{"id":19081,"date":"2022-07-13T18:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T18:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/?p=19081"},"modified":"2022-07-13T23:25:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T23:25:00","slug":"chris-douglas-and-james-beckwith-honored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/2022\/chris-douglas-and-james-beckwith-honored\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Douglas and James Beckwith are honored for their years of service"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Annual Conference celebrated the service of Chris Douglas, who retired as Conference director last year, and James Beckwith, who is completing 10 years as Conference secretary, with presentations during the Tuesday afternoon business session. A reception followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also noted for their years of service to the Conference were Sandy Kinsey, who is completing 10 years as assistant to the Conference secretary, and head teller Joyce Person, who has held that volunteer position for some 30-plus years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Beckwith and Douglas received a variety of gifts, including presentations from the Association for the Arts in the Church of the Brethren: a quilted wall hanging for Douglas, and a set of hand-crafted bowl cozies for Beckwith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to Beckwith, presenter Donna Ritchie Martin noted that he could use the bowl cozies to hold cold bowls of ice cream, getting chuckles from delegates familiar with the Conference tradition of ice cream socials. \u201cYou have held us together through process and polity,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have held us together as the church and we are grateful!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beckwith responded by telling of his feelings when he first looked out over the delegate body from the head table. \u201cLord, these are my people,\u201d he remembered thinking. \u201cI look at you today and that\u2019s in my heart\u2026but my prayer was, \u2018This is not my church, but your church, Lord.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Outgoing Conference secretary James Beckwith (at center right) is greeted by Fred Swartz (at center left), a former longterm Conference secretary. Photo by Glenn Riegel<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Chris Douglas (left), who last year retired as Annual Conference director, receives a quilted wallhanging from the Association for the Arts in the Church of the Brethren. Photo by Glenn Riegel<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Chris Douglas greets a young Conferencegoer during a reception following the business session on Tuesday, July 12. Photo by Glenn Riegel<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Annual Conference celebrated the service of Chris Douglas, who retired as Conference director last year, and James Beckwith, who is completing 10 years as Conference secretary, with presentations during the Tuesday afternoon business session. A reception followed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1703],"tags":[2470,1258,1590,664,1033,3,2468,2464,1482,2471,2469],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-19081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-of-the-brethren-newsline","tag-aacb","tag-annual-conference","tag-annual-conference-2022","tag-association-for-the-arts-in-the-church-of-the-brethren","tag-chris-douglas","tag-church-of-the-brethren","tag-conference-director","tag-conference-secretary","tag-james-beckwith","tag-quilts","tag-retirement-celebration"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19086,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19081\/revisions\/19086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19081"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=19081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}