Work of the New England Conference Board of Discipleship

In the wake of the worst of COVID-19, the New England Annual Conference began to re-form its conference board of discipleship. I was asked to chair this board and found that, like me, most of the members on the re-formed board were new to this work. I learned that the previous group met only a few times per year…. And we were off to the races!

As a good United Methodist, I turned to the Book of Discipline to see what boards of discipleship were supposed to do. When I saw the pages of information there, I thought twice about what I had taken on. The Book of Discipline devotes five dense pages to the duties of the conference board of discipleship. We are to “lead and assist the congregations and the districts in the conference in their efforts to communicate and celebrate the redeeming and reconciling love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ ….” (paragraph 630.1) In doing this, we are also to connect Discipleship Ministries (formerly the General Board of Discipleship) to our annual conference. The list of things that the board of discipleship ought to do is dizzying, but our board began to find its way when we noticed that the tasks were divided into five areas: Christian education, evangelism, worship, stewardship, and spiritual formation. We still had a huge task, but now we had a manageable way to think about it!

We decided to survey our conference to see how well-resourced the clergy and laity in New England felt in each of the five areas. After administering our survey during annual conference, we learned that evangelism posed the biggest challenge for our church leaders. The members of the board decided to focus on one area each year, allowing us to try to nurture each area in turn over the course of twelve months. Given the results of our survey, we needed to start with evangelism.

We decided to use our budget to fund copies of a book on evangelism that congregations could use to host small-group studies and conversations. COVID had kept people apart for so long and churches were finding it challenging to encourage people to return. Because of this, many congregations were eager to participate in what we termed a pilot project. Thirteen churches from four states within the New England Conference signed up, and we purchased 159 copies of Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism by Martha Grace Reece, giving each congregation as many copies of the book as requested.

With one year under our belt, we turned to year two, which we would dedicate to stewardship. This seemed a particularly timely area of focus, given the financial challenges so many congregations – and the denomination as a whole – face now. We didn’t want to host another book study, so we found our way to Rev. Ken Sloane, Director of Stewardship and Generosity for Discipleship Ministries. Ken was a gracious partner who agreed to collaborate with us on a series of webinars on different topics associated with stewardship. Some of these topics were ones that he suggested, but he was willing to host a webinar on a topic we requested: the intersection of stewardship and ecology. Some of these webinars were countrywide affairs, where New England participants were among hundreds of others learning from Ken. Some were events just for us, with lots of time for interaction and questions. Since Ken already does this work for the United Methodist Church and didn’t require payment, we were able to use our budget money to purchase incentives for participants: people who participated in at least two webinars before June were invited to a lunch with Ken at annual conference, and people who participated in at least four webinars received three books on stewardship recommended by Ken (we chose A Spirituality of Fundraising, Generosity, Stewardship and Abundance, and Money Talks: A Biblical Take on Earning, Saving, Spending, and Giving.)

Now we’re planning year three with a focus on spiritual formation. We’ve reached out to Discipleship Ministries again for ideas about partnering with their spirituality programs. We’re working with a local retreat center about ways to collaborate. We hope to set aside some of our budget for “retreat scholarships” to encourage our congregational leaders to prioritize self-care and spiritual care by helping to defray the cost of retreats.

In addition to devoting a year to each of our five areas, we decided to offer suggestions of recommended resources to the conference each month. As part of our conference’s monthly e-newsletter, the board of discipleship contributes a small section called “Seeds of Discipleship.” Each month, we highlight five books, websites, or other resources – one for each section of worship, stewardship, spiritual formation, evangelism, and Christian education. We hope that these recommendations might bring new resources to the members of our conference.

There are many ways to approach the work of a conference board of discipleship! We will continue to serve in the way we’ve developed, and we pray that God will use our work to help resource the United Methodist Church in New England for the transformation of the world.

Heather Josselyn-Cranson, Order of Saint Luke, is the chair of the board of discipleship for the New England Annual Conference. She is also the abbot of the Order of Saint Luke, a religious order dedicated to sacramental and liturgical scholarship, education, and practice. She teaches music and religious studies classes at Regis College, where she is the Sister Margaret William McCarthy Endowed Chair in Music.