Regionalization Series, Part 5: The path to greater regionalization in the future
Passing regionalization legislation at General Conference is only a first step toward fulfilling what regionalization can be for The United Methodist Church. Putting into place what is passed, and completing the promise of a Global Book of Discipline, will engage United Methodists in deliberation, organization, and the development of new legislation during the quadrennia to come. Graphic by Laurens Glass, United Methodist Communications.
The regionalization legislation brought by the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters to be considered by the General Conference in 2024 would, if fully passed, begin a process of greater adaptability of the Book of Discipline to fit the varying needs and opportunities of United Methodists worldwide.
But there will be more work to be done after the General Conference. First, two-thirds or more of those voting in the annual conferences worldwide will need to approve the multiple constitutional amendments that lay the constitutional foundation to create the new structures that will be needed and specifically authorize many of the changes involved.
Getting to a two-thirds majority of the General Conference, much less across all of the annual conferences worldwide, is a challenge, by design. What is foundational for any organization — secular, political or ecclesial — should be difficult to change, and thus should require such supermajorities to change them. Assuming the General Conference passes the constitutional amendments, it will be up to the delegates, bishops and other leaders to inform and effectively persuade their annual conferences about the importance and the benefits to be achieved by approving these amendments when the conferences vote on them in 2025.
The enabling legislation to put these amendments into practice, if also passed by a simple majority of the General Conference in 2024, would go into effect when the Council of Bishops announces the relevant amendments have passed. This meeting will be in fall 2025 (usually late October, early November). The constitution sets the framework. The enabling legislation, which will appear mostly within the existing Central Conferences paragraphs (numbered starting with Paragraph 500), gives the specifics about how the revamped regional conferences would function.
Most of the constitutional changes in the legislation, in terms of sheer number of changes, are in name only. They would change the name “central conference” to “regional conference.” As we saw in Part 4 of the series, however, some of the amendments are more substantive, granting to the proposed regional conferences several powers to adapt the Book of Discipline that were not previously specifically assigned to the existing central conferences. These more substantive changes would become effective upon the announcement of the passage of their related constitutional amendments as well.
Some of the regionalization legislation is neither a constitutional amendment nor enabling legislation for constitutional amendments. These include parts of two of the three non-disciplinary regionalization petitions brought by the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters (Petition 6, (p. 44 ff.) Petition 8, p. 50 ff.).
Petition 6, if passed by a simple majority of the General Conference, would create an Interim United States Legislative Committee immediately upon the adjournment of the upcoming session of the General Conference in 2024. This committee would function much as the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters does now, by having all legislation relating to specific U.S. matters diverted to this body rather than to the various other legislative committees of the General Conference. This would entirely free those committees to consider legislation intended to be of a churchwide nature. The United States Legislative Committee would continue to function until a U.S. Regional Conference becomes fully operational.
Petition 8 would create a study team to develop proposals for addressing several unresolved matters with the new regional conferences — if the legislation is passed to create them — and present those proposals to a subsequent session of the General Conference. Unresolved issues include but are not limited to whether jurisdictions should continue to exist and how to proceed if regional conferences are believed to have overstepped their legislative bounds in how and what they adapt. The purpose of the study and the proposals would be to ensure full equity across all regional conferences. If this petition is passed, the study would begin immediately, but proposals would be brought to the General Conference only if the constitutional amendments and enabling legislation creating the regional conferences have also passed.
Finally, there remains the work of completing the task of restructuring the Book of Discipline as described in the current Paragraph 101 of the 2016 Book of Discipline. At the heart of this work is a substantial overhaul of the current Book of Discipline to create a new Part VI (items not adaptable by the regional conferences) and a new Part VII (items adaptable by the regional conferences). The Standing Committee had submitted in 2019 two items of legislation that would help facilitate this work. The 2019 versions of these items are included in Volume 2, Section 2 of the Advance Daily Christian Advocate. The Standing Committee’s updated versions of these petitions will appear with the final updated volume of the ADCA, reflecting materials submitted within the 2023 window for new legislation. These items with all other new or updated legislation are expected to be published online in an additional section of the Advance Daily Christian Advocate in early 2024.
Petition 20157 (p. 616) would amend Paragraph 101 to allow the Standing Committee to propose new language related to theology and mission, particularly for the work of agencies, that reflects the diverse legal and missional contexts across the worldwide Church. As the rationale statement in the 2019 version of this petition notes, the current language of the Discipline was forged in a predominantly U.S. cultural and legal context. Simply rearranging the existing language, as Paragraph 101 seems originally to have proposed, cannot adequately address the very different realities outside of the United States in a way that a truly General Book of Discipline calls for.
Petition 20660 (p. 824) would create an immediate feedback process from every annual conference across the worldwide Church to address core questions about what kinds of legislation best belong in Part VI (non-adaptable) and Part VII (adaptable). Every annual conference would provide answers to a few key questions about what needs to apply across the entire denomination to ensure clear United Methodist identity and what needs to be adaptable regionally for maximal missional effectiveness. Using these responses from every annual conference meeting in 2024, the Standing Committee would draft proposals for Parts VI and VII to be presented to a subsequent session of the General Conference.
What it takes for The United Methodist Church to maintain its identity and unity worldwide while granting appropriate regional flexibility will not be finalized by the General Conference in 2024, even if all of the legislation brought to support this work is passed by the required margins. The effort will only have begun. But it will have begun with clear plans to listen to leaders across the entire church and continue to bring revisions in the years ahead to ensure that what has begun will help United Methodists carry out their mission more effectively wherever they are.
Read more from the series, What is Regionalization?
Burton Edwards serves as director of Ask The UMC, the information service of United Methodist Communications.
