Why Wespath supports regionalization

Key Points:

• The United Methodist Church’s pension and benefits agency staff helped develop legislation that will go before General Conference delegates this month.
• Agency staff see the legislation, aimed at putting the U.S. and central conferences on equal footing, as crucial to their work of supporting clergy and other church workers in retirement.
• The legislation all requires amending the denomination’s constitution — a high bar.

Among those championing The United Methodist Church’s regionalization is the denomination’s pension and benefits agency.

In fact, Wespath Benefits and Investments staff have been involved from the beginning in developing the regionalization proposals now going before General Conference delegates.

Regionalization has become United Methodist shorthand for restructuring proposals under consideration when the denomination’s international lawmaking assembly meets April 23-May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The most prominent of these proposals is Worldwide Regionalization submitted by the denomination’s Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters, the majority of whose membership comes from outside the U.S.

Under the proposal, the United Methodist presence in the United States and the denomination’s seven current central conferences in Africa, Europe and the Philippines would each become regional conferences with the same decision-making authority to adapt ministries to regional missional needs.

At present, no structure exists to deal with concerns solely related to the United States. The result is that the increasingly international General Conference ends up being largely dominated by debates and votes on U.S. affairs — including U.S. church-employee benefit plans.

Wespath would like to see that situation change.

“It simply is not an effective way to do things — to have benefit-plan changes that apply only to the U.S. church be voted on by an international body, the majority of which in the future will not be affected by them or have anything to do with them,” said Dale Jones, Wespath’s managing director of church relations.

He added that the denomination’s policies already allow United Methodist pension plans outside the U.S. to operate differently.

“Everywhere else in the world where there are United Methodist Church pension plans, they’re governed by whatever entity they operate within — an annual conference, an episcopal area or a central conference,” Jones said.

“But because of the background of where we came from, we haven’t made any changes to what’s now become a really archaic way of dealing with the U.S. clergy plans. So it was important for us, from a Wespath standpoint, for there to be some type of U.S.-based entity that could deal with the matters that affect U.S. clergy.”

The United Methodist Church’s background is that of a U.S.-founded denomination slowly transforming into a truly global one.

Plans call for the coming General Conference to have 862 voting delegates from four continents — 55.9% from the U.S., 32% from Africa, 6% from the Philippines, 4.6% from Europe and the remainder from concordat churches that have close ties to The United Methodist Church.

But given longtime trends that have seen U.S. membership shrink while African membership has grown, many United Methodists expect this to be the last regular session of General Conference where U.S. delegates are the majority.

If the denomination’s current structure remains unchanged, that eventually could pose a legal challenge for Wespath. The self-supporting agency administers benefit plans and investments on behalf of over 100,000 participants and more than 150 United Methodist institutions.

“While unlikely, there could be unintended legal implications if a non-U.S. majority delegate body, less familiar with U.S. benefit plans, created or modified legislation (and it subsequently was approved) that conflicted with U.S. laws,” said Julie Capozzi, Wespath’s managing director of communications.   

That’s because U.S. employee benefit plans must comply with U.S. federal laws.

“More important are the practical implications of this situation,” Capozzi added.

Currently, preparing for General Conference often requires Wespath to translate more than 100 pages of U.S. benefit plan documents, written to be in harmony with U.S. law, into multiple languages. That is not only costly but also runs the risk that some plan provisions may not really translate, Capozzi said.

Jones also said it’s unfair to subject African, Asian and European delegates to all these dense pages of pension code that have no bearing on their lives or ministries.

Wespath’s central conference pensions, which support more than 3,600 clergy and spouses in retirement, are under more local control to ensure they are in compliance with their nations’ laws as well as local needs.

The denomination’s constitution has long ensured central conferences, the earliest of which dates to the 1880s, have the freedom to make “such changes and adaptations” to the Book of Discipline — the denomination’s policy book — as missional needs and differing legal contexts require.

For example, based on their needs, central conferences have adapted the ordination requirements for elders and the tenure of bishops. Some central conferences have opted not to add the order of ordained deacons, which was established by the1996 General Conference for clergy who focus on ministry of word, service and compassion.

The church in the United States does not have the freedom to make such adaptations.

