Rev. Mike Mayo-Moyle serves this week as a volunteer IT professional and finds the behind-the-scenes, collaborative ministry rewarding.
FAITH GREEN TIMMONS
Michigan Conference Communications
Many might think of General Conference as one major event in the life of the United Methodist Church that occurs every four years under normal circumstances. However, a behind-the-scenes look reveals that many moving parts create the whole.
Rev. Michael Mayo-Moyle is an IT specialist for our Michigan Conference. He is also part of a team of volunteers, mostly from the United Methodist Information Technology Association (UMITA), supporting the entire event. UMITA members are the professionals who provide IT support to individual annual conferences.
Their role at General Conference in Charlotte began before most others even arrived. “We had basically 24 hours to get an entire network setup, deploying switches, printers, and laptops throughout the building so that the General Conference office staff could start working and central conference delegates could meet,” said Mayo-Moyle.
Mayo-Moyle is an ordained elder, appointed to his current position in our conference as an extension ministry. His professional skill set poised him to offer a unique contribution at General Conference and lend us a specialized observer perspective. “With this level of complexity,” said Mayo-Moyle, “there are always obstacles and miscommunications, but it seems like there is also a lot of grace to repair those errors and oversights just as quickly.”
Mayo-Moyle explained, “Being at General Conference has been a very powerful reminder that we are a global movement, with members across the world committed to the United Methodist expression of Christ’s church and people who embrace the values of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It warms my heart to see and hear people from many cultures and backgrounds, all laughing, loving, and embracing each other, even when the news and social media feeds are filled with reports of global conflict, fear, hostility, and war. The only ‘argument’ I’ve gotten into was in line for tea with a woman from one of the African conferences, where we each wanted the other person to go first.”
He encourages everyone to watch the daily live-stream, which broadcasts worship and business sessions from General Conference. Click here to watch and view the full schedule through Friday, May 3. Because of the work that Mayo-Moyle does, as well as other technical specialists like him, we have the benefit of what is almost a front-row seat. Making that happen is one of the many roles they perform each day.
“In general, our team has been among the first to arrive and the last to leave daily,” said Rev. Mayo-Moyle. They prepare the equipment (laptops and scanners) for the plenary floor and run the IT Help Desk at the back of the plenary area. Once the opening worship and plenary business is complete, Mayo-Moyle runs to ensure equipment works for upcoming legislative sessions. As mentioned earlier, this is a volunteer service that he and his team from across that nation are providing. However, it is one that offers a sense of gratitude and appreciation for the wider United Methodist Church in return:
“Just as we use our gifts at the annual conference level, it is important to offer them to the general church. Alongside this, if we didn’t volunteer our time and effort, the work of ordering, deploying, and supporting would need to be done by an outside vendor, increasing the overall cost of the operation of General Conference. The other value is building relationships with my counterparts in other conferences. In addition to doing the work needed here, we can share challenges and ideas common to our experiences and contexts. For example, we can ask: ‘How do you manage email in your conference? ‘What types of equipment (laptops, firewalls, switches, etc.) are you using?’ We have an email list we can use for these types of discussions, but it is good to have face-to-face opportunities to discern how we might work more effectively and be a resource for one another. It comes back to the idea of bringing together different gifts. Some team members are a little more experienced in the application and programming side. Others have more experience with hardware and infrastructure. So, when we share our gifts, we grow stronger together; it is United Methodist connectionalism at its finest.”
Last Updated on May 2, 2024