Trinity Shares 2012 Catalog: http://tinyurl.com/trinityshares12

Download Catalog: 2012 Trinity Shares Catalog

View all photos here.

Trinity Membership Covenant

Hello dear fellow UMCers! I’ve been in Tampa for 8 days now and my has the time flown! General Conference has been an incredible experience thus far. It’s Methodistland; we’re in our own liturgical, theological, legislating world, full of Robert’s rules of order, petition numbers, song and fellowship. I’m not certain, but I don’t think it gets any more Methodist than this. General Conference is where we see the reality of connectionalism, as most of the people here spend a lot of time getting to know new people, meeting up with old friends, discussing tough issues… basically there’s a lot of talking and relationship building happening. Saturday night (at 9:30pm) was the end of the ‘committee’ half of the GC process. Months before the conference, legislative petitions are submitted and then divided up based on their subject. Some of these are; ‘Faith and Order’, ‘Church and Society’, ‘Financial Administration’, ‘General Administration’, and ‘Ministry and Higher Education’. All of the delegates choose which of these subjects they’d prefer to work on at the conference. However, there are so many documents to look at, usually those committees have to break into subcommittees, dividing the work and hopefully shortening the time it takes to approve or reject each piece of legislation. But at this point, a petition must pass through subcommittee to have a chance of passing out of full committee as a recommendation to the full General Conference that they should accept the petition as rule. It’s a long, frustration process often.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello Trinity friends!  Greetings from Tampa, Florida!

I made it here safely on Sunday and have been busy working for Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) almost non-stop since I arrived.

Currently, MFSA is working in coalition with 5 other UM caucus groups who support active social justice in the Church. At this GC, we’re making our physical presence known here in Tampa by erecting a very large tent just across the street from the convention center and making it a place for people to gather, eat, pray, and support each other when times get tough.  We’re calling it the ‘Love Your Neighbor Tabernacle’, as ‘Love Your Neighbor’ is the name of the coalition, and, well, it’s a big tent!  On Monday night we hosted a big dinner for the delegates that come from the central conferences, (primarily people from Africa and the Philippians) as it’s always been a challenge to connect with that large and growing population in our church.  Every day there will be meals and activities in the tabernacle, hosting and encouraging relationship building and good times.

Today General Conference officially began with an opening worship attended by 4,500 people.  If you remember, there are less than 1,000 elected delegates here to vote on legislation, which means there are 3,500 people here just like me; volunteers, monitors, reserve delegates, and visitors.  There are just so many people who care about our church enough to travel across the country and world to have their voice heard.  It astounds me and fills me with hope for our denomination.  I’m excited for legislative sessions to begin tomorrow, that’s when the real work begins.

Tomorrow starts bright and early!  I hope to write often to give you a glimpse into what’s happening here in Tampa.  Blessings!

Slideshow:

Link to album