wfn.org | Delegates reject proposal for Evangelical Missionary Conference

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CLEVELAND (UMNS) - The United Methodist Church will not create a specialized
missionary conference for evangelicals in the west.

By a 615-312 vote, delegates attending the denomination's General Conference
rejected on May 12 a proposal to establish an Evangelical Missionary
Conference in the Western Jurisdiction. The vote came on the last day of the
legislative assembly, which began May 2.

Establishing a missionary conference is the first step toward becoming an
annual conference. Because of particular mission opportunities, location or
limited resources and membership, a missionary conference does not qualify
to be either an annual conference or a provisional conference. A missionary
conference is organized in the same way as an annual conference, which is
the basic organizational body in the denomination and includes all United
Methodist churches in a geographically defined area.

The United Methodist Church has 66 annual conferences in the United States
and 52 in Europe, Africa and the Philippines.

The push for a new conference came from the Evangelical Renewal Fellowship,
a conservative group whose members feel marginalized in the
California-Nevada Annual (regional) Conference and want to split away. The
fellowship petitioned the General Conference to create an Evangelical
Missionary Conference in the West that would be supportive of the
connectional mission of the United Methodist Church. 

Tensions have been rising between Cal-Nevada Conference leaders and the
fellowship. The evangelicals were particularly dissatisfied with a Feb. 11
announcement that an investigative committee would not place 67 clergy
members in the Cal-Nevada Conference on trial in the church for performing a
same-sex union service.  

The conservative groups in the church were inflamed not only by the
Cal-Nevada decision, but also by comments made by San Francisco Area Bishop
Melvin G. Talbert regarding the authority of the annual conference. Talbert,
who announced the investigative committee's decision, added that while the
ruling may appear to have broken covenant with the Book of Discipline, there
is "another more basic and fundamental covenant that has precedence over
this one narrow focus of law." That is the covenant of the annual
conference, into which clergy members are received, he said. The committee's
decision reflected the Cal-Nevada Conference's "longstanding covenant
commitments for inclusiveness and justice."

Opponents to the fellowship's proposal spoke against dividing the church
because of differences in theology. They also rejected a motion that would
have requested the churchwide General Council on Ministries to engage in a
four-year study about the need to create an evangelical conference. 

The 992 delegates also voted against a move to instruct and bind the
leadership -- both clergy and lay -- of the Cal-Nevada Conference to enter
into a direct process of reconciliation, which would have been under the
direction of the College of Bishops of the Western Jurisdiction.

David Owen, a representative from South Indiana, suggested that the
conference bring those involved in the conflict into conversations and "work
it out as a witness to the world."

In 1996, delegates voted against creating a similar proposal that would have
created a missionary conference specifically for Koreans.

Delegates to the 2000 General Conference expressed hope that those who feel
disenfranchised in the Western Jurisdiction would be reconciled with the
Cal-Nevada Conference.
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--Linda Green

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United Methodist News Service
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