Kerrfunk

I am a United Methodist pastor in West Virginia.
I was ordained an elder in 2005 and am a full member of the WV Conference.

In this post I will address two “potentially contentious” (my words) resolutions which were submitted (6/1/23) to WVAC23 (June 8-11) and included in the registration packet we all received when we signed in; 2023-08 and 2023-09.

Any errors in describing the events are mine.

Three or four noteworthy things from WVAC23:
One, I like and respect our bishop, SSB, who has been our leader for eleven years, and by Discipline we cannot have her for a fourth quadrennium.

Two, Judi K has been Conference secretary for twentysomething years, and has done an excellent job. She retired from this position to take a position with the greater denomination (!) in the “Connectional Table”. We’re proud of her! Elected as new conference secretary is Sarah Estep.

Three, Brad B. received recognition from a denominational communications agency for excellence in communication. He’s a stand-up dude and I’m proud to call him a friend.

The conference had a live choir for the first time since COVID, led by the fantastic Dan whose last name I don’t recall but he was simply amazing and a joy to worship with.

Laity elected a member to Jurisdictional Conference, Kim Matthews.

Retirees were celebrated, deceased were mourned, and people were commissioned and ordained. We had addresses from Bishop Cynthia Moore Koikoi, WVWC President Moore, author Sue Kibbey, and others.

If you’ve never been to Annual Conference I highly recommend checking it out if and when you can.

Also: www.wvumc.com/news

 

And now the “potentially contentious” resolutions:

In my words, 23-08 called on WVUMC clergy to remember and keep the ordination vows (particularly with respect to upholding, keeping, and teaching the denomination’s positions regarding sexuality issues and the church. The United Methodist rule book forbids same-sex marriages from being celebrated in our churches and by our clergy). When this resolution was brought to the business session of the conference (on Thursday evening), somebody rose to speak about the resolution, and stated that this is a matter that the WVUMC Board of Ordained Ministry should deal with on a case-by-case basis, and the conference voted to refer 23-08 to BOM.

Sometime during the day on Friday, the Rules Committee presented a few changes to our operational rules (they had done a bunch of work going through our existing rules and were essentially tidying our rules up). One of the proposed tweaks had to do with exactly when a resolution must be proposed for inclusion in our printed materials before conference. Somebody rose to speak, seeking to tweak the proposed tweak to ensure that resolutions be published early enough that delegates could study them before conference. After 40 minutes of debate/discussion, the tweak-of-the-tweak passed, thus requiring that in order for a resolution to be considered by the conference, it must be submitted 90 days or more before conference.

Then on Saturday, during a business session, 2023-09 was brought to the floor.

In my words, 23-09 called on the WVUMC conference to petition the Jurisdictional Conference and the College of Bishops to ensure that the Jurisdictional Conference and the College of Bishops uphold church discipline and rules, and to NOT encourage / turn a blind eye to “civil disobedience” (my words) which would go against the same-sex marriage prohibition and homosexual clergy legislation on our books.

Somebody then pointed out that according to the rule change we made on Friday, we could not consider 23-09 since 23-09 had not been submitted 90 days prior to conference. In order to consider 23-09, we would have to SUSPEND the rule that we had just passed, and in order to suspend the rules to consider 23-09, we needed a 2/3 vote. We didn’t get a 2/3 vote. After some emotionally charged discussion, the Rules Committee suggested we revisit suspending the rules, since 23-09 had indeed been submitted to the AnnConf in good faith and before the preceding day’s rule change. The vote was very close to revisit suspending the rules, but ultimately it did not get enough votes, so long story short, 23-09 was never officially discussed.

It seems to me that the people who lobbied for the Friday rule change did so unaware that it would cause 23-09 to be ineligible for consideration.

That is, in a nutshell, the “potentially contentious” part of WVAC23.

In WVUMC about fifty churches closed; about half of them because they were unsustainable, and about half because they apparently no longer wished to be UMC. With the closure process WVUMC uses, that’s about all the detail I have. So out of 900 ish churches, 25ish closed in a disaffiliation way, presumably to unite with the newly-formed conservative “Global Methodist Church”.

