Summer Greetings,

The second of the three church conferences are now over.  Our annual Rocky Mountain Conference ended on June 12th with Pat Bell and Cody Anderson both involved in the Celebrating of Ministry Service:  Pat was Commissioned along with six others,( a step along the way to becoming an ordained elder), and Cody was recognized as being a licensed Local Pastor.

We selected Rev. Skip Strictland to be our RMC nominee for bishop.  He will join several other nominees at the upcoming Western Jurisdictional Conference in July in sharing his hopes and dreams for our UMC and answering questions from the delegates at that conference.  Only one nominee will be selected by a voting process to be a new bishop for the UMC.

Another important area of the conference was the presentation and voting of whether we will join up with the Yellowstone Conference to become a new Mountain Sky Conference.  The Yellowstone Annual Conference is meeting June 16-19, and they also will be taking a vote to decide if they are willing to move forward in this process of joining together.  All the votes will be counted on Sunday, June 19th, in the afternoon and can be seen via ‘live stream’ on the rmcumc.orgwebsite.  If both conferences want to move forward in this four year process, then a petition to that effect will be presented at the July Jurisdictional Conference. Our United Methodist denomination is shrinking here in the U.S. and Europe and growing in Africa and the Philippines.  Helping to make our UM churches more of a movement of Wesleyan vitality in our country instead of a stagnant institution is the hope behind this new conference.

Grace and Peace be yours today and every day!

Ruth Wills, Lay Leader