At the Outset

NOTE: I am blogging more frequently during the 2024 General Conference, as I did in 2019. These are only my reflections, and in no way are they comprehensive. To keep up with happenings of the UMC General Conference, I invite you to stay connected HERE.

General Conference is hard. That is a reality we have faced throughout the decades … since almost the beginning of this new unified body known as the United Methodist Church. It has been hard because we have sought to be a global body where diversity is embraced even when that diversity means that we believe very different things … about human sexuality … about how to respond to injustice … about how we are organized to best suit a rapidly changing world.

In the midst of our struggles, there has been much pain … especially for our LGBTQ+ siblings and their allies. One of my colleagues describes how, through years of advocacy and attending multiple General Conference, it has felt like a physical kick in the gut each time the General Conference has moved from a statement of incompatibility to charges that can be brought against clergy and churches for officiating or allowing same-gender weddings. As the western culture has advanced in its understanding of human sexuality, the denomination has attempted to bring charges against LGBTQ+ persons who dared to believe they could be ordained as clergy or be consecrated as bishops.

At the same time, we have struggled with colonial attitudes towards our neighbors whose stances on these very same issues are much more conservative. In the struggle between those on both sides of the human sexuality debate in the US, both sides have often attempted to leverage African and Filipino voices and votes to help move the needle in the US, often with adverse consequences for our global communion.

Key to understanding our challenges is the fact that we are still organized as if we are a US-centric church, when our center is clearly shifting away from our county. In 1968, 92.5% of the voting delegates at the Uniting Conference held in Dallas were from the US, and until the 1980’s there would be no formal translation for non-English speaking conference delegates. Today the US has only a slim majority of votes in the General Conference with an explosion of growth specifically on the African continent.

United Methodists outside of the US belong to conferences situated in what are known as Central Conferences, which have the capability of modifying (within certain parameters) the mandates of the Book of Discipline to work within their cultural context. They can do this by vote of the Central Conference without influence by US (or other Central) conferences.

The same, however, is not true for churches or conferences in the US. We are governed by the Book of Discipline as it is written without the capability of modifying it for our own cultural context. So the whole General Conference decides how the US churches will function, so our non-US delegates do get to decide how we will function within the US while the same is not true of their own Central Conferences.

You see the problem here.

So perhaps the biggest item to be considered at this year’s General Conference is something called “regionalization.” Regionalization would create the US as a region and would then designate all Central Conferences as their own region. Each region would then have the opportunity to determine such things as standards for marriage and ordination based on cultural context. This would move us a step further beyond colonial attitudes and let those of us in the US be a more relevant church in our own context.

This legislation, however, is a huge step. Because this will be an amendment to the UMC Constitution, it requires both a 2/3rd vote by the General Conference AND a 2/3rd aggregate ratification by all of the annual conferences globally. Should this happen, this would signal a new day for the UMC.

So at the outset of the General Conference, we find ourselves again at the place of hope. Perhaps this will be the day that we will become the church that God would have us be. Perhaps we will be able to move beyond discussions around human sexuality then to face the mandate of Christ to transform the world into the realm of God we are created to be. Perhaps we will begin to address the myriad of other issues that plague human society.

My prayer on this eve of the convening of this General Conference is that God will be made known in the work of those elected to serve us.