The move to Arizona gave me a new appreciation for—and understanding of—providence. Unbeknownst to me when I applied for the position at Trinity Heights, Arizona and the southern tip of Nevada were preparing to form a new annual conference. Again, anyone not involved in The United Methodist Church would understandably not recognize this as the once-in-a-lifetime occurrence it was, but there I was just in the nick of time to witness the whole thing. Being a layperson not elected as a delegate from the local congregation made my attendance unofficial at best, but the good folks at THUMC still felt that I should be there to observe the proceedings.
What I regarded as so providential about this development was the fact that a brand new conference would not, in all likelihood, have a “seminary rule” in place as did the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference. Such a rule was, in my opinion, emblematic of the elitist class that United Methodist clergy had become. For nearly two-centuries the historic avenue into the ordained ministry of the Methodist church had been through the Course of Study, but post-WWII seminary graduates looked down upon this non-academic route and devised rules requiring graduation from a seminary in order to be ordained and become a member of the conference. This always struck me as “illegal” because the provisions for the Course of Study were included in the Book of Discipline, but I was told that annual conferences had the latitude to institute such provisions if they so chose. But in what came to be known as the Desert Southwest Annual Conference the only rule book was the Discipline and it was very clear to me that now was the time to act!
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