The highlight of morning worship in Charlotte was the Episcopal Address offered by Bishop L. Jonathan Holston of the South Carolina Episcopacy. He concluded his sermon by repeating, “Let’s go and be the people, who God is calling us to be!” An additional story about his address may be found here.
Arkansas Area Bishop Laura Merill presided over the morning plenary session of General Conference.
During this plenary, the body heard the daily monitoring report and the nominations report. The report on the revised Social Principles was postponed because it was not available to be distributed in all of the languages*. It will be shared tomorrow.
*The General Conference has four official languages: English, French (Parisian), Portuguese, and Kiswani. All publications are provided to delegates in these languages. There are currently ten different languages being interpreted verbally.
During the second morning plenary, the Young Adult address was offered by two different young people: Alejandra Salemi (Florida Conference) and Senesi T.A. Rogers (Sierra Leone Conference).
Salemi shared an impactful address challenging everyone to remember that the “children are watching.” She shared that Young United Methodists are resilient people who are encouraged to explore calling but are also seeing the secret meetings to conspire, the yelling, the arguing, and the crumble (of the church).
“However the cards fall, we will figure out a way forward. There is so much worth in humanity. We can still turn this ship around and broker peace… There is still time,” she concluded.
Rogers shared a story about his local church in Sierra Leone. Almost always their council meetings are very corporate, but not lacking colorful conversation. At this particular council meeting the matter of a coffin trolley was on the agenda. The casket trolley reminded everyone who saw it as a symbol of death as it had to remain in the front of the church at all times because it wouldn’t fold up and fit into a closet. He said that this vote to replace that eyesore of a trolley was the fastest unanimous vote he had ever witnessed.
He compared this vote and fear of this trolley to “a fear of death… that make us slaves to the ways of this world and make us forget the gifts that God gives us.”
Following the Young People’s address, presiding Bishop Carlo Rapanut of the Pheonix Episcopal Area offered an open apology as a response, “If you are a young person watching,.. we ask for your forgiveness. Forgive us for setting you aside or tokenizing you. We commit, I commit, to doing things better.”
Bishop Thomas Bickerton (outgoing chair of the Council of Bishops), Bishop Tracy Smith Malone (incoming chair of the Council of Bishops), Bishop Mande Muyombo (Secretary of the Council of Bishops), and Judi Kinniston (Connectional Ministries Officer) gave a report on the financial state of the church and directed the report to the people in the local churches. There will be a short-term plan and a long-term strategy for all regions, to intentionally move from reaction to revitalization.
Bishop Tracy Smith Malone shared, “Each of us must embrace the power of the Holy Spirit as we decide what is God’s will for the church we love.”
Moses Kumar, the General Secretary and Treasurer of the General Council on Finance and Administration offered a report that included the following data post-disaffiliation:
- 21,581 US churches
- 9,714 Central Conference churches
- 31,295 United Methodist Churches, worldwide
The proposed budget amount is $353 million with a 42% reduction overall.
In the report, Kumar proposed that we should all consider ministry partnerships, asking how we can do ministry differently, and doing more with less.
The full budget proposal and report may be found here.
The afternoon was spent with delegates and Bishops in legislative committee meetings. Officer elections were held and results will be announced tomorrow.