After a four-year delay, the next General Conference is rapidly approaching in just over four months.
With time of the essence, the commission that plans The United Methodist Church’s top lawmaking assembly met Dec. 12-15 in Charlotte, North Carolina, to iron out some final details.
The coming General Conference is now set to take place April 23-May 3 in that city’s convention center — bringing together United Methodists from four continents who will make decisions that will shape the global denomination for years to come.
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During their December meeting, commission members also heard updates on efforts to ensure General Conference delegates from outside the United States receive the required visas to attend. Long waits for visas — exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — were a major reason for General Conference’s continued postponement.
A separation of sorts already has taken place. The 2024 General Conference comes as the denomination is grappling with the withdrawal of more than 7,600 U.S. congregations from The United Methodist Church.
Those departures represent about a quarter of U.S. churches leaving the denomination under a disaffiliation policy passed by the 2019 special General Conference. The bulk of those departures took place this year before the disaffiliation policy officially ends on Dec. 31.
The lawmaking assembly faces many proposals dealing with topics as varied as the denomination-wide budget, social teachings, ecumenical relations and international structure.
All told, General Conference has received 1,100 properly submitted petitions — basically the United Methodist equivalent of bills before a legislature. And just like a bill on Capitol Hill, the first stop for a General Conference petition is in one of the gathering’s legislative committees. In 2024, General Conference will have 14 legislative committees.
“We really, as a commission, cannot set priority on legislation. That’s not what we’re called to do,” Kim Simpson, the chair of the Commission on the General Conference, said during the December meeting. “We are called to make sure that the facilities, the (language) interpretation, the hospitality — everything — is ready so that delegates can do their best work.”
Here is a look at some of what the commission did at its recent meeting:
Part of helping delegates do their work includes dealing with some of the implications of the disaffiliations that already have occurred such as how to handle petitions submitted by people who, for whatever reason, are no longer part of The United Methodist Church.
The Judicial Council — The United Methodist Church’s top court — has ruled that annual conferences could hold elections to fill any vacancies in their General Conference delegations if their pool of reserve delegates is empty.
However, the church’s high court has left it up to General Conference to decide how to handle vacancies in delegations to jurisdictional and central conferences, which meet after General Conference takes place.
The commission also received an update on where things stand in ensuring elected General Conference delegates have the required visas to attend.
The commission also spent time discussing how to handle the multiple proposals coming to General Conference that affect the denomination’s global structure.
The commission approved a recommendation that all legislative committees set aside time to discuss regionalization and how it will affect the work of their committee.
The United Methodist Council of Bishops has announced plans to call a five-day special session of General Conference in 2026 — which the Book of Discipline allows bishops to do.
A special session in 2026 would have the same delegates who serve in 2024, unless an annual conference chooses to elect a new slate.
excerpt from a story by Heather Hahn, assistant news editor, UM News..
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