The 2019 Annual Conference ended with the Ordering of Ministry service on Saturday morning. This service licensed, commissioned, certified, recognized, and ordained 65 persons for ministry into the world.
Bishop Ward used John 16: 12-15 as her scriptural text for the message. This passage has a forward-looking message and helps us lean into what we will be. God tells us, “I have much more to give you through the words of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit calls us to want and experience more, beyond what our words can express. “The Christian life, from beginning to end, is an experience, a journey toward this great ‘more’ of God.”
The lesson we find ourselves needing to learn over and over again is to lean into God’s generosity and abundance, rather than retreating back into smallness. Ward gave witness to the times when she may have had reservations on how to get some things done and yet God’s generosity poured in over and over again, even from persons she never knew or met. “It’s a marvelous thing to be small when you know a great God. . . . God has a plan for us so much wider, so much deeper, so much higher than the visions we hold.”
We give thanks to God that God’s riches are so vast that our hearts cannot contain, nor our hands hold the vastness of God’s treasures
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One missionary was commissioned, six lay ministers were certified, 14 lay missioners were certified, five deacons were ordained, eight probational members were commissioned, 20 persons were licensed for pastoral ministry, ten elders were ordained, and one person’s orders were recognized.