This was a
good General Conference! We may indeed look back
one day and see this General Conference as a
turning point for the United Methodist Church. I
hope and pray so!
There was a lot
of pain and hurt but there was also a lot of
healing, joy and coming together for
transformational clarification of our Church's
mission.
The worship,
meditations, and conferencing were excellent.
The Repentance for Racism service was a
highlight (assuming we do something about racism
in our individual lives). The fellowship and
renewing of old acquaintances was
special.
But our report
today will focus on the legislative actions of
General Conference.
Your delegation
came together as a cohesive unit to play
important roles in the deliberations and actions
of the 2000 General Conference. I have never
been a part of any group I was more proud of
than this delegation to General
Conference.
Your delegation
worked long and hard, their attendance was good
and their participation in General Conference
activities was excellent.
1. Possibly the
most important action of General Conference was
'to add a sentence to the mission part of The
Discipline, which says "Jesus Christ is the Son
of God, the Savior of the world and the Lord of
all. (I wish we could have used the word "only"
a couple of times, but it is a significant
addition to The Discipline.)
2. The
Conference called upon the various governments
of our land not to prohibit voluntary prayer in
public schools.
3. Thirty
percent of the Conference voted to eliminate
altogether the General Board of Church and
Society. (Maybe four years from now, we can find
the other 21 percent!)
4. Regarding
apportionments:
•
We voted a 6.1 percent increase in total
General Church apportionments.
• But we
also changed the way apportionments are
allocated between the Conferences. This
change alone will increase North Georgia's
share approximately 12 percent by
2004.
• The
bottom line. of these two actions together is
that our North Georgia General Church
apportionments will increase around 18
percent this quadrennium.
5. We also voted
to allow Annual Conferences the option of
separating General Church apportionments from
Annual Conference apportionments. This would
mean each local church would make a decision on
the support of the Annual Conference as a
separate line item from General Church
support.
6. In effect, we
voted down-the Connectional Process Team Report,
but turned its ideas for new transformational
directions over to the General Council on
Ministries to determine how to implement new
directions for the church and provide
legislation for the 2004 General
Conference.
7. Generally, we
gave GCOM a vote of confidence and turned
several key matters over to GCOM for study and
future implementation.
8. The role of
Lay Speaking was substantially
enhanced:
•
It will be called Lay Speaking Ministries in
the future.
• We
created a Conference Committee on Lay
Speaking Ministries and clarified its
responsibility to the Conference Board of
Laity.
• We
also called upon Lay Speakers to be committed
to doctrine, scripture and the history and
life of United Methodist Church.
9. One of the
issues our Conference had been very much
involved in -- we adopted a new formula for
fairer allocation of the 1,000 General
Conference delegates. This will probably give
North Georgia 28 delegates in 2004. If we
continue to grow we may even have 30. A plan to
increase the maximum number of delegates from
the current 1,000 to 1,200 was
defeated.
10. Several
votes left the Judicial Council as it is
presently and we elected a strong group to serve
on the Judicial Council this coming
quadrennium.
11. Without a
doubt the most important action our Delegation
took was to offer a resolution requesting a
Declaratory Decision relating to [the
California-Nevada conference's] refusal to
try the 67 clergy that performed a same-sex
ceremony last year.
It would have
been real easy for our delegation to back away
from this, but we didn't. This action took
courage and set the tone for the entire
conference.
The resolution
confronted, without being confrontational, the
major issue of our church today -- which
is that of an Annual Conference doing whatever
it wants without regard to church law. If one
conference can do this, it is the beginning of
the end to our connectional system. The decision
itself says this "would lead to
chaos."
We asked the
Judicial Council to rule on four separate items.
They ruled on all four. This may be one of the
most clarifying events of General Conference.
The decision says:
I. A
clergy person has the responsibility of
adhering to The Discipline and to
assure that those for whom he/she has
administrative responsibility to do the
same.
II. No Annual
Conference has the right to negate or ignore
provisions of The Discipline even where they
conscientiously disagree.
III. The
Discipline is law and regulates every
phase of life and work of the
Church.
IV. There are
no covenants which supersede the authority of
The Discipline.
Hopefully, this
decision will put an end to the type thing that
occurred in Cal-Nev last year. It has already
been cited by clergy trying to be treated
fairly. The Judicial Council really stood up and
was counted. We owe them a debt of
gratitude.
Martha will come
now to talk about some of the social issues.
Basically,
we upheld and strengthened The Discipline
as it relates to the practice of homosexuality
and continued our long standing acceptance of
homosexuals as persons of sacred worth.
We
voted:
1. Not
to delete the phrase "Fidelity in marriage,
celibacy in singleness."
2. To
retain the language "the practice of
homosexuality is incompatible with Christian
teaching."
3. Moved the
prohibition on clergy performing same sex
ceremonies to the ministry section of The
Discipline.
4. A minority
report passed that makes the social
principles "instructive" and not
church law. (However, this was done after
moving the prohibition on same sex ceremonies
to the law part of The
Discipline.)
5. To retain
the language that prohibits the use of our
churches for same sex ceremonies.
6. Retained
prohibition against ordaining practicing
homosexuals.
7. Defeated
several attempts to water down these strong
provisions -- such as the attempt to add "all
covenant relationships" alongside
marriage.
8. Did not
add further stipulations to the existing
prohibitions against using church funds for
the promotion of homosexual activities (these
new items were felt unmanageable and
unnecessary).
In other
actions, we:
9. Took
a strong stance against partial-birth
abortion, except in the case of mother's life
or fetal anomalies incompatible with
life.
10. Voted to
add a "Baptized Membership Roll." This is a
constitutional change and will be voted on by
us at Annual Conference next year. It will
take two-thirds vote by two-thirds of Annual
Conferences.
11. Did not
change the Ministerial Educational Fund to
place 40 percent rather than 25 percent of
the monies in the Annual Conference for
student assistance.
12. Passed
legislation requiring an evangelism
course of study for ministry
candidates.
13. Changed
the name of the Committee on Nominations and
Personnel to the Committee on Lay Leadership
and charged the Committee with identifying
and deploying Christian Spiritual leadership
for the congregation.
14. Supported
the "Shared Mission Focus on Young People"
and allocated $3 million to enhance this
program.
15.
Encouraged cabinets to lengthen the tenure of
pastoral appointments and refused to
eliminate the guaranteed
appointment.
16. Approved
a $20 million "Igniting Ministries" national
media advertising campaign. You will start
seeing TV spots in early 2001. There will be
media kits to assist the local church in
making this campaign local.
