Thursday, May 8, 2008

A weekly look-around at the Church in the World.

Hello to my sisters and brothers in Christ: it is good to be back home in the west! General Conference has concluded, and everyone who attended has returned safely home, burnished by the long days of wonderful singing, challenging work, joys, discoveries, disappointments and wonder. It really is too much to summarize all at once, and I know our delegation will bring you their report in a variety of ways soon.

So let me offer something I observed that was a small thing, something I probably noticed only because I have been to so many General Conferences over so many years that all the things which remain essentially the same have blurred together—but this popped out for me: we had no hymnals.

Understand that in all the years past, delegation members arrived to find fresh hymnals with special General Conference 1988 or 1996 or 2004 imprints on the cover; the Bishops received even spiffier versions (which I enjoyed giving away to our volunteers.) I distinctly recall living through the proud presentation of the “new blue” hymnals that replaced the “old red” ones that so many of us grew up using. Now at this General Conference, we approved the development of the next new hymnal, to be ready in time for our arrival in Tampa, Florida for General Conference 2012.

But in Fort Worth we had no hymnals. Many will be quick to note that Methodists have always been known for their singing—in the frontier days, Native Americans in the northeast called Methodists “the noisy yelling people” for our singing. The earliest circuit riders were given a bible, a hymnal, and later the Discipline, and this was considered sufficient to cover every need in ministry. “Our” hymns from the Wesley brothers have been so potent that they have touched lives far beyond Methodism, some even adopted by other protestant faiths.

So no hymnals at General Conference really struck me. Yet it was also obvious that no hymnal—certainly no book that a normal person could handle—no hymnal could possibly contain the overwhelming variety of music that we shared together in Fort Worth. And what fantastic, uplifting music it was! Instead of reading from the text, everything was visually available on the screens above us, so that we truly lifted our heads, our mouths up and throats open to sing, just as my choir director always reminded us to do.

Certainly many congregations are already using overhead displays, some exclusively. My point is, this was the first time that that was the primary and only way to read the music at General Conference. It was a small but critical step beyond our past, and a little glimpse into the future; a future that cannot be contained in any one book (although books and hymnals and such will continue to contribute to our ministries,) and a future that will be more multi-sensory, multi-accessible, calling forth all kinds of new creativity.

Again, very little of this is new in general—but it was a first for us specifically as the whole body of United Methodism called together. So I received it as a small sign of a great hope for a future that can be remarkably different.

Your sister and bishop in Christ, Mary Ann