wfn.org | Delegates elect first Judicial Council member from outside U.S.

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

CLEVELAND (UMNS) - General Conference 2000 has elected six new members of
United Methodism's "supreme court," including the first member from outside
the United States.

Layman Roldolfo Beltran, an attorney, former conference lay leader and
three-time General Conference delegate from the Philippines Central
Conference, was one of three lay and three clergy members elected May 8 for
terms on the denomination's Judicial Council. 

The nine-member Judicial Council determines the constitutionality of actions
by the General Conference, jurisdiction or conference judicatory, according
to church law in the Book of Discipline. General Conference, the
denomination's highest governing body, elects members at its quadrennial
meetings. The usual term of office is eight years. Five of the vacancies
filled were of persons completing an eight-year term; the Rev. Jane Tews of
Phoenix was elected to fill an unexpired term of four years.

The Judicial Council will organize May 11 and new members will take office
at the close of General Conference on May 12.

Other lay members elected by the 2000 General Conference were Mary Daffin,
an attorney and member of First United Methodist Church, Houston, and James
Holsinger, a physician who serves as chancellor of the Chandler Medical
Center at the University of Kentucky.

Clergy elected to the Judicial Council were: Tews, a district superintendent
in the Desert Southwest Conference and a former municipal court judge; the
Rev. Keith Boyette, pastor of Wilderness Community United Methodist Church,
Fredericksburg, Va., and a former trial attorney; and the Rev. Larry
Pickens, an attorney and pastor of Maple Park United Methodist Church in
Chicago. Pickens served as counsel for the Rev. Greg Dell, who was convicted
in a March 1999 church trial of violating church law by performing a
same-sex union ceremony. 

Three members of the council will continue the last half of their eight-year
term: the Rev. C. Rex Bevins of Lincoln, Neb.; Sally Curtis AsKew of Bogart,
Ga.; and Thomas Matheny, a Hammond, La., attorney. Matheny was first elected
to the council in 1972, and has served as president for an unprecedented 24
years. Ill health prevented him from attending the May 2-12 General
Conference in Cleveland, but delegates sent greetings and prayers.
# # #
--M. Garlinda Burton

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United Methodist News Service
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