Meet Our Conference Teacher

BY REV. DERREK BELASE

One of the five dreams of our annual conference is the dream of revitalized faith communities and lighthouse churches.

Since 2016, our conference has been asking local churches to focus on discipleship systems and methods of community outreach which helps all of us make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We have also shared many of the See All the People resources, produced by the denomination. In addition, we curate discipleship resources at our website.

In 2018, we devoted an entire day of our conference session

focused on this goal. Rev. Junius Dotson, then General Secretary of Discipleship Ministries, was our keynote speaker and there were workshops based on church size as well as topics of interest.

This year, we will host Rev. Jeff Campbell, Chief Executive Officer and General Secretary of Discipleship Ministries, as our conference teacher, who will focus his teaching on “See All the People: 2.0.”

The new iteration of this movement includes a wave of resourcing supporting the laity of our churches. Rev. Campbell will be sharing short stories of disciples living out their faith in various workplaces; each sharing how they understand discipleship and God’s call on their lives in their everyday work.

In addition, he will help us think about how our role as a leader in the church can be lived out by seeing ALL the people. In every church and ministry area, we must

how our individual contributions connect to disciple making.

Campbell comes to this role having led Discipleship Ministries as the Associate General Secretary for Strategic Programming where he was instrumental in the creation of resources supporting the See All the People initiative which invites leaders to stop trying to fix their church and start seeing the people that God calls us to reach.

Rev. Campbell joined Discipleship Ministries in 2013 as Executive Director of Conference Relationships and before that, he served local churches as a senior pastor. He has a BA in English,

Linguistics, and Speech form the University of Mary Washington, and his Master of Divinity from Drew Theology School, where he was awarded the Alton Raynor Prize for Town & Country Ministry.

Rev. Campbell is a servant leader, speaker, teacher, and ordained elder of the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference. Campbell teaches Intentional Discipleship Systems and Community Engagement in seminaries, annual conferences, districts, and local churches, challenging United Methodist leaders to make the mission of making disciples and transforming

communities the center of all that we do.

He and his family participate in the life and ministries of Glendale United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN.

Discipleship Ministries will also have a booth filled with resources in our display area on the second floor of the Freede Center.