UMAF Statement after 2024 General Conference
27 May 2024
Dear United Methodists in Africa
We give thanks to God for the United Methodist Church General Conference that took place in Charlotte, North Carolina April 23-May 3, 2024. The General Conference is the worldwide legislative assembly of The United Methodist Church, called to make decision that are overarching for our worldwide denomination.
Before the General Conference, the United Methodist Africa Forum (UMAF) presented to you what we highlighted as our legislative agenda as we entered the General Conference. The agenda emanated from the two UMAF gatherings held in Johannesburg, South Africa, April 2023 and Dar es salaam, Tanzania, January 2024.
This statement is intended to share with you how our African delegates working with the rest of other delegates from across the connection managed to drive towards our goals and what we achieved. It is important to highlight the fact that to achieve any goals at the General Conference, which is a vote driven decision-making process, there is a need to secure those votes, therefore requiring cooperation and understanding with delegates from other regions. This also means that a lot of compromises are to be made to reach common understanding so we can achieve our goals.
With a great sense of responsibility, your UMAF leadership at the General Conference kept the focus on negotiating and representing African voices with the instructions provided from our two sessions in Johannesburg and Dar es salaam. This was meant to build consensus around our principles so as to achieve desired goals. It is important to realize through conversation and dialogue with others, one doesn’t fully get what we desire, yet maintaining our fundamental principles is key.
Let us admit as your leaders at this point that we were not totally of the same mind, and we lost some negotiating capital in some issues due to some divisions which emerged as we headed to the General Conference. The dominating region managed to pull some of our leaders and African groups to the USA agenda. Even faced with this challenge we managed to keep holding the line to the end.
Below is how we fared on our legislative agenda we presented to you before General Conference in our statement of 12 April 2024 addressed to the African Bishops:
We went to the General Conference with a plan to pass the Christmas Covenant: The result we got was the Worldwide regionalisation was passed and now this is the regionalisation legislation which has been passed by the General Conference. This will now be coming to our annual conferences for ratification. We now present the legislation that was passed to your scrutiny as African United Methodists and make decisions during ratification.
UMAF went to the General Conference to advocate for the amendment of the Revised Social Principles on the definition of Marriage. Our plan was to support the adoption of the revised social principles with the following amendment: “Within the Church, we affirm marriage as a sacred lifelong covenant that brings a man and a woman of faith together.” This goal was achieved and now the revised social principles include a clear definition of marriage as between a man and a woman of faith. There could be other interpretations on the meaning of the words adult people of faith, in Africa we will interpret that as a statement against child marriages. Other regions may have different interpretations.
UMAF went to the General Conference advocating that African delegates will oppose any legislation seeking to extend disaffiliations: This goal was achieved there is no more legislation on disaffiliations as these would have promoted disunity and instability in the African United Methodist Church. With the end of disaffiliations, we continue boldly the ministry of our denomination and those seeking to leave the denomination can do so individually or by using approved processes in our Book of Discipline.
UMAF went to the General Conference to defend maintaining the standards of ordination in The United methodist Church in Africa as it was in the 2016 Book of Discipline. UMAF advocated to uphold paragraph 304.3 regarding homosexuality. This paragraph was removed from the discipline. This was one of those hot negotiations. What we managed to gain is the church did not affirm homosexuality. Here let us explain what the removal of this paragraph means: The removal of this language brings the UMC back to neutral, to its pre-1972 and 1984 state by having no commentary on homosexuality. It is neither condemning it nor affirming it. The Book of Discipline says nothing about it now, leaving individuals and churches the freedom to have their own opinions on the matter. This is now a matter to be decided by Regions, Annual Conferences, and Local churches. Part of our United Methodist doctrinal heritage is to respect the "diversity of opinions.”
UMAF went to the General Conference to support the continued Support of African Education: This goal was achieved when the General Conference voted to support Africa University and gave additional support for education in Africa.
UMAF supported the election of Justice Molly Mwayera to the Judicial Council of the UMC and she was elected on the first ballot, we celebrate this achievement as well. Your UMAF leadership has been working on this election since our inception and we managed to build support from across the denomination.
Other items we must mention for celebration was the granting of two additional bishops to Africa who will be going to Burundi and South Cango. We will have to keep asking for more. Burundi was mentioned and approved in Dar es Salaam resolutions from the Africa Central Conference report.
Our Concerns on how the General Conference was organised were raised and discussed and the Commission on General Conference gave their explanations although their report was not satisfactory, we acknowledge that our calls were heard. We are glad that we now have a new secretary of the General Conference, and it is our hope that things will improve.
UMAF joined Hands with BMCR and co-sponsored a gathering of all black delegates and other UMC leaders who were at the General Conference, several black American and African bishops attended the event and our UMAF leaders rocked the night with music and dance. We will keep strengthening our cooperation with the Black Methodist for Church Renewal (BMCR).
Looking at these outcomes we would like to thank you all as these couldn’t be achieved without your dedicated commitments, especially noting that UMAF is only 1 year old. Now as we move forward, we need to keep working together and plan our next activities as we must work on regionalization legislation to be ratified by annual conferences. UMAF will continue to organise the United Methodists in Africa to keep our voices being heard in the connectional church. It is through cooperation, unity of purpose and pulling together which will see us growing and standing up for the African Church. Freedom is never given in a silver plate and privileges are never surrendered willingly. We need to stand up to what we believe and represent the church in Africa.
Our unity of purpose, guided by our principles and values will help us reach higher levels as efforts towards division will downplay our work and ministry of the church in Africa.
As we move forward, we call for unity and standing together as United Methodists in Africa.
We were, we are, and we will always be United Methodists.
Rev Lloyd Nyarota Rev. Gabrial Banga Mususwa
General Coordinator General Secretary
