On the last day of General Conference, the end of the two-week event that included one week of legislative committees and one week of plenary sessions, Bishop Sue provided a wrap-up of this General Conference session and what she hopes the Virginia Conference focuses on this coming Sunday and moving forward. (View full video at embedded video above).
Bishop Sue talked about the love, acceptance, joy, and the embracing of one another rather than what she called the awful division, argument and ugliness that marked the last several General Conference sessions.
“I don’t know about you but that’s the Church I want to be part of,” she said. “Where not everybody agrees – there were traditionalists here, progressives here, I would say most people here are centrists – but we really decided it was more important to love each other and get along and we had enough of the arguing. So we put that behind us and a lot of very positive stuff came out of these last two weeks.”
This coming Sunday, she said she would emphasize in local churches that “The United Methodist Church is focused on mission and the love of Jesus Christ and the living out of the Gospel in sacrificial love and outpouring of mission.”
She celebrated the sacramental authority granted to ordained deacons and the regionalization work.
“It’s a new day for really living out the Gospel, for really showing and behaving as Jesus did and moving into our communities as forces of love and grace and becoming islands of sanity in our crazy world,” she said.
Find information related to the General Conference session at the conference website: https://vaumc.org/gc2024/.
View VAUMC videos on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vaconf/albums/