Baked Goods and Good ideas Baking

I see evidence of this year's General Conference theme already (in day two) in some of the worships/speeches that I've heard or read notes on so far. (I would like to note, in light of the current political race our outgoing president of the Bishop's council is a woman and our in coming is an African American man, hmm, they co-led the opening worship) Today's comments, "four areas of focus area are: 1) Engaging in ministry with the poor; 2) creating new places for new people and renewing existing congregations; 3) stamping out diseases of poverty by improving health globally; and 4) developing principled Christian leaders for the church and the world." embody Hope with goals that are measurable. I find hope in articulating goals that are attainable and evaluable, especially when there is a need for healing and unification. Some reports and commentary mark our church to be in a stale-mate on many issues and regardless of how many hold that view, being able to point to progress somewhere is at least healing to me. In my recent complaining on the lack of accountability in the clergy system, I'm thankful for dialogue on new models for effective ministry, this gives me hope. I'm worried when back to back headlines read, General Conference to include emphasis on Health and Cookie Bakers fire up ovens for General Conference no one caught the disconnect in that? But would we be Methodists w/o cookies? May be not, but the article says, "100,000 cookies for 1,000 delegates" Maybe this is why we have to have an emphasis on health. Cookies are okay within reason. I'm really not trying be a downer on cookies, I just took a batch of brownies out of the oven myself. But may be we can reflect on some of our bigger problems in attempting to walk off our 100 cookies per person.