Annual Conference Guest Preachers Announced

The Western NC Conference is excited to welcome this year's Annual Conference guest preachers, Rev. Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric and Rev. Dawn M. Hand.

On Friday morning, Annual Conference will open in worship with Rev. Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric preaching. Dr. Colón-Emeric is dean of Duke Divinity School, Irene and William McCutchen Associate Professor of Reconciliation and Theology, and director of the Center for Reconciliation. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Colón-Emeric was the first Latino to be ordained as an elder in the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church and was founding pastor of Cristo Vive UMC in Durham, N.C. He became founding director of the Hispanic House of Studies at Duke Divinity School in 2007 and joined the Divinity School faculty in 2008. Since 2010, he has served as the director of Central American Methodist Course of Study, which trains Methodist pastors who have not earned a formal master of divinity degree in such places as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. He is also director of the Duke-Peru Theological Initiative, a partnership between the Methodist Church of Peru and Duke Divinity School.

On Saturday, Rev. Dawn M. Hand will lead this year's Celebration of Life worship service. Rev. Hand is the Central Maryland District Superintendenet for the Baltimore-Washington Conference and Western NC Conference clergy. Rev. Hand has been active in the church her whole life and was serving as a communicator in the Western North Carolina Annual Conference when she experienced a call to ordained ministry. She was named the denomination’s Communicator of the Year in 2004 by the United Methodist Association of Communicators. Rev. Hand began serving the Central Maryland District in July 2021.