MITCHELL, SOUTH DAKOTA—Bishop Scott Jones, Great Plains Episcopal Area will provide insights and learning to the leaders of the Dakotas Conference on September 13-14, 2013.  The Dakotas Conference Common Table is hosting a leadership and planning event named “Forward:  Bold, Spirit Leaders” on the campus of Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, South Dakota.

Bishop Jones guides the formation of the Great Plains Conference

Bishop Jones serves The Great Plains Area, which includes the Nebraska, Kansas East and Kansas West annual conferences. The three conferences voted in 2012 to become one annual conference effective Jan. 1, 2014. Together, the three conferences have more than 220,000 lay people, nearly 1,000 congregations and almost 800 active elders, deacons, associate members and local pastors.

Uniting Conference*

A Uniting Conference was recently held to begin the final preparations for the unification of the three conferences to the Great Plains United Methodist Conference. 

Jones views the coming together of the three conferences as the chance to “re-invent ourselves,” to do things newly and differently, if the Holy Spirit so leads.

“A new shape and form of United Methodism is beginning in Nebraska and Kansas. What’s it’s going to be like to serve Christ in these states?” Jones asked during the Uniting Conference.

“What would it be like if all 1,000 churches in Nebraska and Kansas were communities of love, sharing God’s love effectively?” he asked.

Jones also talked about replacing “drift with focus.”

Too many United Methodist churches have activities that are not focused on making disciples of Jesus Christ, according to Jones.

If activities don’t have a direct connection to making disciples, Jones said United Methodist churches should quit doing them.

“Faithfulness to your past requires change for your future,” Jones said.

Drawing on Acts 15:22-29, the bishop noted that the early church, as it was faced with Gentiles wanting to join the community of Jesus Christ, had “a full-blown problem” on its hands, as it had to leave much of its civil and ceremonial law behind and look at the situation morally. Jones compared this with what Jesus did during his earthly ministry. As Jesus broke laws — healing on the Sabbath, speaking to a Samaritan woman, etc. — he showed his followers that the moral law was what mattered.

“Jesus had a boundary-crossing ministry that reached out to new people,” Jones said. This is what we need to be about as the Great Plains United Methodist Church, and we do it by being faithful to our past while we look to necessary change for our future.

More about Bishop Jones

Scott Jameson Jones was elected to the episcopacy in 2004 and assigned to serve the Kansas Area, which includes the Kansas West Conference and the Kansas East Conference. In 2012, Bishop Jones was assigned to the new Great Plains Area, which includes the Nebraska Conference, Kansas West Conference and Kansas East Conference.

His most recent books are United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center and The Evangelistic Love of God and Neighbor: A Theology of Discipleship and Witness. He has been named associate editor of volumes 5 and 6 in the Bicentennial Edition of The Works of John Wesley, the scholarly edition of Wesley’s Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament.

* includes excerpts from article by Lisa Diehl, Communication Director, Kansas East and West Annual Conference