In her final blog as Clergy Assistant to the Bishop, Rev. Melanie Carey encourages all to praise and not complaint.
REV. MELANIE LEE CAREY
Clergy Assistant to the Bishop
This will be my last blog entry for Spiritual Cairns as in less than two weeks I will begin my new appointment as the lead pastor at Nardin Park Church in Farmington Hills.
At that time, Rev. John Boley will begin his new appointment as the Clergy Assistant to the Bishop for the Michigan Area. You will be in his good and capable hands and I am sure that he will be a blessing to each of you, to Bishop Deb in her final months of serving before her retirement and to whoever it is whom God sends to Michigan as our new bishop. There are lots of changes happening in Michigan and John will provide steady and faithful leadership for all of us. Please welcome him warmly and pray for him for all that he has to do, for all the changes that are happening in leadership and for all the driving he will be doing across our great state.
Continue to pray for Bishop Deb in her final months as our Bishop. She will retire on September 1st. What a blessing she has been to us! What a gift she has given us in bringing us together and getting us started on building a new annual conference.
As I write this blog it is less than 48 hours since we wrapped up our annual conference sessions in East Lansing. What a week of conferencing it was! I am grateful to the planning team, the area program team, the worship team, the Breslin Center Staff and the many volunteers who pitched in and helped to make it a great week. Highlights for me were Bishop Deb’s piano playing, the ordination service, the mission day and TOM talks with inspiring poetry, powerful preaching and worship services and celebrating Bishop Deb’s ministry with her family and friends. I was deeply moved by the first step in our act of repentance with our Native American Brothers and Sisters. We have so much to do in that regard and I pray we will keep walking together.
So many people told me how much they enjoyed the new venue at the Breslin Center and how much fun it truly was to be together with United Methodists across the entire state of Michigan. Yes, some of us missed the old spaces and places, but the new place was not so bad, and in fact some even told me that they wished we were staying in East Lansing for next year! MSU was not able to offer us any Sundays during our needed time frame, so that was a major reason for our looking at another venue for 2017.
Now we will gather at the Grand Traverse Resort and I hope that those of you who had fears and concerns going into the 2016 session will reflect on how well things went, and bring that positive spirit into our next annual conference session. I have visited the Traverse City venue with some of the planning team members and I really think you are going to love being in this new setting. Yes, it is another change. For some of you it will mean a farther drive to conference, for others it will mean a lesser drive. There are cost differences, but there are also lots of options to help you keep costs down. I invite you to live into the new possibilities that this venue will bring to us! In the end it is our attitude toward things that makes all the difference.
My husband, Jon, has a little sign on the top of his dresser it reads “Be a Fountain, not a drain”. This is a quote from a former MLB player Rex Hudler. Whether you are a baseball fan or not, it is good advice and a good reminder for each of us. We spend a lot of time in the church complaining about things. Those complaining times drain all of us. Let’s decide to be a fountain because goodness knows in our world today we need more fountains and less drains! As Bishop Ott reminded us at Annual Conference: Be Hope!
Finally a word about the events that took place this past week in Orlando. If you have not already done so, please read Bishop Deb’s reflections (found on our website and in this edition of MIconnect) I encourage you to take one or all of the actions she outlines as the only way things will change is if we work to change them. Now is the time for us to be the fountain of God’s love. May our love for one another be what guides us in our response to the senseless act of violence that have happened. May our love for one another be what guides us as we reach out to members of the LGBTQI, the Muslim and Latino/a communities and offer love. May our love for one another be the force that gives us courage to work so that this kind of atrocity does not happen again.
It is hard to find adequate words, thus I want to leave you with a song by singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer. Click on the arrow below to hear her song I heard an Owl. Bless each and every one of you. Be a Fountain, not a Drain!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8WC2Y3CS8Y
Last Updated on June 21, 2016