Photo Courtesy of Pacific Northwest Conference
Pacific Northwest Conference | April 23, 1016
If you’re like me, you can almost feel it these days, a quiet sense that something is shifting in the life of The United Methodist Church. It’s not always obvious, and it doesn’t come with clear headlines, but it’s there… enough to make you pause, wonder, and maybe even pray a little more closely.
In my role as Executive Director of Connectional Ministries, I find myself in a lot of those in-between spaces, conversations with clergy and laity, moments before and after meetings, the honest reflections that don’t always make it into reports. And lately, I keep hearing the same questions surface: Where is God leading us? What’s taking shape among us? How do we stay connected and faithful in the middle of all this?
I spent some time sitting with this excellent article by Heather Hahn on how church leaders are charting a new future for bishops, and it stayed with me.
At first glance, it may sound structural or distant. But the more I read, the more it felt deeply pastoral, because at its core, it’s about how we are led, how we care for one another, and how we remain rooted in connection even as things change.
This isn’t simple. There’s history here. There are real questions. And the future is still taking shape. But what I felt as I read wasn’t heaviness, it was a steady kind of hope. The kind that reminds us that even in seasons of change, God has not stepped away. God is still present. Still shaping us. Still calling us forward, together.
So I want to invite you to spend a little time with it. Not just to understand what’s being discussed, but to listen for what God’s Spirit might be stirring in you. Pay attention to what resonates, what stretches you, what calls you into prayer, and what this might mean for how we live as the Church in this moment.
And as you do, may you be held in the quiet assurance that we are not navigating this alone.
May God give wisdom to our bishops, clarity to our leaders, and grace to all of us as we continue to be the Church together.
And may we move forward, not with fear, but with a deep and steady hope, trusting God, who is already ahead of us.
Salamat po, O Dios.
Rev. David Valera serves as Executive Director of Connectional Ministries for The Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church.