On the Way to Calgary
Devotions and prayers for the 2026 Leadership Gathering
Bishop Ruben Saenz Jr.
President, Council of Bishops
Sunday, October 18, 2026 · Seventh of seven devotions
Seven bishops from across the connection are offering a devotion and a prayer on each of the seven Sundays leading to the Council of Bishops Leadership Gathering in Calgary, Alberta, October 20 to 24, 2026. You are invited to read, to pray, and to share these with your congregation.
Scripture
“One generation shall extol your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts.”
Psalm 145:4, NRSV
Reflection
Emboldened by the Spirit: Imagining a Church Yet to Be
This verse reminds me of a relay.
Two generations appear in a single line, and neither one is the subject of the sentence. God's mighty acts are. The older generation does not hand over its achievements, its structures, or its preferences. It hands over testimony, the mighty acts of God, and then watches as a younger generation takes that testimony and does something the psalm insists they will do in their own voice: declare.
That is the whole vocation of an ancestor, and it is the reason we are gathering.
Friends, we are not custodians of a church museum. We are stewards of a living witness that was entrusted to us the same way we now must entrust it: imperfectly, hopefully, at some cost. Someone taught us to sing. Someone prayed for us. Someone taught us the faith. Someone chose faithfulness in a season when it was costly, and we are the harvest of seeds we never saw planted. We did not build the church we inherited. We received it.
So, the question before us is not whether we will hand something on. Time will see to that. The question is what we will hand on and how we will hand it on.
What we long to hand on is a church vibrant with the Spirit's life, where belonging is what strengthens and enriches our witness, where a young woman in Harare, a lay leader in Manila, a pastor in Oslo, and a teenager in Texas all recognize the same welcome and the same Lord.
We long to hand on a church that learned to love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously because the Spirit had emboldened it to.
To hand that on requires three things of us, and none of them are comfortable.
We must tell the truth. Ancestors who only tell the flattering parts leave their children unprepared. We name God's faithfulness and our failures, our complicity, our fear. A witness that cannot survive honesty can never be a faithful witness.
We must refuse to hoard. Position, platform, the microphone, the agenda: these are not possessions. Every generation is tempted to hold the church so tightly that the next one cannot get a grip on it. The psalm gives the second generation a verb, declare. We must leave them room to do so.
We must plant what we will not harvest. What comes out of Calgary will be measured in fifty years, not in one quadrennium. We may not see the fruit of our hopes for a United Methodist Church Yet to Be. Ancestors rarely do.
This is why our work is to discern, design, and declare.
To discern what the Spirit is doing among us, rather than what we assume.
To design a church that a receiving generation can carry: light enough to lift, strong enough to bear weight, faithful enough to be recognizably ours.
And then to declare it, out loud, with the boldness of people who believe God is not finished with us.
We are heirs. We are also ancestors in the making. Both will be true in Calgary.
May the Spirit find us honest, generous, and unafraid, and may the generation that receives what we hand over declare God's mighty acts more freely than we ever managed or can imagine.
Prayer
God of every generation, You have been faithful to those who came before us, and you will be faithful to those who come after. We thank you for the ones who told us your story, the ones who sang, who prayed, who stood, who stayed.
Now make us good ancestors. Give us courage to tell the truth about ourselves. Loosen our grip on what was never ours to keep. Teach us to plant what we will not live to harvest.
Holy Spirit, embolden us. By your Spirit, discern for us what we cannot see alone. Enable us to help shape a church where all belong, and where love is bold, service is joyful, and leadership is brave.
And when we hand it on, let our children and their children and their children's children, take it gladly, and declare your mighty acts in their own voice. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Read the whole series: On the Way to Calgary.