The Kerusso – August | 2024 Kerusso (Greek): “To publish, proclaim openly: something which has been done.”
Thankful for the EMC Max Edwards
As I put the blinking cursor onto the blank page of the August Kerusso, it hit me pretty hard that we are half-way through 2024 already! Is that possible? And then I realized that exactly two years from today (writing in late July) we will be concluding our 34th General Conference on Friday, July 24th, of 2026. We are precisely half-way through this General Conference Quadrennium. Wow! Maybe it’s just me waxing a little nostalgic or something, but it really is hard to grasp how quickly time seems to be moving. It was nearly 30 years ago that Judy and I began attending an EMC Church in Elizabeth City, NC, that Dr. Art Wilt was shepherding. We fell in love with a faith family that has only grown in our hearts. Does someone have a Kleenex? Just kidding - - mostly. I love the Evangelical Methodist Church, and I love each of you, and I am very excited about the future of our fellowship. The world absolutely needs the EMC! It needs voices like ours, proclaiming the truth of God’s love and salvation without an overlay of external legalism. It needs voices like ours, advocating for holiness of heart and mind that groans after holy love with confidence in the possibility of aspiring to, and attaining it, but only by and through the power of the Holy Spirit. It needs voices like ours, that will not bend to the cultural wind of compromise on the authority and inspiration of God’s Holy Word. It needs voices like ours, that calls us to love people who are trapped in sin, yet without affirming the sin as normative. Thank you, people of the EMC for being a light to the world! Not a source of light, but a mirror of light, reflecting the beauty and transformative power of the light of Christ Jesus, Son of God and Savior of the whole world. As we move into the last half of this quadrennium, I trust that we will keep our eyes on Christ, working shoulderto-shoulder in harmony and grace to fulfill our calling to be “imitators of God, as dear children.” (Eph. 5:1) I look forward to gathering with you in our “Journey” Sessions next year. They will be our last District Sessions before our General Conference convenes in July of 2026. Here is a reminder of the locations and dates: