For me it's about the potential. The world-wide networked connection of the UMC is an amazing resource for changing the world. The huge web of relationships with people and schools and para-church agencies and missions that make up the UMC family is too valuable a resource to let go fallow. The friendships we make with United Methodists throughout the world, especially our folks on the ground in Africa, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe are a source of profound inspiration and great pride. I know that our denomination is shrinking in the US, but I am determined to be in the right place and the right time to leverage our current institutional crisis into a opportunity to re-invest the United Methodist Church into an even more world-changing movement of Christ's love.