The quadrennial gathering of the world-wide United Methodist \u00a0family will happen this month, May 10-20, in Portland, Oregon. Nearly 900 delegates and many more observers and support people will convene to consider options in moving our denomination forward for the next four years.<\/p>\n
Everyone is expecting an even more contentious General Conference (GC) than 2012, which was a debacle, to say the least. The \u201cprogressive\u201d \u00a0forces who want the UMC to change its stance on homosexuality, same-sex marriage, abortion, and a number of other hot button issues plan to disrupt the conference, since they know they do not have enough votes to change its stances.<\/p>\n
Our Lay Leader, Karl Baumgardner, will be attending as a prayer minister, and Wesley Putnam (the evangelist we hosted recently) will \u00a0also be there.<\/p>\n
So, what can we do who remain home?\u00a0 Pray.<\/p>\n
I want to encourage all of us to be in prayer from now through the end of the General Conference. \u00a0Pray for the Holy Spirit to fall on the\u00a0General Conference, and pray for Biblical Faith to prevail in all decisions.<\/p>\n
There are several ways you can follow the proceedings of the GC. \u00a0There is a mobile app for General Conference which will provide updates and even some live video. \u00a0Look for it in your app store. There is a \u00a0General Conference Facebook page (<\/a>www.facebook.com\/umcgeneralconference<\/a>) which will have updates as the proceedings \u00a0unfold. \u00a0You can subscribe to the United Methodist News Service email or webpage (go to http:\/\/www.umc.org\/news-and-media\/united-methodist-news<\/a> for more information). \u00a0And you can even watch live streaming from Portland by visiting http:\/\/www.umc.org\/who-we-are\/general-conference-2016-live-video-stream-english<\/a>.<\/p>\n Much of the GC will be routine and not very interesting, especially in the first week.\u00a0 But please, please, please, keep it in prayer. \u00a0 Let\u2019s bathe the GC in prayers for spiritual renewal, awakening, faithfulness and Biblical truth!<\/p>\n Faithfully, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The quadrennial gathering of the world-wide United Methodist \u00a0family will happen this month, May 10-20, in Portland, Oregon. Nearly 900 delegates and many more observers and support people will convene to consider options in moving our denomination forward for the next four years. Everyone is expecting an even more contentious General Conference (GC) than 2012, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2005,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,39,38,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-news","category-local-outreach","category-outreach","category-pastoral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1985,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984\/revisions\/1985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPastor Glen<\/p>\n