Bishop Ward and Gary Locklear extend an invitation to participate in one of four Building an Intentional Discipleship System workshops this month, led by Phil Maynard.
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ.
Here in the North Carolina Annual Conference, we together seek to make disciples of Jesus Christ in every place, through healthy congregations and effective leadership. To advance our leadership for laity and for clergy, our conference lay leader, Gary Locklear, will share an opportunity coming up very soon.
GARY LOCKLEAR: Thank you, Bishop. Coming up at the end of the month, we have a series of four workshops designed to help us move from membership to discipleship. Phil Maynard, who was a member of this conference at one time, will be leading us. Phil is the author of “Shift,” the most notable of his books. Our connectional ministry team has been using that concept in many of our congregations for several years now and it’s making a difference.
So we as the laity could like to follow up on that and do more work of moving our membership to discipleship and picking up those traits of true disciples in our congregations and in our communities as well.
Those events are going to be held Aug. 24 for Corridor and Fairway districts at Aldersgate United Methodist in Durham; Aug. 25 will be the Capital and Heritage districts meeting at Garner United Methodist in Garner; on Aug. 27, the Beacon and Sound districts will be meeting at St. James in Greenville; and finally, on Tuesday, Aug. 28, the Gateway and Harbor districts will be at Chestnut Street in Lumberton.
If that doesn’t fit your calendar, feel free to come to any of these meetings and feel free to come and experience what disciple-making is all about and we’ll be happy to have you there. The link for connecting with us is on our conference website. We are encouraging both clergy and laity to be part of this training. The cost of the training is $10 per person and that is to cover the cost of your meal.
BISHOP: So, hit the link and sign up today. It would be wonderful to have a team of laity from your congregation and for your pastor to be a part of this training event.