wfn.org | Council commits to help United Methodists 'live into the future'

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Oct. 26, 2000 News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.     10-71B{490}

DAYTON, Ohio (UMNS) - Transforming the United Methodist Church into a more
effective worldwide movement will be a central challenge for the
denomination's General Council on Ministries (GCOM) during the next four
years.

Meeting Oct. 20-24 to organize for 2001-2004, the 80-member council reviewed
a long list of new and continuing responsibilities and concluded that
"Living Into the Future," a referral from the General Conference, will be a
top priority.  

The referral asks GCOM to provide leadership and develop recommendations for
responding to five "transformational directions" identified by the
denomination's Connectional Process Team (CPT). The 38-member CPT worked
during the previous four years with a charge to lead the church in a
transformational direction and make recommendations on how the denomination
might be structured for greater effectiveness. The team was also asked to
give special consideration to the "global nature of the church." 

Delegates to the 2000 General Conference rejected much of the CPT report,
particularly proposals related to structure and organization, but affirmed
the five transformational directions as "central ideas ... at the heart of
the needed change" in the church.

The directions deal with Christian formation, spiritual leadership,
empowerment for ministry, strengthening global connections and ecumenical
relationships, and encouraging doctrinal and theological discourse.

General Conference delegates said the principles "need to be brought to life
at every level of the United Methodist Church over the next quadrennium."
They called on each organizational level of the church - from local
congregations to denominational boards - to "begin to live out these
transformational directions."

The council is also being asked to continue a dialogue on the global nature
of the church started by the denomination's Council of Bishops during the
1993-1996 quadrennium and continued by the CPT throughout the next four
years. 

A major challenge for the GCOM is a request that it "determine the most
effective design for the work of the general agencies and to provide
implementing legislation" to the 2004 General Conference. Such a design is
to include "specific ways for agencies to integrate their work for greater
collaboration and elimination of duplication."

GCOM's ongoing mandate for years has been to "facilitate the church's
program life" and to "encourage, coordinate and support" the churchwide
agencies. The exact nature of this oversight, which includes evaluation and
allocation of funds, has at times been a source of tension. GCOM was created
soon after the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren churches merged in
1968 to form the United Methodist Church. The top staff executives of 11
churchwide  agencies are GCOM members without vote.

Among the CPT recommendations defeated at the 2000 General Conference was
one calling for the elimination of GCOM. The agency has 22 staff with
offices in Dayton. 

In an address to the council, after only four days on the job, new top staff
executive Daniel K. Church highlighted two concerns. "For too long this
council has been perceived as having responsibility without authority, and
for too long we have operated as if the center of God's universe were the
United States of America, maybe even Dayton, Ohio," he said. 

"The opportunity now exists to work in collegial fashion with the general
agencies and the annual conferences, exercising the duty of nurture and
evaluation where appropriate but relying on covenant to hold each other
accountable," he continued. 

He warned that the church must be cautious about embracing models from
business and industry.  "Instead of using the flow of financial allocations
as the leverage to police ourselves and enforce 'the rules,' we shall learn
to govern ourselves by the covenant which calls us each to account for the
promises we have made, those made at our baptism and those made at our
installation as general secretaries."

Church affirmed the "marvelous invitation to make true what we have said for
decades - that we believe we are all children of one parent and the global
nature of our church should be reflected in our institutions, systems and
practices."  

Early in the meeting, a reception was held to provide time for council
members to meet Church and his wife, Lorinda. Reared in the parsonage of a
Free Methodist pastor in California, Church most recently was a hospital
administrator in Ohio. 

GCOM officers elected to four-year terms were: president, Bishop Edward W.
Paup, Portland, Ore.; vice presidents, Solomon Chiripasi, Harare, Zimbabwe,
and Amy Valdez Barker, Sun Prairie, Wis.; secretary, the Rev. Andy Langford,
Charlotte, N.C.; and treasurer, Mary Silva, San Marcos, Texas.

