Greetings!
 | | Chris Walters |
The folks who spread Methodism in early America were "lay preachers." The early Methodists spread so fast that in May 1779 the southern lay preachers at a conference in Fluvanna, Virginia appointed a committee to ordain ministers so that these ordained preachers could administer the sacraments because ordained clergymen, like Thomas Coke later, were few during the Revolution.
That was 230 years ago. The ordination "controversy" was one challenge early Methodists faced in this country, a challenge that emerged because the church was growing so fast. Today we have different challenges as Methodists, but one of them remains the same, that the "harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." Jesus said to the disciples as he sent them out in pairs, "Therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
Jesus says the same to us today.
Thankfully, we are asking the Lord to send out laborers into the harvest! And we support these new laborers of Harvest 2020 with our prayers, our connectional relationships and resources, and through our financial blessings.
As a newly-commissioned, second-career pastor, I am amazingly blessed to be appointed to one of the two oldest charges in our conference, which was started as a Methodist class in 1829 by  circuit rider Jesse Walker. The 1832 Conference appointed Rev. Beggs to the new church in Walker's Grove (now Plainfield). I now serve this historical church community because a bunch of people conferencing together in Tennessee more than 200 years ago saw a vision of unharvested fields and acted by sending Jesse Walker on horseback to the rivers, woods, and prairies of Illinois. Several churches in our conference trace their origins to similar efforts in the 19th century. We have faithfully harvested these fields for many decades, and we Methodists have built several storehouses for nearly two hundred years, dotting the landscape of Northern Illinois.
Through Harvest 2020 we do the same. We conference together, we see visions, and we send out laborers into the fields. Our methods are of the 21st century, but our intentions and the "Lord of the harvest" are the same. We are building new "storehouses" for the harvest. The hard work of harvesting the fields into storehouses of church communities-old and new-requires perpetual re-commitment and renewal in our mutual labor for the present and future kingdom of God.
~Chris Walters
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