Thank You!

The Global General Conference 2022 was co-created by people from all over the world doing their own small part to contribute toward a truly historic, one-of-a-kind experience. Thank you for the part you played in the amazing collaborative success that ushered in a way for us to Be Transformed.

Thank you for registering and supporting the Conference Team throughout the many, many changes over the last three years as we sought to make the best choices we could for our diverse, global body. Thank you for taking time to answer survey emails and offer your feedback, ideas, and questions throughout the creative process. Thank you for sending in videos of yourself or your church, thank you for being the one behind the camera or the one who created a beautiful scene that served as a background in someone’s video.

There is no way we could ever even know of all the people who contributed to such a dynamic conference, but we do want to acknowledge the special contributions of some of our key volunteers in case you missed our gratitude in the closing session.

First, thank you to UpRising Austin (formerly MCC Austin) for your investment in General Conference since the beginning. You were with us every step of the way as the conference changed shape from one big conference in Austin, to Austin being one of many sites, and continuing to invest in the conference even when Austin was no longer a host city. Extra special gratitude to Rev. Karen Woodworth (Thompson) helped us see that Austin was no longer a good choice and opening the door to think about going to Houston.

When we discerned the need for multiple sites because of Covid-related travel restrictions, Resurrection MCCin Houston, Texas, USA stepped in, offering to host us in their home as a site and technological hub. Thank you to Rev. Elder Troy Treash, your amazing staff, and incredible volunteers for your warm hospitality when hosting our worship planning meeting and site visits.

Thank you to our amazing, visionary worship team! Rev. Karen Woodworth and Dr. Daniel Arredondo volunteered to chair the worship team and hire Dr. Marcia McFee, creator of Worship Design Studio, as a consultant to co-create the way a multi-site – then online – conference could work. Thank you Karen, Daniel, and Marcia for your collaborative leadership style that made is possible for truly global, multi-lingual, spacious worship throughout the weekend.

Speaking of worship, thank you to our opening worship preachers: Rev. Cristiano Valerio, Rev. Elder Carolyn Mobley-Bowie, Rev. Elaine Saralegui and our closing worship preacher Rev. Elder Cecilia Eggleston. Thank you to our opening worship co-leaders Rev. Brendan Boone, Anne Klemm, Coralis Rosario Weston, Magnum Bezerra Luciano and our Prayer Service Worship Leader Rev. Wanda Floyd. Thank you to everyone who participated in worship in any way: pre-recording a video, writing a litany, leading us in live worship, prayerfully chatting with us in the chat, allowing the team to lift up worship songs from your church or collaborative projects, creating the online worship orders, translating, and so much more. Thank you our worship editors –all those who edited individual pieces like songs, and scripture, to those who edited the final versions of the whole services: Marcia McFee, Kim Raybon-Noyce, and AhSa-Ti Nu, and Mike Haase.

Thank you to our amazing programming team who used a de-centered, collaborative approach to planning worship. A big, big thank you to Collis Floyd for offering a new way to co-create programming working with a team of over 15 people from around the world to think of topics, narrow them down, invite presenters, and coordinate all of the behind-the-scenes logistics to ensure we had summaries, bios, photos, supplemental materials, and received the all content in enough time to be edited. Thank you for all of your hard work to ensure we had 17 incredible workshops and to all of our 36 workshop presenters. Thank you to Chris Baker for editing all the final workshop videos! Don’t forget that these workshops were created with the hope that you will share the content of workshops with your congregation and colleagues and return to them again and again in the next six months.

Thank you to all of those who helped our 5 plenaries lift-up 18 voices in such a powerful part of our transformational weekend. Thank you to our keynote speakers and panel leaders, panel members and hosts for helping us to embrace our Core Values and transform us!  Thank you also to our incredible conference artist Jaclyn Gilstrap from A Visual Approach who gave us a new way to interact with our plenary sessions.

Thank you to Orgena Rose and AhSa-Ti Nu Tyehimba-Ford for composing original music for this year’s conference. Orgena’s “We Are MCC” featured in the Opening Welcome to General Conference sung by all kinds of MCC voices was a great song to inspire us into Conference. And AhSa-Ti Nu’s music had us dancing in our seats at the opening and closing of all our worship services, plenaries, and workshops.

This conference could not have happened without an amazing 16-member tech team who worked over the past 4 months to design and test, and try to break and crash all the technologies we have been using. During the height of General Conference many of our tech team members supported a 24-hour Tech support line to help with any challenges throughout the conference. We especially thank the volunteers who staffed that around the clock including: Lily-Rose Lenten, Jim Manchester, Huey Lee, Kim & Tammy Raybon-Noyce, Orgena Rose, Ray Cannon, and Chris Baker. We also thank our tech crew who worked alongside Mike and Lauren the entire weekend: John Peckham, AhSa-Ti Nu, and Don & Ray Cannon.

This conference was accessible to many who speak languages other than English thanks to our incredible translations team led by Rev. Elder Hector Gutierrez. Thank you to our many, many volunteer translators.

Thank you to our 16 Incredible and amazing UFMCC Staff. Each and every staff member took on at least one extra project and this conference could not be what it was without the staff. Thank you, staff for trusting us, asking challenging questions, and supporting in every way.

Thank you to our Council of Elders for being a pastoral presence throughout the conference. A special gratitude toward Rev. Elder Maxwell Reay who coordinated the devotionals and sanctuary spaces.

Thank you to the members of our Governing Board who invested in the success of this General Conference, embracing the move to an online conference and setting up an amazing Procedures Team who created a new way of doing business. Thank you all for leading us centered on the value of abundance rather than scarcity and allowing us to take risks as we knew you supported our every decision.

Thank you to each person and team in hosting over 30 Streaming Parties around the world. Thank you to all those who gathered in person somewhere, taking this experiment to a whole new level. Based on registration, we know at least 500 people engaged in a streaming party over the weekend. Wow! We especially want to thank those who helped us create the Streaming Party Toolkit including Janine McCarthy, the organizers of the All Florida and MAPUS networks.

 

Thank you to all of those who started a community discussion group or hosted a meet-up – you made this a truly grass roots experience! A special thank you to Rev. Stedney Philips for organizing the initial groups that allowed for people to join something right when opening the App and to all those who signed up to host various kinship communities.

Because of your generosity, General Conference 2022 allowed the most people to participate in General Conference yet. By granting scholarships, helping with streaming party costs, and Internet costs for people all over the world, this conference was able to stretch every donation in ways we can’t always with an in-person conference. So thank you to each person who donated to the “Go Global” fund!

Of course, we thank our strategic team, the General Conference Core Team who helped us birth this process, came up with amazing ideas and helped us to see what we couldn’t: Rev. Dr. Kharma Amos, Dr. Lillian Dunlap, Rev. Elder Cecilia Eggleston, Rev. Elder Hector Gutierrez, Rev. Jennifer J.C. Hall, Chad Hobbs, Barry Hundley, Rev. Lori McPherson and Léo Rossetti. Thank you also to the amazing General Conference Commission whose ideas we got to pilot at this conference. Thank you for your visionary leadership!

Community is what communities does, and YOU did community. Thank you for answering each other’s questions, leading one another to the right places to be or find something, responding to needs in the chat, sending love notes and posted photos of animals. Thank you for your patience, your calm presence, your understanding and your grace. For adding to this conference in showing up fully, communicating with love, and opening doors for others. Thank you to the people we may have missed mentioning and the people who did things we don’t even know about. Thank you for being honest about the ways you wanted to engage in this unique way of doing conference.