About the Kenastons

Judi blogs under “OneMoreStepUp.” Connor blogs under “Stretch Out Your Hand.” Diane blogs under “La Peregrina.” Joe blogs under one of the other usernames, but we’ll always cite his name at the top. Rachel and Adam avoid blogging at all costs.

Everything below was written for GC’12… For a 2016 update see here. 

Welcome!  We are your typical United Methodist family:
Our great-great-great-grandfather was a circuit rider.
Our great-great- and great-grandfathers also chose the itinerant life (and our female ancestors were along for the [circuit] ride!).
The grandparents are all lifelong United Methodists, lay leaders and church musicians.  Judi (“Mom”) and Joe (“Dad”) met at a United Methodist youth camp and started dating after going to lots of district meetings.  We love connectionalism!
Joe went into ordained ministry, serving in Manchester, England, before returning to West Virginia, where he now serves Lewisburg UMC in Lewisburg, WV (website and facebook).
Judi chose lay ministry, which has ranged from directing children’s choirs to editing the Conference Journal as the first lay conference secretary (an administrative position) in the West Virginia Annual Conference.

The global hands of Rachel’s ever-patient boyfriend…
Notice how the U.S. is NOT the center of the world!

Diane, Rachel, and Connor have all “served time” as Conference Council on Youth Ministries (CCYM) chairpersons and have found their own vocations in the church, from patiently painting and photographing a map of the world on her boyfriend’s hands (Rachel, all in the name of designing the Journal cover!) to participating in a UMC near his college (Connor) to being commissioned as an elder and answering her own call to ministry (Diane).  Diane is under her first year of appointment at Crossroads and Waverly United Methodist Churches in Waverly, WV (follow us on facebook!).

So, we’re Methodist, but why are we at General Conference?
Judi was the only one of us ever elected to General Conference.  (She claims people only elect her because they like her kids, but that doesn’t explain why a) her husband and b) her kids have not been elected!)
Diane is going as a monitor for the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women (GCSRW).  She was selected as a GCSRW board member mere weeks after her college boyfriend broke up with her because he didn’t believe women should be ordained… a passion for women’s rights was the best thing that came from that relationship!  [DISCLAIMER: This blog is not an official GCSRW voice].

Francis Asbury at Old Rehoboth in WV
(photo credit to Dewayne and Ginnie Lowther, photojournalists in the West Virginia Annual Conference and at General Conference—-and all-around terrific people)

Joe is going as a page.  This is a step down from his historical reenactment of Francis Asbury last year, but he’ll probably enjoy Tampa more having lost the overcoat.
Connor will join the family blog as a delegate to the Northeastern Jurisdictional (NEJ) Conference in July.
And while we are staring longingly at Tampa from the air-conditioned fortress of General Conference, Rachel is getting sunburned in New York‘s Central Park.