Bishop Lanette Plambeck gives the Episcopal Address to Annual Conference. Photos by jlynn Studios.

"God has equipped us, the people of The United Methodist Church, to mind the gap." That’s what Bishop Lanette Plambeck told members of the 31st Session of the Dakotas Annual Conference during her Episcopal Address on Thursday morning.

 
Drawing from Isaiah 43:1, she started by reminding those gathered that we need not fear. We have been redeemed. We belong to God. “Our faith teaches us that the Spirit is not only with us on our very best days but the Spirit of God is with us on our toughest days,” she said.

Bishop Lanette asked people to reflect on the past five years and asked them to specifically think back to 2019: General Conference. A time when division, polarity, and divisiveness were part of the story of the people called United Methodists.

At that time, Bishop Lanette took a trip to Scotland seeking renewal, rest, and redemption—and as she was stepping onto a bus, the driver instructed her to “mind the gap” between the platform and the vehicle. In that moment, God gave her a dream to mind the gap between the brokenness around us and the world we are called to help bring about.

“I believe God has uniquely positioned the United Methodists across the Dakotas to be trailblazers as we mind the gaps of society,” she said.

She invited representatives from each district to bring forth samples of dirt form the land where they live. “We are all children of the earth. Caretakers of the land,” said Bishop Lanette.

God is calling us to be connected in love even though we all are shaped by different dirt. Bishop Lanette said. “God's invitation to each of us, lay and clergy, is to make disciples, no matter what dirt is part of our past or present.”

She pointed out that last year, the U.S. surgeon general declared loneliness a public health epidemic. Millennials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha are feeling the pain of loneliness, isolation, and depression in excruciating ways. In interviews, those generations consistently say they are longing for connection.
 
“I believe God has equipped us, the church, to mind the gap,” Bishop Lanette said. “We need to figure out how to tell the Jesus story to reach new people and new places—not only for their sake but for the sake of the gospel and the world. We will mind the gap of justice and reconciliation work…we will mind the gap of the least of these so that people will have their basic human needs met.”

Toward the end of her address, she asked those gathered to take out a piece of paper and divide it into quadrants. In one, she invited them to list their dreams for the laity in our conference; on another, to list their dreams for Dakotas’ clergy. The third quadrant was for dreams for the Dakotas Conference, and the fourth quadrant was for ideas of how we can witness to the world. District superintendents gathered the slips of paper for the bishop and her leadership teams to review.

“You and I, laity and clergy all across the Dakotas Conference, can be engaged in the work of closing the gap, minding the gap, that separates the kingdom of heaven from what we are experiencing here on earth,” Bishop Lanette said in the final moments of her address. “Hallelujah. Amen.”