Conference Minister's Corner - 6/24/2025

Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

-Jeremiah 6:16

It seems like a good time to introduce you to a theme we will be talking a lot about over the next nine months. Our camping season at Horton Center began on Sunday. The theme for this year’s camp curriculum is “Another Way”. But it is not just the theme of our summer at Horton Center. We found that this theme spoke to us so profoundly that we have also chosen it as our theme for Annual Meeting and Prepared to Serve.

So much of Jesus ministry was about encouraging his followers to find another way. Jesus urged and modeled a faithfulness that was distinctly different than the normal patterns of the world. Many times in his ministry Jesus says, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…” Whether it is “turning the other cheek” or “picking up our cross and following,” we are informed again and again that Jesus’ way is another way.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past week. I was thinking about it when I learned that the Supreme Court resolved that gender-affirming care for minors could be banned by states. That may be the way of a world. A world which fears what it does not understand. A world that too often limits itself to binary choices rather than celebrating the full diversity of the Divine tapestry of self-identity. But the Jesus I follow tells me there is another way and I am to follow it. Another way where we not only respect, but value, the identities that the Spirit reveals to each person. Another way where the “image of God” is not limited by human understanding and comfortability, but where it stretches us to see each being and all of creation in a far more complex way. A way that fully embodies the complexities of Divine love.

As I’ve watched the news this past week, I have also seen the sights of the consequences of ordinance explosions in Iran and Israel. We live in a world that clutches tightly to the myth that power leads to peace. We no longer even hear the irony in our believing that it is destruction, violence, and carnage which are what pave the way to peace. But Jesus speaks of another way. Jesus encourages us to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and to sacrifice more than we have to. Jesus tells us that to love our neighbor means loving our enemy. But when we hear Jesus proclaim “blessed are the peacemakers”, do we even remember that Jesus is saying we are to choose another way than what the world so often chooses?

I think there is a lot for us to consider over the upcoming months as we reflect on what it means to follow one who so often chooses another way.