2016 Annual Conference

June 29 – July 3, Koury Convention Center and Sheraton Hotel
Greensboro, NC

Theme: Carry the Light (John 1:1-5)

…in your heart — Claim it
…in your church — Focus it
…in your community — Spread it
…in your world — Be it

The next time you see a leaf flutter in a gust of air or a blade of grass bend to the breeze, consider that it is being touched by a power that begins some 93 million miles away. Actually, every living movement on our earth begins with strength driven by the light of the sun. When we walk from one room to the next, we are burning the sunlight that brought the rain and grew the food that nourishes our physical bodies.

Some of that power, from a solar panel for example, is very immediate - about eight minutes old. Some of it, coal for example, has been stored for thousands of years. It is all from the same source.

As Christians we confess that there is one source for our spiritual being; one source for the meaning that powers our mental and emotional existence; one source for Life.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:1-5 NRSV

The Gospel of John opens with this magnificent hymn in tribute to the relationship between word, life and light. They were all present “in the beginning” and they all came to focus in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. They were revealed in a person of history that we remember regularly in the act of communion; a person that we recognize as a source of our salvation; a person who, we confess, lives with us in the Holy Spirit and whose body is alive in our worshiping community of faith.

This is a confession that is, at once, intimate and shared, personal and universal, present and eternal. It is a testimony that is closer than our own name and beyond our most faithful and imaginative comprehension; a testimony that we know Him who was "in the beginning." It is a testimony that a light that is as immediate as the Holy Spirit and as ancient as the texts of the Old Testament powers us. We claim a Light that comes to us across the space of two thousand years and across the space from the beginning of creation; a light that warms us, heals us, comforts us, nourishes us, guides us and grows us.

For this, we rededicate ourselves to "Carry the Light."

Andy Murray, moderator
2016 Annual Conference