Devotional from Pastor Dave June 12, 2024

Our Holston Annual Conference is wrapping up this morning at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. It’s been such beautiful weather here and such a refreshing spirit of fellowship. Our Signal Crest contingent (Bill Thornton, Allison Maynard, Stephen and Katy Hines and their family, Lisa Beckman, and Tracy and our sons) have enjoyed seeing several former of our church’s pastors as well as countless friends from across the conference.

At last night’s worship service, we celebrated the conference’s bicentennial – 200 years of Methodist ministry in Holston. The altar arrangement included saddlebags representing our circuit rider heritage and preaching coats, including one worn by my great-uncle Marvin Kincheloe. Six bishops participated in the service, and we also honored our conference’s ministry among Native American and African American peoples.

Charles Maynard shared a particularly interesting story about a table that the president of Morristown College, a historically Black institution, arranged to be built for the 1912 General Conference of what was then the Methodist Episcopal Church. He sent hundreds of letters to people around the world, inviting them to send scraps of wood from their respective regions to be included in this table. He received 360 pieces of wood, which the students then fashioned into a mosaic that formed the top of this table. John Wesley’s famous words, “The World is My Parish,” were carved into the front of the table.

This table, called “The Bishops’ Table,” was lost for several years, but it has been rediscovered in a storage closet of a childcare facility on the site of the former Morristown College and it is currently being restored. Maynard described this table as “a metaphor of who we are as God’s people, the church of Jesus Christ. Like the table, we are a magnificent mosaic of faith, formed with people from all over the world who stand solidly as a table where the world can come feast at a heavenly banquet.”

For many years, the United Methodist Church has been described as a “big tent” denomination, where there is room for all kinds of people. But more recently, the metaphor has been shifting from “big tent” to “big table.” This seems much more appropriate to our Methodist heritage as a people who gather regularly at the table of Christ, where there is indeed room for all, there is always room for more, and there is always room for you.