Bishop’s Award Presented to Ruth Walton
Here is the full text of the presentation of the Bishop’s Award to Ruth Walton. The award was presented at Annual Conference during the laity/clergy banquet and was a surprise to Ruth.
This recipient has lived her life in accordance with her belief that if you are serious about your faith, your faith is reflected in how you live your life. She has had a lifelong commitment to work tirelessly for social justice. She has also given distinguished service in the area of Christian Education, was a pioneer church business administrator and is a retired diaconal minister. Her service to local churches and our annual conference stretches over a half century. It continues today. In the 1960’s she was a church education leader at Morningside UMC, here in Salem. She facilitated excellence in educational ministries for children, youth and adults at Morningside. She always tried to have the most up to date teaching materials that taught inclusiveness through picture and word. In 1964, she changed the children’s curriculum to reflect the values of openness and inclusiveness. She then led training in the new curriculum for churches across the Western District. In the 1970’s she was elected lay member to Annual Conference from Morningside and was consecrated as a Diaconal Minister in 1977. She was the first Church Business Administrator to be certified in the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference and was a workshop leader throughout the conference on good church business practices, particularly in the development of written policies. At this same time she was a member of the Conference Board of Discipleship – Division of Education. She was a frequent workshop leader in Christian Education and she and Laura Lee Luce traveled throughout the annual conference resourcing congregations. Laura Lee drove and she navigated and the story is that she only got them lost one time in all of their travels. In the early 1980’s she served on the Conference Board of Church and Society – Division of Social Concerns. This is where the current Western District Assistant to the Bishop first met her and was inspired, as a young pastor, by her depth and breadth of knowledge about the world and active concern for those on the margins.In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s she served as the Vice Chair of the Conference Council on Ministries, with the Bishop as the chair. She was responsible for the smooth and productive functioning of the Council. She has been a longtime member of the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action, with many of those years spent on the executive committee. She received the chapter’s award for outstanding service.
Now a member of Salem First United Methodist Church, she serves on the Social Concerns Ministry Group. She wrote the SCMG pamphlet to describe its work and also wrote a short history of the church’s engagement with the issue of becoming a reconciling congregation, though this was never achieved. She is the secretary of the Social Concerns Ministry Group and has been for ten years. She also served for six years as program chair of the church’s Forum Class which focuses on issues of social justice. She has been one of the church’s most committed members in promoting the social principles of the United Methodist Church, in terms of both education and action, second only to the legendary Dorothy Patch. She and Laura Lee Luce usually tried to sit together during AC sessions.They remarked on more than one occasion that when they were retired they would continue to attend conference sessions, asking for a seat in the back and would eat bonbons. Though she has been retired for many years from her “active” life as a diaconal minister, her dear friend Ann Bateman reports “I have yet to see her eat a bonbon at Annual Conference.” The words that the Rev. Lynn Rabenstein uses to describe her are “integrity, inner strength, compassion and loyalty.” Yes indeed. For extraordinary service to the local church and the annual conference, Ruth Walton…