 

One snafu we had concerning the sound system: the chapel has a sound system, and WVUMC hires a production company for video and sound tech. We’ve worked with the same production company (GNTV) for several years, and we supplement their employees with our own volunteers (such as me, running cameras and sound boards and such).

The tech setup has to allow for eight mics placed around the chapel so that members who want to speak (about business) can do so and be heard by the chapel as well as by the folks online. The tech setup also has to allow for a pulpit mic, two podium mics, three mics at the conference table, choir and piano mics. And the tech setup has to make sure that sound (volume) is appropriate in all areas of the chapel as well as online.

The tech setup was in place and tested before I arrived on Tuesday.

Some time on Wednesday, somebody (not with GNTV and not from our volunteers) turned a bunch of speakers off, and we didn’t know it. When we started up on Thursday, our output was about 15% of what it should’ve been, and we were scrambling to make all things appropriately audible with only one out of eight speakers functioning.

After the opening session on Thursday, GNTV and our volunteers sleuthed about and discovered the powered-off speakers, so for the rest of conference we were able to hear much better.

My job for most of conference was muting/unmuting the various mics, and tweaking volume. A lot of people who get up to speak stand like three feet away from the mic, in which case it doesn’t pic up well and I’d have to do what I could to amplify their sound. If people were too close to a mic, that was easy enough to turn down.

So. That’s some of the dramatic parts of conf. 

The information was there for people who were specifically looking for it, but I would not say the information was at all handy. Somebody from my church asked about church closings and this is what I shared with them:

in Resolution 2023-02, the Cabinet Property Report, section 10.f.4conf.

(pages 2-4 here: https://www.wvumc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2023-02-Cabinet-Property-Report.pdf )

 

twenty listed "financial" as the reason for closure.

six listed "discontinued" as the reason for closure.  

twentythree listed "separated" as the reason for closure.

 

Here are the official definitions from GCFA on the categories: 

• Financial - Closing based on not having finance capability to continue as a functioning entity

• Abandoned - Closing based on members and personnel having ceased to support or look after the entity

• Discontinued - Closing when the conference decides to suspend activity at church due to lack of support or resources. Operations have been or will be shut down.

• Disaffiliation - Church that are exiting/withdrawing the UMC under the new “gracious exit”.  These are churches that will be leaving the UMC under the new discipline code of ¶2553 churches leaving under certain circumstances. GCFA will list all churches living under ¶2553 with a reason of closure as of disaffiliation.

• No Longer Ecumenical Shared Ministry - Closing when church no longer wishes to be a part of Ecumenical Shared Ministry with the UMC.  These are churches that are currently part of your conferences Shared Ministry form. 

I believe "Separated" may be shorthand for churches who no longer want to be part of the ecumenical shared ministry with the UMC. 

These are the six discontinued: 

Pleasant Hill (Greenbrier Wesleyan)
Chrichton (Greenbrier Wesleyan)
Rosemar (Little Kanawha)
First (Mon Valley)
Christ (Northern)
Yawkey (Nine Rivers)

These are the twentythree "separated"

Mt Union (Greenbrier Wesleyan)
Ten Mile (Greenbrier Wesleyan)
Maude Chapel (Greenbrier Wesleyan)
Chesterville (Little Kanawha) 
Merrill Chapel (Little Kanawha) 
Slate Chapel (Little Kanawha) 
Oil Creek (Little Kanawha)
Orlando (Little Kanawha)
Israel (Mon Valley)
Central Chapel (Mon Valley)
New Hope (Mon Valley)
Bethany (Northern)
Pleasant Hill (Northern)
New Bethel (Northern)
Leon (Nine Rivers)
Sinclair (Potomac Highlands)
Valley Chapel (Potomac Highlands)
Seneca (Potomac Highlands)
Faith (Potomac Highlands) 
Baker (Potomac Highlands) 
Shays Chapel (Potomac Highlands)
Bays Chapel (Southern)
Richmond (Southern)