Río Texas Annual Conference

Can we have a topic that is "What is 'Holy' Conferencing?" which focused on the spiritual anchoring of this event? Something like: Welcome to Holy Conferencing If this is your first Annual Conference, you may be walking into something that looks, at first glance, like a church business meeting — with motions, amendments, budget reports, and parliamentary procedure. And in one sense, it is. But in the Wesleyan tradition, it is also something much more: a means of grace. John Wesley believed that God's transforming love reaches us not only in private prayer and Scripture reading, but in the gathered life of the community. He called the early Methodist societies together regularly — not merely to manage affairs, but to listen for the Spirit, speak the truth in love, and be shaped together into something none of them could become alone. That practice of structured, prayerful communal discernment is what we call Holy Conferencing. The word conferencing here carries its old weight. To confer is not just to meet — it is to seek together, to bring what you carry and lay it alongside what others carry, trusting that the Spirit moves in the exchange. Wesley saw this as a genuine means by which God's grace becomes available to us. Not a rubber stamp. Not a performance. A practice. So when we gather for a United Methodist Annual Conference, we are participating in something with deep roots. The debates on the floor, the moments of worship woven through our sessions, the chance encounters in the hallway, the prayers before a difficult vote — all of it belongs to the practice. What does Holy Conferencing ask of us? It asks us to come prepared — having read, prayed, and thought before we arrive. It asks us to speak with care — saying what we genuinely believe, without exaggeration or manipulation. It asks us to listen with charity — assuming good faith in those with whom we disagree, and allowing their words to actually land before we respond. It asks us to hold our outcomes loosely — trusting that if we have conferred faithfully, what emerges belongs to God, even when it isn't exactly what we hoped. And it asks us to remember that the people around us — the delegates, the clergy, the lay members, the visitors — are not opponents or allies first. They are brothers and sisters in Christ, each bearing something the rest of us need. Annual Conference will have its awkward moments, its procedural tangles, its long afternoons. There will likely be votes that go the wrong way, in someone's estimation. But underneath all of it runs a current of genuine belief: that the Holy Spirit is present when the people of God gather in Christ's name to seek the way forward together. You are not here just to observe. You are here to participate in a means of grace. Come ready to be changed — not only to change things.

— toddsalmi, Jun 16, 2026

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