- - The 2004 Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference elected Al Gwinn on the seventh ballot of the Conference. The Kentucky Delegation endorsed Gwinn as nominee. He currently serves as lead pastor of Lexington First United Methodist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. 

Under Gwinn's leadership, First UMC Lexington purchased a second campus in the fastest growing part of the city, led the conference in mission giving in 2002, and is experiencing the highest worship attendance in its history. At Lexington Centenary Gwinn led the congregation through relocation, building of an $11,000,000 facility, and attendance became the largest in the conference.

Gwinn has previously served as the Associate Director of the Conference Council on Ministries and Lexington District Superintendent (during which time he started four new churches, including a Korean congregation). He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry, is a member of the General Council on Ministries and the SEJ Administrative Council, and has been a General Conference Delegate since 1988.

Gwinn holds degrees from The University of Kentucky, Asbury Theological Seminary, and Union College. He is married to Joyce, a Coronary Care Nurse at the University of Kentucky Hospital. They have two married daughters.

For more information and recent ballot info go to www.sej2004.org

Dick Wills spoke at the North Ga. Conf. Laity Luncheon in 2001. Here's my write-up from that event, including in my Annual Conf. report for that year -- at http://gatewayumc.org/annualconferencereport01.htm

In the morning business session, Conference Lay Leader Joe Whittemore, representing the Board of Laity, challenged the delegates to move to a new paradigm of shared ministry between clergy and laity. "We are now at a crossroads in the history of Methodism," he said. Rather than continuing to propagate situations in which either clergy or laity "control everything" in a local church, "we have the opportunity to begin truly sharing ministry and leadership."

At the noontime Laity Luncheon, the Rev. Dick Wills, senior pastor of Christ Church United Methodist in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida explained how his church has moved to a "New Testament model" of shared ministry between clergy and laity.

After running his church for years based on clergy-centered authority structure, "I had a very novel idea!" Mr. Wills said. "I thought, 'I wonder what the New Testament says about the church?'"

Applying principles drawn from Acts 2:42-47, Acts 6:1-6, and 1 Peter 5:1-4, Christ Church gradually moved to a biblical paradigm of ministry.

       
Dick Wills     
"[There was] a big shift in how we understood the church," Mr. Wills explained.

"Before the people would come to church, sit in the pews, serve on a committee, give the money, hire me and I was going to do their work. But that's not what the New Testament says."

Christ Church began training lay people to be "lay pastors," each overseeing an area of the church's ministry. Each small group leader, for example, is considered a lay pastor.

"We have now about 130 lay pastors, and my task really is to be the key spiritual leader who simply leads and does spiritual nurturing and prays," Mr. Wills said.

Mr. Wills, who has written about the transformation at Christ Church in his book, Waking to God's Dream (Abingdon, 1999), noted that adopting a model of shared ministry requires both clergy and laity to give up something.

"[To] have this kind of church, a New Testament church, the pastor must give up control of the ministry.... But on the other side, laity have to give up control of who is the spiritual leader," he said.

"The church was never meant to be run by committee.... We're not a democracy, we're a theocracy -- which means it doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter what I think. It only matters, 'What is God's will?'"

...Waking to God's Dream: Spiritual Leadership and Church Renewal (Abingdon, 1999), by Dick Wills

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