Here’s a celebration: not long ago, if you were a woman in seminary, you looked around, and you were the only woman there. If you felt called into the ministry and you were having to hear the words, “No!, Not Yet, It’s Not in the Bible” and you would face a lot of resistance, if not outright rejection.
We celebrate this day, because as we look around, as we pay attention, as we listen, we have observed that about 25% of the clergy that have been before us as speakers or assistants are women. Of course, 51% of the population of North Carolina are women, so we’ve still got a ways to go if we want to embody the blessed community.
Thankfully, by our observations, we celebrate that 41% of the laity that have been before the conference have been men.

We wish that we could end on such a positive note, but our hearts have been disturbed by some of our shortcomings. For the second year in a row, we have observed that our diversity with regard to racial and ethnic persons here at annual conference is very disappointing. One of the seven pathways indicates that we will “end racism as we authentically expand racial and ethnic ministries.” The US Census reports that approximately 30% of North Carolina is made up of racial and ethnic persons. Within our conference, the proportion is only 5%. Here at this annual conference, our representation is approximately consistent with our conference totals. The proportion is startling when we consider that out of the more than 11,000 racial/ethnic persons reported as members of the annual conference, few are here, less than 5 have spoken from the floor, and approximately the same number from the podium. We hope that our conference will do everything it can to create a diverse and welcoming program in the years to come, greatly increasing that number.

We believe that we need to be held to the accountable to goals and visions set forth by Jesus, and articulated by our Bishops in the Seven Pathways, which remind us that we are to “end racism as we authentically expand racial and ethnic ministries.” If we as a church were to “look like the neighborhood” in terms of our ethnic diversity, we would be reaching out to the community in such a way to attract racial/ethnic persons to this wonderful United Methodist Church – not simply as subjects of mission but as brothers and sisters in Christ called to worship and preach and teach and lead. The task is great; even God sized; perhaps as great as the challenge once faced by women feeling the difficulty or impossibility of living out their call into ministry not long ago. In fact, to rise to this challenge, we would need to add 65,000 racial and ethnic persons to our rolls to bring us in line with “the neighborhood” of North Carolina.

We hope that as Rev. Hamilton reminded us, “these facts will become our friends,” and that God will move us to consider celebrating and challenging the conference towards greater diversity as we plan ways to give voice to our whole conference in the coming months and years, so help us God.

Numbers, numbers, and more numbers. In the sessions of the Annual Conference, our work as followers of Christ often seems to get reduced to numbers – program budgets, salaries, pensions. During each session, members of the Monitoring and Accountability Committee add to the inundation of numbers as we take our positions, armed with pens and data recording sheets. We attend to every movement in the session and with our best guess we record the demographics characteristics of everyone who participates in annual conference – those who speak from the floor and from the dais, those who lead worship, those who serve communion. And at the end of the day we tally the totals.

Perhaps it is no surprise to find that most often, our tallies are skewed toward older white men. Sometimes, particularly in worship, the diversity of participants is impressive. But why do we count? Are we hinting to our white brothers that they should be less vocal? Or are we encouraging others among us – women, people of color, young adults, individuals with physical disabilities – to speak and participate more? Either way, should this type of affirmative-action-influenced approach that is mildly reminiscent of quotas have a place in the body of Christ?

As Grace Hackney taught us in Thursday morning’s Bible study, the vision of God’s kingdom in Revelations 21 is a home among mortals. This, perhaps, is why Christ instructs his disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The Church is to be God’s co-laborer in creating this new kingdom, the beloved community where all of God’s rich and diverse creation is visible and thriving.

Unfortunately, though, the North Carolina Conference does not currently mirror the diversity that God so obviously loves. We are certainly making strides, but there is much work to be done. That’s why we count – to remind us that some of God’s children are missing from the table of communion. Our counting system is not perfect. It can be daunting, sometimes discouraging. But it is another sign-act pointing us to the beloved community that we one day hope to embody.

Chanequa Walker-Barnes