Regionalization is not a new thing, Dr. Kasongo Peniel, a standing committee member from the Congo Central Conference, recently told delegates in a livestream preview of legislation. He was among the standing committee members who helped draft Worldwide Regionalization.

“These petitions that we are offering to the General Conference for you to act upon would give to the United States of America the same power that the central conferences have got around the world,” he said.

Previous efforts at regionalization have gone down to defeat over the years.

Creating the new regional structures requires amending the denomination’s constitution — a high bar.

For ratification, amendments must receive at least a two-thirds vote at General Conference and at least two-thirds of the total votes from annual conferences, regional bodies consisting of voters from multiple congregations. The regional conferences planned under regionalization would each consist of multiple annual conferences.

However, a number of United Methodist leaders see new urgency for the U.S., Africa, Europe and the Philippines to each be on equal footing now that the Standing Committee on General Conference Matters is developing a draft of a new General Book of Discipline.

That work entails the standing committee — a permanent committee on General Conference — proposing what parts of the Book of Discipline’s Part VI applies to all regions and what they can adapt. Part VI, the Discipline’s largest section, deals with organization and administration.

The goal is to have a shorter, more globally relevant Book of Discipline. Whatever the new General Book of Discipline no longer includes will be subject to adaptation at the regional level. The standing committee’s work is ongoing.

In the meantime, the standing committee invited the Connectional Table — a leadership body that coordinates denomination-wide ministry and resources — to work on developing a structure where U.S. United Methodists could do their adaptive work.

That’s how Wespath staff got involved. Back in 2017, the Connectional Table began discussing two different approaches for how such a structure might work.

One approach was to create a U.S. regional conference with the same authority as central conferences. The other was to create a General Conference legislative committee on U.S. matters, similar to the current Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters.

Judi Kenaston, who then chaired the task force working on the U.S. structure, said Wespath’s leadership was eager to help in the work, and staff members, including Jones and Cynthia Dopke, proved key in combining both approaches.

“Originally, we thought there had to be a choice between creating a committee that would be able to process the legislation but then bring it back to the General Conference plenary for approval, and creating a new regional conference, which required changing the constitution,” Kenaston said. She is now the Connectional Table’s chief connectional officer as well as a General Conference delegate from West Virginia.

“The committee decided to do a two-step process that would provide for the committee while waiting for the constitutional changes to be made. It also meant that the committee could continue to operate even if the constitutional changes were not supported. Wespath personnel were essential in creating this two-step process and helping to craft the legislation so that it would be constitutional.”

The Connectional Table legislation would create a General Conference Committee on U.S. Matters consisting of all U.S. delegates as well as two delegates from each of the seven central conferences in Africa, Europe and the Philippines. If approved, the committee would meet in the days before the next General Conference.

Creating such a committee only requires a simple majority of General Conference voters. It would cease to exist if the amendment creating the U.S. regional conference is ratified.

The Connectional Table’s legislation has since been incorporated in its entirety into the Christmas Covenant proposal and later the standing committee’s Worldwide Regionalization legislation, which builds on the Christmas Covenant work.

The standing committee’s Worldwide Regionalization legislation has the support of the Connectional Table and most of the developers of the Christmas Covenant — a grassroots group of central conference members who see regionalization as a way to keep the denomination together amid different cultural and legal contexts.

Much of the discussion around regionalization has revolved around what it would mean for the denomination’s longtime debate about the place of LGBTQ people in the life of the church. The debate has already led to the exit of 25% of U.S. churches since 2019. 

The short answer is that none of the regionalization proposals even mention homosexuality or alter the denomination’s bans on same-sex marriage or “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy.

The Worldwide Regionalization proposal does spell out that each region would have the freedom to adopt its own ordination requirements, its own regional hymnal and ritual including marriage rites, and its own rules related to chargeable offenses and penalties so long as United Methodists are not deprived of their right to a church trial.

Wespath’s experience shows there are other matters at stake as well.

Jones said he hopes delegates will work together to move regionalization forward.

“If we need to make refinements and improvements to it as we go along then so be it,” he said. “But let’s not lose this opportunity to get something in place that will move us from a colonial nature to a more truly worldwide church.”

Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or  newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free daily or weekly Digests.