Meet the DLTs: Pastor Bryant Clark

December 9, 2019 / By Pastor Bryant Clark / 2 Comments

My name s Bryant Clark; I am the pastor at Park UMC in Hamilton. Much like my work in the local church, my priority on the Mohawk district leadership team is one of empowerment. I believe very strongly in the idea that all Christians are capable and few of us are fragile. All Christians have something to offer the wider church, not to mention the world beyond it. But too often we erect for ourselves or accept the existing barriers between ourselves and progress – it’s the general conference’s fault, apportionments are too high, no one in my church wants to do anything, we’ve never done it that way before, what if my people get mad. I believe this is all fear talking. And while God calls us to many things, fear and fragility are rarely ranked among them.

So I guess you could say I’m the dreamer of the group. And I don’t sit still very well. Whether or not it is comfortable for them, I believe so very much in the folk in my district, lay and clergy, ordained and licensed. And as a result, I seek to empower them to do great and different work. Cultivating pastor area connection groups to bind together groups of active clergy, empowering local churches to create discipleship plans and go about church differently, addressing fallout from GC2019 and helping folk make sense of our present Methodist moment, or designing district days where we can learn specific skills and new paradigms – these tasks all come back to the value of empowerment for me. For God who began a good work will be faithful to complete it, and we have a role in that too.