Wichita

Well, it's Sunday evening and I'm sitting at the desk in my hotel here in Wichita, KS. Yes, Toto, this is Kansas! I haven't been here since 1997 (I think)....it was one of the last trips I took with GEN Hartzog when he talked to the pre-command course.

Anyway, interesting day. Departed OB at 5:45 and got here at 3:00 pm, checked-in and went over to The Spiritual Life Center where I'll be attending a conference on 'Empowering Ministries of Health.' It's being co-sponsored by the General Board of Global Ministries - Health and Welfare, and the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits of the United Methodist Church. It promises to be interesting and for all us who call ourselves Methodists should provide lots of thought for ministry. The stated vision is "to recover the Wesleyan tradition of health, healing and wholeness."

With his actions John Wesley defined what being a Methodist was about...he went out of the church to where the people were and, while out there, ministered to them spiritually as well as physically.

The first plenary session speaker was Bishop Scott Jones, Resident Bishop of the Kansas Area, and he titled his remarks: Healing Soul and Body. I must say he was an excellent speaker and delivered remarks that alternated between humorous and serious, but were entirely relevant to the church today. He remarked that the church today is in trouble for a variety of reasons, among them that (a) we don't care for outsiders; (b) we don't talk enough about Jesus; (c) we run into obstacles and stop rather than moving forward.

Bishop Jones is a former teacher at Perkins and his remarks alternated between lecture and sermon. It was fun and he made some quite interesting remarks on how translating Hebrew teachings into Greek created a sort of "soul & body dualism" that is at odds with the traditional Hebrew teaching of a more combined/unitary soul & body. He also brought Plato into the discussion.

He went on to describe a change that occurred in American churches from the 1880's thru the 1920's and described it as a split between the evangelical and social justice branches. In conclusion he made the comment that if we are to fix our problems we've got to figure out how our churches become places of healing (body & spirit) and how they become places of community.

Anyway, very interesting and I had planned to tape his remarks so I could share them but I "goofed" and used a tape that had one one of the little tabs broken out and when I flipped it over it wouldn't record. So, I only got a bit over 1/2 of his remarks.

Tomorrow's opening worship service/plenary session is being led by Rev. Dr. Embra Jackson from our own Mississippi Annual Conference. The title is "Do We Want to Be Healed?" and is described as "a message to challenge us in the church to become healing agents and transformers in the world." I'll tape it and also have the PowerPoint slides. If I can get him to give me the file I'll annotate them with notes/comments and then post them.