Notes from Kearney: Day 2
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.
Bubbles to the Ceiling
The morning started before the business did. I was up early for a workout and sat with scripture and prayer while the day was still quiet. Then I helped Nicole get her booth set up, including a bubble machine that put out a remarkable stream of bubbles, rising almost to the ceiling, more fun than it had any right to be.
The District Brunch
District brunches are new this year. The lines were long and the food was good. There were words from conference and district leaders, including our District Superintendent Karen Rice-Ratzlaff. An encouraging word came from the district lay leader. Stop lamenting the size of your congregations, she said, and enjoy the connection. In the middle of a conference this large, the smaller neighborhood of a district gathering was good to have.
The Clergy Session
The clergy session met at one. It is the closed session where the clergy gather as clergy, receiving from the Board of Ordained Ministry those moving toward commissioning and ordination and approving them for the next step. This year that included Chantel Makarawa, our associate at McPherson First, moving toward commissioning as a provisional elder. It is the covenant community of the order, a practice that reaches back to the beginnings of Methodism. In many ways it is still what Annual Conference is for me. We make promises to one another in that space, and we keep renewing them year after year.
Worship, Then Business
Opening worship filled the hall with singing, and the whole conference received communion together, soon followed by the first business session at four. The heart of the afternoon was the proposed Strategic Plan for 2026 through 2030, presented and discussed today and coming up for adoption on Saturday. The plan names who the conference hopes to be: disciples of Jesus Christ defined by grace, welcoming all people as beloved children of God, living as one connection across the districts.
The budget and the pension and health report were presented as well. The conference closed 2025 with a surplus, part of which is going back out as a $500 check to every local church. The session closed by holding two anniversaries together: seventy years of full clergy rights for women, and thirty years of the Order of Deacon. Two reminders that the church’s sense of who God calls has kept widening.
A denomination is easy to argue about in the abstract. Up close, on a Thursday in Kearney, it looks like bubbles at a booth, an encouraging word at brunch, communion shared by a whole conference, and a covenant the clergy keep renewing. The committee work now moves toward Saturday’s votes. For one day, the lesson was simpler than the docket: enjoy the connection.