Regionalization starts taking effect

Key points:

• What is now the Standing Committee on Regional Conference Matters Outside the USA has a new name and a new responsibility.
• The international United Methodist body, which submitted regionalization to General Conference, met to celebrate the ratification of the denominational restructuring.
• Committee members also got to work on next steps.

The international church body that placed regionalization before General Conference voters met Nov. 8 to both celebrate and get to work putting the legislation into action.

Under the newly ratified restructuring, The United Methodist Church in the U.S. and each central conference — church regions in Africa, Europe and the Philippines — become regional conferences with the same decision-making authority. Each regional conference will be able to adapt parts of the Book of Discipline, the denomination’s policy book, to its own legal and missional contexts.

The changes aim to de-center the U.S. and foster more equity around the globe in church governance.

Members of what is now called the Standing Committee on Regional Conference Matters Outside the USA (previously Central Conference Matters) admitted that they expected regionalization to win the needed two-thirds majority for approval.

However, they still marveled that annual conference lay and clergy voters ratified the amendment-package to the denomination’s constitution by a staggering 91.6%.

All told, the Council of Bishops reported the total vote for regionalization at the denomination’s more than 130 annual conferences was 34,148 to 3,124.

“This never would have happened had there been one person or one group proposing it,” said the Rev. Dee Stickley-Miner, the standing committee’s secretary. “This is the result of the fact that everybody around the world — they were able to see themselves as being a part of The United Methodist Church, and they were able to hear their voice represented and seen in the faces of people who took leadership.”

The standing committee — the one denominational body with a majority of members from Africa, Europe and the Philippines — is a permanent committee of General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking assembly. The standing committee took the final steps that got the amendments package before General Conference, where it won 78% of the vote and moved forward to annual conferences.

However, committee members readily acknowledge they were building on work already done by the Connectional Table, which acts as a sort of denominational church council, and a grassroots group of central conference church leaders who drafted the Christmas Covenant. All three groups working together were crucial to getting the legislation over the finish line.

Henoc Malenge Mwenze, a standing committee member from Congo, also credited bishops with clearing up misinformation being spread, especially on the African continent, about the legislation in the immediate aftermath of last year’s General Conference.

“I want to take the opportunity to congratulate all our bishops because they prayed for the truth to win, and I think that’s victory,” Mwenze said through a French interpreter. “Africa is celebrating for something that we accomplished together.”

With regionalization’s ratification, the standing committee has put forward two task forces that will work with the Connectional Table to study how to perfect regionalization.

The standing committee in collaboration with the Connectional Table will seek to address the following:

1. Whether the U.S. should continue to have jurisdictions.
2. Whether a mediation process should be developed for situations where a regional conference may be seen as overstepping its power of adaptation.
3. Other questions of equity in a worldwide church.

The two bodies must report their findings and submit any resulting legislation to the 2028 General Conference.

Regionalization’s ratification also will likely shape the standing committee’s longtime effort, dating back to 2012, to develop recommendations for what is essential in the Book of Discipline and can be adapted by regional conferences.

Before regionalization, only central conferences could adapt parts of the Discipline — making the U.S. the default for church governance.

Now, all of the denomination’s geographic regions will have the same authority to make adaptations — adding to the hope that the standing committee and fellow church leaders can develop recommendations for a truly General Book of Discipline that contains only measures that must apply denomination-wide.

To decide what’s adaptable, the standing committee is working with three other denominational leadership bodies — the Committee on Faith and Order, the Ministry Study Commission and the Connectional Table. Members of all three bodies joined the standing committee’s Nov. 8 meeting. The groups will hold a joint meeting next year in Copenhagen, Denmark, to continue developing the recommendations that will go before the 2028 General Conference.

Unreserved cooperation is what made regionalization possible, said retired Bishop Harald Rückert, the standing committee’s chair. Cooperation, he added, remains the decisive factor in charting a future for the church.

“We need each other to jointly move forward,” he said. “And so, I’m very delighted to continue this work with you on the standing committee and with all the others that are involved in this great work that we are doing on behalf of our church. It is complicated, yes, and it’s a lot of work, yes. But our church is worth doing this work jointly together.”

Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.