THE COURAGE TO IMAGINE

by Jocelyn Watkins, 2026 Illinois/Wisconsin District moderator

“I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you” (2 Timothy 1:6)

“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” (Acts 2:17-18) 

Beloved in Christ,

Every year, Annual Conference themes arrive long before the gathering itself, quietly working their way into our conversations, worship planning, newsletters, and expectations. The more I sit with this year’s theme, “Imagine!”, drawn from Acts 2:17-18, the more timely it seems. Perhaps that is because imagination feels increasingly difficult in a world so practiced at anticipating conflict, decline, disappointment, and division. Fear, after all, requires very little imagination. We encounter it in headlines, political rhetoric, and in the anxieties many congregations quietly carry about attendance, finances, aging membership, and the future itself. Over time, it becomes easy to speak the language of scarcity more fluently than the language of possibility.

When the Spirit is poured out in Acts 2, it is not upon people who feel secure, settled, or certain about what comes next. The disciples are living under occupation and political tension. They are navigating uncertainty, grief, confusion, and the lingering disorientation that follows upheaval. And still, into that reality, the Spirit speaks through visions, dreams, prophecy, courage, and community. “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,” Peter declares. “Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

Peter’s description of the Spirit’s work in Acts 2 is remarkably communal. The young are seeing visions. The old are dreaming dreams. Sons and daughters prophesy, and servants receive the Spirit. Imagination, in Peter’s telling, is not reserved for a select few. The Spirit is poured out broadly across the community, and the miracle unfolding in that moment is not simply that people are speaking. The miracle is that people are hearing one another, each in their own language, across difference and distance in ways that should not have been easily possible.

I wonder sometimes whether we still expect the Spirit to work like that among us. Too often, I suspect we have become more practiced at imagining what the church is losing than imagining what the Holy Spirit may still be capable of doing within and through us. We know how to talk about shrinking attendance, aging buildings, limited budgets, and uncertain futures. Those realities deserve our attention. I wonder whether we devote the same energy to imagining what faithfulness, renewal, and Spirit-led community might look like in the years ahead. We grow fluent in the language of decline, anticipating conflict before conversation has even begun and assuming younger generations are disinterested while older generations feel unheard. Before long, our attention turns toward protecting what remains rather than discerning what new thing God may still be unfolding in our midst.

Again and again, our Brethren story has unfolded in seasons of uncertainty, carried forward by ordinary people willing to gather, listen, ask difficult questions, and trust the Spirit's guidance through community and discernment. Perhaps that, too, is part of what it means to be “Kindled Anew.”

Rekindling may begin with recovering the courage to imagine differently: congregations where disagreement does not immediately become division, where younger and older voices listen to one another with genuine curiosity, and where communities are known not only for surviving difficult times, but for embodying hope, generosity, patience, and peace within them. Imagination itself may be a kind of spiritual discipline, because what we imagine inevitably shapes how we live. Congregations shaped primarily by narratives of decline often begin behaving defensively and fearfully. Congregations that expect the Spirit to remain active among them often begin asking different questions. They may become more willing to listen, to experiment, to make room for voices that have not always been heard, and to believe that faithfulness and future are not the same thing as institutional preservation.

As we gather for Annual Conference this month, and as we continue our life together in the weeks that follow, my hope is that we will carry some of that imagination with us. Not imagination detached from reality, but imagination deeply rooted in the conviction that the Holy Spirit has not stopped speaking, not stopped stirring, and not stopped kindling new life among God's people.

In a season that so often encourages fear, suspicion, exhaustion, and retreat, one of the most faithful things we can do may be to remain open to the possibility that God is still doing more than we can presently see. If that is true, what might our congregations notice, nurture, or attempt differently?