More on that event below.)

The celebrity of the conference was honorary Chief Petty Officer Diego Santiago. In January of this year, little Diego, who is fighting childhood cancer, was no longer being helped by chemotherapy. Even so, six months later, there he was, on the conference stage, being wildly applauded by everyone present. Thanks be to God!

Before the Celebration of the 50^th Anniversary of Women’s Full Ordination in The United Methodist Church, there was a rather peculiar reference to "ordination rights." (Does anyone have a "right" to be ordained into the Church’s representative ministry?) During the celebration, a female pastor was seen browsing in the Cokesbury bookstore. When asked why she was not attending the celebration, she replied: "I want to be seen as a United Methodist pastor, not a female United Methodist pastor."

Dr. M. Elton Hendricks, the president of Methodist College, made a thoughtful speech about higher education. He urged the conference to remember its colleges and to keep the mission of the colleges consistent with the mission of the Church. This is an urgent task, given the fact of secularism and the fact that the University of North Carolina system might soon be studying the possibility of inviting North Carolina Wesleyan College to become a part of its state-university system.

Rev. Bruce E. Stanley, the president of the Methodist Home for Children, offered a powerful thought about the importance of greeting and touching. Drawing from an African tradition, he noted that greeting a person involves more than seeing that person. This is Biblically illustrated when the risen Christ appeared to His disciples, greeted them, and invited Thomas to "touch" His wounds (John 20). Furthermore, Rev. Stanley’s point could be connected to meeting and touching Christ in Holy Communion.

Mr. Jim Winkler, the General Secretary of the General Board of Church and Society, addressed the entire conference and the Methodist Federation for Social Action luncheon. He spoke about how, with the board, he tries to speak "truth to power" by offering "firm, polite witness" to political leaders. This was said after he had called for the impeachment of President Bush, which Mr. Winkler later regretted. At the luncheon, Mr. Winkler gave an interesting account of his board’s history, including its historic temperance and public-morals ministry, which opposed prize fighting. His argument against the war against terror was familiar to anyone who watches the evening news.

Mr. Bill Bryan is the president of Mt. Olive Pickles and a member of Mt. Olive United Methodist Church. His patience and perseverance helped turn a boycott of Mt. Olive Pickles into a migrant-housing project. This is a strong story about how contention between groups can be turned into cooperation that serves "the least of these" (Matthew 25) and the public good.

During the love feast, a Japanese-American United Methodist woman offered the funniest line of the conference. In the American church, she had learned that, to God, "‘redneck’ does not matter. But stiff neck does matter...."