May 11, 2023 | by Heather Hahn
The Council of Bishops is recommending that The United Methodist Church hold a five-day session of its top lawmaking assembly in May 2026.
This gathering would be in addition to the regular General Conference sessions already planned for 2024 and 2028.
“This also would be a regular session,” Council of Bishops President Thomas J. Bickerton, who also leads the New York Conference, told UM News.
“But we are asking for it to be framed a different way to enable us to make the kind of shifts that the denomination needs to make.”
The denomination’s General Conference draws lay and clergy delegates, bishops and others from four continents. The delegates typically consider legislative petitions and elect various church leaders over a period of 10 days. The bishops are suggesting the extra General Conference meet for half as long.
The bishops’ request, announced at the conclusion of their April 29-May 5 meeting, comes as the denomination continues to deal with rising church disaffiliations following decades of disputes over same-sex weddings and gay clergy.
In a statement released after the meeting, the bishops said the additional General Conference “would focus on re-establishing connection, lament and healing, celebration, recasting the mission and vision for The United Methodist Church.”
The bishops’ resolution also supports a recent ruling by the Judicial Council, The United Methodist Church’s top court.
With the pandemic-caused postponement of the 2020 General Conference to 2024, the Judicial Council majority said in Decision 1472 that another regular session must convene between the beginning of 2025 and the end of 2027 to get the schedule back on track.
The denomination’s constitution in Paragraph 14 says General Conference “shall meet once in four years.”
The Judicial Council majority said that since the paragraph “stipulates one session per every four years, another regular session of General Conference is therefore required.”
However, four of the nine Judicial Council members dissented from that part of the ruling.
With that division in mind, the General Council on Finance and Administration — the denomination’s finance agency — is asking the church court to reconsider its decision.
The Judicial Council’s ruling would result in holding three General Conference sessions over five years.
The agency’s request for reconsideration argues that the denomination’s constitution “does not establish the total number of sessions of the General Conference there is to have been at any given time in the life of the denomination. Instead, it states how often the General Conference should convene.”
The agency’s request goes on to discuss the denomination’s financial constraints. The finance agency said the 2016 General Conference — the most recent regular session — cost about $10 million, and costs have only gone up. The added expense of planning another General Conference within the same four-year period would reduce funds “allocated to other areas/functions of the general Church, with reductions in some areas approaching a total of 50%,” the agency said.
Under the Judicial Council’s Rules of Practice and Procedure, a majority of the church court’s members must vote for reconsideration for the decision to be revisited.
The bishops also plan to file their own brief in the case, in support of the church court’s recent ruling.
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