Rev. Emily Allen: “Spirit-Filled Work”
“Spirit-Filled Work”: Reflections from Costa Rica – GMC Convening General Conference
Emily Allen
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering” (Romans 12:1 MSG). What does it look like to place our work before God as an offering? I learned with a new depth what this means through my experiences as a delegate at the Convening General Conference of the Global Methodist Church (GMC).
The Global Methodist Church launched as an official denomination on May 1, 2022. Since then, transitional leadership and frameworks have been in place until our Convening General Conference, which took place September 20-26, 2024 in San José, Costa Rica: when the official structure, mission, and leadership of the denomination were adopted. It is part of our Methodist heritage that decisions about the church be affirmed through the practice of holy conferencing, or what John Wesley called the “Christian Conference.” Dr. Kevin Watson explains that for Wesley the goal of Christian Conferencing was to be “filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost.” At the Convening Conference, I experienced how work that could seem to be perfunctory can be filled with the Holy Spirit and set the course of a whole movement!
The work of General Conference began with committees, where subgroups of delegates refined and passed or rejected petitions. My committee was tasked with refining the constitution of the church. We deliberated about theological, organizational, missional, and legal implications of each word of the document. When we felt that the constitution was perfected, our committee chair asked us to take a standing vote to affirm the document. Although it was past 2:00 am in Kenya, one delegate on our committee had stayed up on Zoom until we finalized the constitution. When she stood to vote yes, many of us cried aloud for joy, grateful for the work of the Spirit through our global committee’s efforts. We put the document in the middle of the room and prayed over it, that the church it represents would always convey Christ to the world.
Little moments of grace like those in the Constitution Committee filled General Conference, but perhaps the most prominent times of movement of the Spirit were in times of corporate worship. Matt Reynolds wrote in his article “Consecration Before Crossing” that, “We can strategize and plan all we want, but in the end the GMC will be a mere footnote in history if our hearts are not ready to host his presence. Without his Spirit we have nothing.” Each morning, various speakers offered devotionals that invited the members of the conference to ask the Holy Spirit to guide our work.
One morning, Dr. Luther Oconer preached, “Church, if the Spirit shows up in our proceedings here at the General Conference, we too will become of one heart. There will be no more trust issues.” I had entered the conference room that morning with concern for unity and wisdom in terms of the election of bishops. By the time he finished preaching, I was on my knees weeping and asking the Holy Spirit to come and transform my heart! Later, when we elected bishops, it was clear that the Holy Spirit had brought unity to the conference delegates as we voted with one heart and mind.
Holy conferencing came alive for me at the Convening General Conference, and I believe that God is at work in the GMC, taking our efforts to submit ourselves to the Spirit and using us to join in his mission for the world. The work that we did, far from being perfunctory changes to remove transitional language, was our offering to the Lord. By God’s grace, we made course-setting decisions with the help of the Spirit, So the World will Know.
Emily Allen is a 5th year M.Div. student on the Wilmore campus. She is an ordained deacon in the Global Methodist Church and a member of the Northeast Conference.
Leave a Reply