Notes from Kearney: Day 1
Travel, breakfast at Kitt's, and the Service of Commemoration.
Notes from Kearney is a short mini-series during the 2026 Great Plains Annual Conference. Posts go up each morning of the conference. These are observation, not transcript.
Getting to Kearney
Nicole and I drove separately this year. I had a funeral Tuesday morning and met with another funeral family that afternoon before heading north. Two charging stops in the electric car, Concordia and Wood River, and I arrived at the hotel after dark.
Wednesday Before Conference
Wednesday morning was open for me before registration after lunch. Looking for breakfast, I found Kitt’s Kitchen and Coffee, not far from the hotel. I had a late breakfast and got some work done. Sermon edits. Email. Details for next week’s funeral still coming together. The work I leave in McPherson does not stop because I have arrived in Kearney, and there is usually a layer of overlap on the first day before I settle into conference mode. I am not quite there yet, but getting there.
I picked up my nametag at registration after lunch. Seeing colleagues in the hallway, a year since the last time we were together, is the moment when conference starts to feel like conference.
Service of Commemoration
The order and schedule of Annual Conference shifts a little from year to year. This year, the Service of Commemoration came first, ahead of the official opening of the conference. It has been done a variety of ways over the years, and this was one of the better ones in recent memory. Straightforward and thoughtful.
I arrived a little early and had time to sit and reflect. I remembered my Dad. I thought about my Granddad. Both were United Methodist clergy in this conference. Annual Conference is one of the places where the cloud of witnesses feels closest, and where the friendships that develop across a clergy career carry a kind of reach and depth I don’t find elsewhere. Local-church connections are real and deep. There is something different about sitting in a row with people I have known across my whole ministry.
The names of those who died in the past year appeared on a memorial video, faces and dates as the room sat with each one. Forty-three clergy. Twenty-four spouses. One child. Sixty-eight in all.
The dance team from Hamilton Chapel United Methodist Church in Parsons, Kansas, the Vikings Dance and Color Guard, was a highlight. They shared a piece set to “Thy Word Is a Lamp Unto My Feet.” Later they brought in a procession of light, and at the close they led a recession of the light.
Looking Ahead
Thursday brings District Brunches at 11, new this year. Clergy Session follows at 1 p.m., then opening worship, and then the first business session of the conference.