Today begins my journey down to Charlotte, NC for General Conference 2020 2024. It is the first General Conference I’ll ever have attended, as well as the first one I will be working as a member of the press for. My purpose in going is to capture the stories of what the Church is doing, and specifically how this impacts people of the West Virginia Annual Conference. I will also hope to show our delegates and members shine in their connectional roles. This is a chance to tell the story of how God is at work in the midst of a process we often forget is founded on the Spirit – not just the fights that we have in the Spirit’s presence.

I go, like all people, with expectations and hopes and predictions. Yet, I am not writing this to be another think piece, letter to the editor, or “inside track,” to the happenings of the General Conference. I don’t know how many times I’ll sit down and type something out, I’m not even sure the format I’ll land on for them, but I know I feel compelled to write.

I feel compelled to write about the beauty of what conferencing allows us to do, to capture the humanity of those gathered in the process. People from all over the world are coming together and in that gathering there is hope. Hope for a sort of unity that transcends the barriers we place around ourselves. Hope for a Church that is ever expanding in its shows of grace. Hope for a future with better things ahead than were ever behind us.

I have become more and more enamored with the simple beauty of life. The flowers that grow out of the ground, the blooms that demand not only to live but to enrich the world around them with color. The expression of compassion that all living things seem to be capable of showing – from a cat curled on my chest to the bird that circles its nest. Above all else, I love humanity in its broken glory. Reflections, each and every one of us, of the Divine Image, we shine like nothing else. We laugh, we cry, we hurt, and we reconcile. We aspire to the height Irenaeus put forward for us, “The Glory of God is a living person, and the life of a person is in beholding God.”

I hope to capture some of the beauty of humanity in sitting down and reflecting each day. Not in denial of our worse tendencies nor to obfuscate the difficult work of legislation. I only wish to see beauty, to name it, and to give it its due consideration. There is a need to tell stories that are beautiful, in a world that is so often full-up on sorrow. The bold defiance of the lilies, here today and gone tomorrow. The quiet assurance felt by sparrows that go by their business day after day. Christ told us to find peace in these simple things. May the beauty of Holy Conferencing, and the people who make it happen, be present in all I deign to write.

John Langenstein.
04/21/2024
At my desk at home, awaiting services,
and the long drive to Charlotte.