Let us continue to pray for General Conference 2016 (May 10-20, 2016). We need to lift up the ministry of worship, in both music and message, at the conference and pray that it edifies each person present and all of us together.

The worship director will be the Rev. Laura Jaquith Bartlett of Eagle Creek, Oregon. She is a Deacon in the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference who serves as Program Director at the Alton L. Collins Retreat Center. She is also a worship coach and President of the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship.

Rev. Barlett is organizing hundreds of worship leaders, choirs and musicians who will come to General Conference.  We celebrate her ministry and the way her gifts will lift up our hearts in worship and praise.

The overall General Conference worship experience, in all its power and diversity, offers a rare opportunity every four years for thousands of United Methodists and guests from around the world to worship and praise God together. Along with the music and liturgy, it also enable disciples of every nation to hear together in their own tongues God’s prophetic Word preached by leaders of our church. It is a true Pentecost moment that we will actually experience during Pentecost.

Please pray that each song and sermon, each Scripture verse, prayer and litany we hear and recite may truly lead us into finding and fulfilling God’s vision and purpose for the church, God’s church. Amen.

Bishop Peggy A. Johnson