General Conference updates

Intro

Overview

Overview of Methodist Polity

San Jose, Costa Rica

Limited scope. So petitions could only be submitted on some open paragraphs.

Friday-Thursday. 7 full days of work.

We met Friday for worship in the morning, then plenary to vote for some important things like adopting the transitional book as a starting place, voting on the current bishops Jones and Webb.

Then we break into legislative committees:

Episcopacy

Ministry in the local church

Constitution

Conferences

Judicial

In these committees you work with submitted petitions to perfect petitions or reject them and then bring them to the plenary.

Bishops

2 tasks that were at hand:

Bishops now

Bishops down the road

what is the role of bishops

Interim Bishops

A lot of debate here for a few reasons:

Nigeria

Slate approved

Bishops in 2026 and beyond:

a democratic process would create episcopal areas each six years so that General Conference can elect bishops directly to them. In doing so, General Conference delegates will benefit from prior vetting, interviewing, and ranking work done by each area committee on episcopacy. (The previous version tasked the General Committee on Episcopacy with the creation of the episcopal areas.)

Episcopal areas, groupings of 6-8 annual conferences, need not be geographically contiguous and may be international in composition. These are nothing like jurisdictions or regions (I hear that any reference to even the possibility of regions is being eliminated from the Constitution). An area committee on episcopacy is the only area-specific structure and bishops will be elected, of course, by the General Conference. The composition of the episcopal areas will be revisited every six years and modified as best serves the mission.

Other things decided:

Constitution

Approved seminaries and programs

Mission statement

Mission statement:

The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.

Sermon.