First for bishop
The Rev. Jimmy Nunn discusses his first annual meeting as bishop of the Oklahoma United Methodist Conference.
The leader of Oklahoma Methodists recently touted several new church plants, a well-attended delegate dialogue event and stabilizing church attendance figures as signs that the state’s Methodists are on the right track.
The Rev. Jimmy Nunn, bishop of the Oklahoma United Methodist Conference since August 2016, presided over the conference’s annual meeting May 29-June 1 at Oklahoma City University and St. Luke’s United Methodist Church.
Nunn said he ordained several people into the Methodist ministry and made numerous new appointments, including the appointment of the Rev. Matthew Mitchell, of Georgia, to the vacant post of senior pastor at United Methodist Church of the Servant. The church at 14343 N MacArthur is one of the state’s largest and most prominent churches.
Nunn said thus far, he has found that “there are really good, strong people” in the Oklahoma Methodist conference.
He said he found those attributes rose to the surface when a new dialogue event was held during the annual meeting as part of the conference’s “Praying Our Way Forward” initiative.
Nunn said people gathered in small groups one evening and were asked to discuss questions provided by the conference. The questions were designed to foster discussion about ways that Methodists may talk together about different issues, including potentially divisive topics.
The bishop said feedback from the event was overwhelmingly positive. There was a potential to have about 1,000 delegates there. The final count was closer to between 800 and 900 people, which Nunn considered more than enough to accomplish the project’s goal.
“We had time for people to talk in self-selected groups of four or five people. It was kind of an experiment,” he said. “It helps for people to be able to talk to each other about their fears, their hopes and their frustrations.”
Nunn said he was also heartened by a special luncheon gathering of about 40 youths, who asked him good questions after he gave a short presentation.
The Methodist leader said he was thrilled that delegates passed a resolution designating the First United Methodist Church of Oklahoma City building as a United Methodist historical site. He said the downtown church at 131 NW 4 has been in ministry
there for 127 years.
Getting down to details
The bishop said the annual meeting provided an opportunity for United Methodists to discuss several issues of importance, including church plants, attendance and mission efforts.
Nunn said attendance for the United Methodist denomination declined nationally last year but in Oklahoma, the rate of decline decreased. He said this is an indication that attendance at Methodist churches across the state is stabilizing.
He said worship attendance for 2016 was 48,493, compared with 49,013 in 2015, showing a decline of 520. In 2015, attendance declined by 1,666, from 50,679 in 2014.
“Of course, one year does not a trend make, but that’s encouraging,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said other positive signs of progress are growing mission efforts and a bevy of new church plants.
Nunn said in 2016, there were 55,533 Methodists involved in mission efforts, compared with 15,495 in 2012. He said this is indicative of the denomination’s commitment to serving the community.
Nunn also touted two major strategies that have become fruitful.
He said the Oklahoma Methodist conference has designed to work on increasing the health of existing churches while at the same time encouraging churches that are already healthy to plant new churches.
Nunn said some notable metro-area examples of the latter strategy include St. Luke’s opening its new Edmond satellite in October 2016, and Acts II in Edmond launching two new church plants. He said one of the Acts II church plants, Connect United Methodist, moved into its new building in November 2016.
Nunn said along those line, two houses churches were initially launched in Ardmore last year and their number has now increased to six. Also, First United Methodist Church of Claremore also launched two new satellites.