General Conference Preview

Friday evening I attended "Get Engaged" A Forum on the 2016 General Conference of The United Methodist Church. It was held at Birmingham First United Methodist Church. The purpose of the forum was to introduce us to what General Conference is and the major issues that will be discussed at GC when it meets May 10-20 in Portland, Oregon.

Frank Driscoll, chair of the Church and Society committee at Birmingham First, served as host. He welcomed us and explained how the evening would work. There would be a chance for Q&A after each block of presenters. Rev. Gary Haller of Birmingham First gave the opening prayer.

Rev. Laurie Haller began by answering the question "What is General Conference, Anyway?" The United Methodist Church has a constitution modeled somewhat on the United States Constitution. The global denomination has an executive branch, a legislative branch, and a judicial branch. The executive branch is the bishops who oversee day-to-day work. The judicial branch is the Judicial Council.

And the legislative branch is General Conference. It meets once every four years to set the budget and goals for the denomination for the next four years. It also updates the Book of Discipline which is the book the defines the denomination.

This year there will be 864 delegates representing 12.3 million UMC members around the world. 504 of the delegates, 58.3%, will be from the United States, 260 of the delegates, 30.1%, will be from Africa, and 50 delegates, 5.8%, from each of Europe and the Philippines. Delegates are awarded based on the membership in each area. There are also representatives from associated denominations in South American and Asia. The cost of putting on General Conference will be $10.5 million.

Delegate Diane Brown from Ypsilanti showed us the books containing the petitions submitted to GC. These petitions come from individuals, local churches, annual conferences, and various denomination agencies. They fall into four broad categories. A petition might request a change to the constitution part of the Book of Discipline. If so, GC must approve it by a 2/3 majority and then it goes to each Annual Conference around the world. A petition might request a change to the discipline – the structure of the denomination and its various boards and agencies. A petition might seek a change in the Book of Resolutions, which is the official church position on issues in the wider world, such as abortion and war. Finally, there are petitions that request a change to non-discpline issues.

During the first week of General Conference the delegates are assigned to one of a dozen committees. The petitions are also assigned to these committees. Each committee decides which petitions are to go before the plenary session and in what manner, such as general consent or individual debate. If the committee doesn't act on a petition it dies.

The second week of GC is the plenary session with all delegates working through all the petitions forwarded by the committees.

There are also daily worship services with preachers and choirs from around the world.

Rev. Carl Gladstone spoke about the Young People's Address. He has worked with two youth, one from Africa and one from Detroit, who will present their vision for the denomination. This will be livestreamed on Saturday, May 14 at 8:45 am (11:45 Detroit time) on the GC website. Rev. Gladstone is still seeking input from other youth. One question the youth propose is wouldn't it be good to have a few bishops who are the same age Jesus was when he conducted his ministry?

Rev. Charles Boayue spoke on "The Challenge and Joy of a Global Church." He said United Methodism has a worldwide direction and vision supplied by GC and a local context. Between the global and local is a tension. The denomination has been seeking resolution of that tension since 1996. An example of that tension is 70% of the global funding at all levels comes from the USA but the USA has only 58% of the vote at GC.

At the moment there is no official "plan" but there are known needs. The global church needs more bishops to guide faith building. It also needs some sort of global Book of Discipline with what is essential to everyone. There is lots of debate about what that should be.

There is also lots of debate over the structure of the church. There is a proposal out of the Northeast Jurisdiction that presents a detailed structure for the church. It is so detailed it is likely to not pass. There is another proposal from Texas to make the USA a central conference. The rest of the global church is organized in central conferences with a few each in Europe, Africa, and the Philippines. Each central conference is able to take the Book of Discipline, the worldwide direction, and adapt it to local context. The USA cannot.

Boayue was asked: What is is a central conference allowed to change in the Book of Discipline? Who can change the categories of what might be changed? The first question wasn't answered. As for the second, GC can, but how it goes about doing so depends on whether the category is part of the constitution or part of the discipline.

Boayue then said if the USA becomes a central conference then all of the language in the Book of Discipline about jurisdictions becomes meaningless. It is replaced by the language for central conferences.

The next forum topic was "The Church and Human Sexuality." Delegate Jackie Euper noted that most of the petitions to GC – and most of the media attention – are about human sexuality. Euper told us about the work of Ashley Boggan who was a PhD student at Drew University and an intern with the Connectional Table. Boggan wrote "Human Sexuality and The United Methodist Church: Timeline 1964-2014.

I downloaded it and skimmed through it. The paper summarizes all events by the denomination, its churches, and its various members having something to do with sexuality. Of course, most of that is about homosexuality. Included are all the actions taken by General Conference over the years. Because it is a PDF it is difficult for me to link to it. However, I easily found it through Google.

Rev. Joy Barrett listed the five contentious areas dealing with sexuality in the Book of Discipline. I think I captured them all. These areas are (1) The phrase "homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." (2) The definition of marriage in the Social Principles. (3) Who can be considered for ordination and appointment. (4) Whether various churches, boards, and agencies are allowed to spend money on homosexuality issues. (5) The list and definition of chargeable offenses. For the incompatibility phrase over 1200 petitions were submitted, seeking some type of change. For the definition of marriage and rules of ordination over 1000 petitions were submitted for each.

Earlier Brown had noted that the books of petitions sometimes listed the text of one petition and include a note saying something like, "and 25 similar petitions."

Barrett then discussed the "third way" brought by the Connectional Table. The Table decided they could not be silent and could not recommend full inclusion. So their proposal is to remove the prohibitions but keep the original language as a historical view. In this way the definition of marriage might be written as: Marriage is a loving commitment of two people. Historically that has meant a man and a woman. This change would mean decisions of ordination would be left to the Annual Conference and decisions of who to marry and be a member would be left to the local congregation. This isn't all we would want, but it is better than what we have now.

Barrett said there are worthwhile videos of all the important issues on the GC website, though I haven't explored them.

Delegate Wayne Bank began the discussion of "Thrive, Not Just Survive: The Future of the United Methodist Church." The goal is to continue and increase the Vital Congregations initiative. He presented numerical goals for various aspects of the Vital Congregation program. He also listed other efforts, such as raising up principled Christian leaders, especially young clergy; a New Places for New People program to invite people into the congregation by doing it outside the church building; a renewed ministry with the poor; and Abundant Health for All, which might mean partnering with community health organizations.

Rev. Melanie Carey continued the discussion of support for local churches. That includes helping the churches that are thriving in creating a church planting strategy. Carey noted that church support is the least newsworthy and yet the most important work that GC does.

An audience member asked that there be a follow-up forum so that these same people could report on what happened at GC. There will be a report to Annual Conference, but not everyone in the room would be going to Annual Conference. Frank Driscoll of Birmingham First promptly offered these facilities for that meeting. The participants liked the idea and a date will be set. If a date is set I'll post it to this blog. I'll try to attend and write a report.

I will be following GC actions and news as much as I can and post what I learn to this blog. The official GC website is here. Some of the Michigan delegates will update blogs describing their time at GC. Those blogs, along with Michigan specific news will have links at the Michigan UMC website and the MichiganUMC Facebook page.