Key points:
- As a first-time General Conference delegate, Amanda Dahnbee Bonnette-Kim went prepared for fights. She didn’t expect to find compassion and cooperation instead.
- “Over and over, I kept hearing ‘this is not what General Conference is usually like,’ but I wonder if it should be,” she writes.
- As the legislative assembly came to a close, she found herself filled with hope and motivation for what is to come next for the denomination.
Photo courtesy of the author.
Commentaries
There are several times in a person’s life when you can look back and pinpoint just when your life changed in crucial ways. For me, it is February 2019.
I had just started my first full-time, real adult job. I had begun to take the first few classes I needed for graduate school, and I felt utterly heartbroken by The United Methodist Church. I have a distinct memory of sitting with my parents around our dining room table as we watched the 2019 General Conference Special Session, where the One Church Plan was defeated and the Traditional Plan was accepted.
I remember sitting there feeling like I had been punched in the stomach. I remember feeling anger, indignation and a deep sorrow within my soul. To me, this vote did not represent The United Methodist Church that I knew and saw in action. It didn’t feel fair and it didn’t feel right.
As I watched, I felt so many negative emotions rising up within me and I felt as if they would all spill out. However, as my eyes were glued to the screen while a young adult spoke at the microphone to talk about their stance on the issue being discussed, what came out of me instead was, “How can I do that? How do I get there?”
I didn’t realize that those words would set me on a path that would change my life for the next five years.
That June, I was elected as the second lay delegate from the New England Conference for the 2020 General Conference delegation team. The prospect of attending General Conference felt both exhilarating and overwhelming to me, but it also felt right.
I could not wait to attend, but the world taught me that patience is important. As the world shut down around me less than a year later, I watched as more and more churches decided to leave The United Methodist Church. Everything felt so discouraging and I began to feel anxious about what General Conference would be like when I was able to finally go.
In 2022, I attended the Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference, and I left once again feeling heartbroken, hurt and angry. I had finally gotten my chance to speak on issues that I felt were important, and I witnessed people being too tired to put in the work that needed to be done. It was discouraging to say the least, and I was told that General Conference would be even more intense and drawn out.
Now back home, a month after General Conference has ended, I sit here and reflect that I think for the first time I knew what John Wesley meant by his heart being “strangely warmed.” After being told for years that General Conference would be intense and hard, and to prepare myself to be hurt and have to fight, everything feels a little anticlimactic but in a good way.
From the very beginning, I was blown away with how there was such a spirit of cooperation and compassion moving through everyone at the General Conference. There were times where tensions got high and times where it was obvious people did not agree, but it was clear that everyone was motivated to do the hard work that needed to be done.
Subscribe to our
e-newsletter
Each day I remember holding my breath as I looked over the consent calendar, wondering if the petitions that would bring forth change would be pulled and debated on. Each day I prayed that if any were, that we would be able to discern our words carefully to minimize harm done to communities that had been targeted so harshly for decades. And each day I was amazed the consent calendar was passed without issue, when the petitions to help make the church more reflective of the church I see in action were accepted with open arms by the majority of the delegates.
As petition after petition was accepted, as I watched decades of harm and exclusion be undone, as I watched new policies that would take accountability for harm perpetrated by The United Methodist Church solidify into rules we are to abide by, I felt my heart strangely warmed.
Over and over, I kept hearing, “this is not what General Conference is usually like,” but I wonder if it should be. If we should accept the changes that are to make the church truly for all people without fanfare. I’m not saying we should not celebrate overcoming hardships and overturning exclusionary/harmful practices, because recognition should be given to those who have fought hard and put in the work to make the church what it is today.
For so long I felt so discouraged by The United Methodist Church, heartbroken by a community that did not fully accept myself and those I loved. But as the conference came to a close, I found myself filled with hope and motivation for what is to come next. Still I feel that spirit of compassion and cooperation deep within me, the sensation of a strangely warmed heart beating within my chest.
When I came home, I remember turning to my fiancé and spilling out the words, “I have to go back, don’t I? I was one of the few female young adult Koreans; they need my voice.”
Because the reality is that while we accomplished the “Three R’s” at this General Conference, a fourth “R” still looms over us. Racism was still prevalent at this General Conference and was seen through many macroaggressions. I knew that was one of the reasons I was there, to use my voice to call it out when I saw it and to hold others accountable.
Racism is not going to be eliminated in my generation — I know that. But I can hope that there is someone out there who watched from their dining room table at all that transpired and with the words, “How can I do that? How do I get there?” on their tongue as the spirit moved through them. I wonder what their next five years will look like.
Bonnette-Kim is administrative assistant at Ottoson Middle School in Arlington, Massachusetts, and a lay member of Carter Memorial United Methodist Church in Needham, Massachusetts. She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
News media contact: Tim Tanton or Joey Butler at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free Daily or Weekly Digests.
