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BY ERIK ALSGAARD AND LINDA WORTHINGTON
UMCONNECTION STAFF

?The large church needs to remind us of the power in the Holy Spirit ? that will change our church, community, laity and families,? said the Rev. Vance Ross as he addressed more than 300 pastors and their staffs at the national Large Membership Church Initiative meeting in Washington April 18-21.
Ross, a clergy member of the Baltimore-Washington Conference, serves as associate general secretary of discipleship ministries at the General Board of Discipleship in Nashville. He spoke at a plenary April 19.
?Prophetic ministry is not just ministry of what will happen, but what ought to happen,? he said.
As he jumped from the stage and walked down the aisle into the audience, he asked, ?If you really believe in the power, what commitment do you have??
Citing now familiar statistics about the decline in The United Methodist Church - 43 percent of UM churches did not take in one person by confession of faith in 2004 - he invited the audience to come forward ?if you are committed to making a change in your congregation.?
Sixty or more responded in the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel.
Bishop John R. Schol and several conference pastors held prominent positions of teaching and preaching during the conference. Participants spent much of their time in workshops and at worship services at Asbury, Metropolitan Memorial and Foundry UMCs, three of the 11 churches in the conference that fall in the ?large church? category: churches with 500 or more in worship.
Bishop Schol led in Bible study April 19.
?All conferences, through the leadership of the Council of Bishops, are working toward ?making disciples for the transformation of the world,?? he said. ?The Discipleship Adventure, focusing on creating and sustaining Acts 2 churches, is our path forward.?
The bishop noted that the birth of the church was a large church movement, citing Acts 2:41 (?That day about three thousand persons were added?). The bishop added that it?s not about largeness or smallness, but rather, ?what God is doing today through our churches in people?s lives and the world.?
Taking the text deeper, the bishop said that spiritual leaders, both clergy and lay, have gbwc_superuserelines clearly set in the Acts 2 text:
? Set a vision.
? Give honor to where the church is today and where it has been.
? Disrupt around the vision. No change or transformation takes place without disruption. ?Jesus was good at asking disruption questions,? he said. Invite people to think on a different path.
? Align around the vision. At Pentecost, the disciples and crowd spoke in many tongues, but through Peter?s preaching and the Holy Spirit, they were aligned in their under-standing, the bishop said.
He explained the elements of the Discipleship Adventure - celebrate, connect, develop, serve and share faith. ?One of the reasons churches don?t grow is because they don?t do all five of the pieces of the Discipleship Adventure well,? the bishop said. ?In baseball you pitch, hit, run, catch and throw. ? Any team that doesn?t do all five well won?t win.?
The five steps also reflect the deep hunger inside people, the bishop added. People have a desire for something greater than they are; they want relationships; they want to understand life; they desire a purpose or calling in life; and they want to share their faith. ?If you miss any one, you will be missing something,? he said.
?If The United Methodist Church is going to move forward, it must become an Acts 2 church,? he concluded. ?Large membership churches can set the pace.?
Bishop Schol introduced four conference pastors whose churches were evidence of Acts 2 fruits.  One of those was the Rev. Donna Claycomb, pastor of Mt. Vernon Place UMC in Washington, D.C. The church is located across the street from the new Convention Center. To say the least, the neighborhood is changing.
 ?We?re a dying church,? she said. ?How do you turn this church around to serve the 4,000 new condos being built??
Claycomb explained a massive new development plan for the property, the demolition in August of much of the present education and office wing, moving the congregation temporarily ?up the street,? and the construction of a 12-story building on the site, one that will have program space for the church, house a partnership with nearby Asbury UMC and contain a new urban ministry branch program and housing for 18 students of Wesley Theological Seminary.
 ?How is it we extend hospitality that is radical to the rich - whatever their status - to all people?? she asked as she focused on the people who will be moving into the neighborhood. ?We?re making plans for a magnificent building but one where God has life abundant and resurrection.?
In the opening worship service April 18, held at Asbury UMC, the Rev. Lovett Weems, Director of the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary, challenged large church pastors and the entire denomination, to move from faithfulness to fruitfulness.
?How many times have you heard in your ministry, ?We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful??? he said. ?The problem is, we?ve taken faithfulness from being something dynamic and full of movement and made it a static word.?
Faithfulness, Weems said, is a state of doing and being, rather than just being.
?Faithfulness is always directional,? he said, ?It is faith in motion. If we are not clear about where we are going, not only will we not know when we?re there, we?ll miss it, too.?
After explaining how ?so that? phraseology helps move churches forward, Weems urged congregations to ?never quit planning for fruits.?
Unfortunately, he said, many people or churches quit planning for fruits when they realize they cannot control the outcomes.
?We can trust in God as the catalyst for fruits,? he said. ?The fruit doesn?t always come how and when we expect it.?
During the gathering, afternoon tours of United Methodist sites in Baltimore, visits to Capitol Hill and the Board of Church and Society were offered.