December Delegation Meeting

Yesterday was our third General / Jurisdictional Conference delegation meeting. I was asked to lead devotions to open the meeting. During the week I gave a lot of thought of what I wanted to share in light of the Diversity Parade in Longview and what it means to be preparing to attend General Conference. The Scriptures at this time of year have several messages from Angels who tell people "don't be afraid." So I read from "The Message" Luke 1:26-38 where Mary is told by Gabriel that she is going to have a child.

Delegates carry some fear about attending these conferences. There are fears about things not going the way we might hope, fears about being prepared for all the work ahead, fears about the potential of broken relationships.

I have some fears about all those things and I pray that God might guide us (me) into this unknown territory.

We were blessed to receive Bishop Jack Tuell who spoke to us about the Judicial Council. He reminded us that the council of Bishops nominate 3 times as many candidates as there are openings every quadrennium. We were also told that the Western Jurisdiction has not had a member on the judicial council in nearly 20 years. There is no provision in the Discipline for regional representation on the Judicial Council.

Speaking of regions . . . one of the intriguing works coming to General Conference is a report regarding the Central (non-United States) Conferences. The United Methodist Church is increasingly becoming a world church and the old system is not working.

The United Methodist Church currently has 7 "Central Conferences" Each of these have many Annual Conferences. These Central Conferences in many ways serve like the Jurisdictions within the U.S. Central Conferences elect and assign Bishops, for example. The big issue is paragraph 543.13 that says: "A central conference shall have authority to edit and publish a central conference Discipline, which shall contain in addition to the Constitution of the Church such sections from the general Discipline of the United Methodist Church as may be pertinent to the entire Church and also such revised, adapted, or new sections as shall have been enacted by the central conference concerned under the powers give by the General Conference."

In other words other than the constitution, Central Conferences are free to make changes to the Discipline in order to meet the ministry needs of the region where they do ministry.

Imagine for a moment the possibilities should the US become its own central conference OR the Western Jurisdiction were to become its own central conference. . .

That isn't going to happen in 2008 but there will be discussions about the relationship of the international church with the US church especially as we become more and more numerically equal.

The other big discussion centered on Jurisdictional Conference and the process of supporting a candidate for Bishop. One issue facing us is while we know of one retirement in the Jurisdiction we are unsure if the General Conference will reduce the number of Bishops for each Jurisdiction. IF the General Conference does that, then we will not be electing a Bishop in 2008 for the Western Jurisdiction. However, those are ifs and buts.

It is the intention of Elaine Stanovsky to participate in the process of Episcopal election if there is an opening at this coming Jurisdictional Conference. The Delegation will be asking her questions and entering a process of examination with her and any others that may be discerning a call regarding the episcopacy. By our Annual Conference rules the delegation "may recommend an episcopal candidate for nomination." Nomination's are also allowed to come from the Annual Conference floor. So in addition to preparing for General Conference we will be entering a time of discernment whether we wish to make a nomination.

There were also practical matters to deal with in our meeting. We talked about hotels and committee assignments. The hotel bookings for the General Conference will happen in January, as the second alternate I am likely to have to wait longer to find out about my arrangements.