With General Conference set to start in weeks, delegates around the globe are raising alarms that they lack details about the long-delayed legislative assembly.
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General Conference organizers told United Methodist News that they plan to communicate many of those details by the end of this week and in early March.
In the meantime, delegates have plenty of concerns about the planning of The United Methodist Church’s big meeting, scheduled for April 23-May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Delegates from the U.S. express concern that they have yet to receive any information about their travel or hotel arrangements.
Some delegates outside the U.S. say they have not yet received an invitation letter — the crucial first step to obtaining a visa to travel to General Conference.
Delegates in various countries also report they still do not have full access to the proposed legislation that they will vote on at General Conference.
Both the logistical information and legislation are usually available to delegates months before the big event. Typically, U.S. delegates have their travel and hotel arrangements in hand by the beginning of the year of General Conference.
Many of the concerns that delegates express come down to a lack of communication. Delegates say they haven’t been told why things are behind.
The Rev. Gary Graves, the secretary of General Conference who oversees the event’s planning, told United Methodist News that delegates can expect to see many of their concerns resolved very soon.
He said annual conference secretaries and chairs of delegations in the U.S. should receive a packet of information by Feb. 16. That packet will include a housing verification form, instructions for requesting medical or dietary information and confirmation of delegate information.
Graves said the packet also will include a request that the chairs of delegations submit the list of any petitions — the General Conference equivalent of bills —submitted by individuals who have since left the denomination. Church law requires that petitions come only from individual United Methodists or United Methodist organizations.
He said updates are coming to delegates in the central conferences — church regions in Africa, Europe and the Philippines — through the process of passport verification and the issuance of invitation letters.
So far, Graves said his office has issued 320 of the 370 invitation letters needed for delegates to obtain visas. Of those remaining, he said:
21 are prepared and will be issued once delegates submit required passport information.
25 are for reserve delegates who are awaiting verification that they need to be seated for delegates who cannot attend.
Two will be issued upon confirmation of the status of their annual conference.
Two will not be issued because the Malawi Provisional Annual Conference did not hold delegate elections.
He said the General Conference office will assign housing based on the housing verification forms and release that information before March 15. He also said delegates should begin to hear about flight arrangements by March 1. General Conference organizers have contracted with the travel agency CTE to make the flight arrangements.
This General Conference, both the Advance Daily Christian Advocate, which contains proposed legislation, and the Daily Christian Advocate, which contains the meeting’s daily proceedings, will be online only.
Delegates with identification numbers already can access the Daily Christian Advocate website.
Graves said other delegate IDs will be issued once delegate changes are confirmed. In the meantime, he said, delegates can download PDF versions of the Advance Daily Christian Advocate.
The PDF versions remain a work in progress. The delegate handbook — which contains the agenda, the delegate lists and map of facilities — has not been updated since 2020, when General Conference was originally scheduled to be in Minneapolis. Likewise, the PDF version of legislation submitted since General Conference’s postponement is currently only available in English and is subject to final editing.
Brian Sigmon, the Daily Christian Advocate editor, said the goal is to have the full PDFs available including in the other official General Conference languages of French, Portuguese and Kiswahili by the first week of March.
In the past, delegations made their own reservations in the room blocks that General Conference staff had reserved. This time, the General Conference office is coordinating all housing together.
The slower timeline has caught many delegates off-guard and caused other complications.
Not every delegation reports struggling to get what they need to attend. In fact, some report being well on their way to getting necessary visas.
Visa access is a challenge at every General Conference. Thirty-one delegates were absent from the 2019 special General Conference — including the entire East Angola delegation — because they could not get visas in time.
Graves said he and other General Conference leaders are open to answering questions and receiving constructive suggestions.
excerpt from a story by Heather Hahn, assistant news editor, UM News
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