GCOM's outgoing president, Bishop J. Woodrow Hearn of Galveston, Texas,
reported on the previous four years' work during an orientation session. He
called for leaders to go beyond "stirring the pot" of routine tasks so they
can  "reach for the vision that God is calling the United Methodist Church
to be." 

He also praised the ministry and mission of churchwide agencies. "We have a
heritage, a great gift that God has given to us through these agencies." To
illustrate, he pointed to the recent commissioning of an unprecedented
number of missionaries.  

Hearn also applauded the 52-year-old Advance, which is jointly related to
the GCOM and the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. With offices
in New York, the Advance is a program of voluntary, designated, second-mile
financial giving, with nearly 2,000 ministries in more than 100 countries.
The bishop predicted that some new GCOM members who may be continued for a
second, four-year term in 2004 will be able to celebrate the Advance topping
more than $1 billion in receipts. Currently, the total is more than $856
million. Elected to head the council's work area on the Advance was Bishop
Alfred Johnson of Pennington, N.J.  

Elected chairwoman of the council's Annual Conference Relationships Work
Area was Carolyn Johnson, West Lafayette, Ind. An Agency Relationships Work
Area will be led by Darlene Amon, Suffolk, Va. Elected to head other work
units were: Cooperative Parish Ministry, the Rev. Danita Anderson, Aurora,
Ill.; Elimination of Institutional Racism, James C. Shaw, Indianapolis;
Ethnic Local Church Concerns, Bishop Rhymes H. Moncure Jr., Nebraska Area;
Native American Forum, the Rev. Shirley Montoya, Kayenta, Ariz.  

Initially, a new Faith and Order Work Area will be led by a three-member
team: Raul Francisco, Little Ferry, N.J.; the Rev. Ardith Allread, San Jose,
Calif.; and the Rev. Richard Jones, Milwaukee. This new work area will focus
on a referral from General Conference to consider the need for a permanent
Commission on Faith and Order within the denomination.  A recommendation
from the work area and council will go to the 2004 General Conference.

GCOM members heard reports from two churchwide initiatives that have been
administratively linked to the agency: Strengthening the Black Church for
the 21st Century and Shared Mission Focus on Young People. Offices for the
initiative on young people are moving to Nashville, Tenn., and will be
administratively linked to the United Methodist Board of Discipleship
beginning Jan. 1. Linda Bales, who has been the staff executive for the
initiative since its creation in 1996, has resigned. Staff executive for the
black church initiative is Andris Salter. 

Top staff elected during the council meeting, in addition to Church, were
Donald Hayashi, Nelda Barrett Murraine and the Rev. William Carter. Two top
staff positions are open.  

The council has responsibility for electing annually the top staff
executives of most churchwide agencies. Elected were: the Rev. James
Winkler, Board of Church and Society; the Rev. Joseph L. Harris, United
Methodist Men; the Rev. Stephanie Anna Hixon and Cecelia Long, Commission on
the Status and Role of Women; the Rev. Larry Hollon, United Methodist
Communications; the Rev. Roger W. Ireson, Board of Higher Education and
Ministry; the Rev. Chester R. Jones, Commission on Religion and Race; the
Rev. Karen Greenwaldt, Board of Discipleship; the Rev. Randolph W. Nugent,
Board of Global Ministries; the Rev. Bruce W. Robbins, Commission on
Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns; the Rev. Charles Yrigoyen Jr.,
Commission on Archives and History.

The council approved recommendations from its Agency Relations Work Area
allocating from contingency funds $15,000 to the Commission on United
Methodist Men for a program to help at-risk inner-city youth in Atlanta,
Dallas, Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Chicago, and $80,000 to the Board of
Church and Society for a 10-member bioethics task force 

The GCOM members meet twice each year.  Their next meeting will be May 4-8
in Phoenix.

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United Methodist News Service
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