Planners set time for US Regional Conference

Key points:

• Organizers held their first meeting to begin planning The United Methodist Church’s inaugural U.S. Regional Conference.
• The U.S. Regional Conference will bring together all elected U.S. General Conference and jurisdictional conference delegates to make decisions that affect U.S. church operations.
• While excited about the work, conference organizers face some big challenges including finding ways to pay for a gathering that, at this point, has no dedicated funding source.

The United Methodist Church’s first-ever U.S. Regional Conference is now set to take place in spring 2029.

Selecting that time frame was among the first decisions made by the Interim Committee on Organization for the U.S. Regional Conference, which members are calling I-ROC for short.

The 25-member committee, joined by three advisers from outside the U.S., has the task of determining the dates, location and other basic details for the inaugural session of the U.S. Regional Conference, the denomination’s newest decision-making body.

Buzzing with excitement, the interim committee members met together for the first time July 16-18 at the Harry Denman Building, home to the Upper Room Chapel, in Nashville, Tennessee. During the meeting, the interim committee also elected its executive committee, set up subcommittees and adopted a covenant for its work together.

“The energy in this group has been off the charts,” Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi, the meeting’s convener, told the committee members as they began their work on July 18. Moore-Koikoi leads the Eastern Pennsylvania and Greater New Jersey conferences.

“You all have been just incredibly engaged. You have been incredibly joyful,” she added. “This has been one of the more joyful United Methodist meetings that I’ve been to. You’ve been engaged so well with one another.”

The committee members have the big task of planning something never seen before in the United States — a body that can make policies specifically for the nation’s missional context.

Their work is made possible by last year’s ratification of regionalization. The restructuring aims to put the denomination’s different geographical regions on equal footing and make General Conference, the international denomination’s top lawmaking assembly, less U.S. centric.

Many United Methodists also see regionalization as part of a new day in the denomination, allowing each region to make its own decisions around LGBTQ inclusion.

Under regionalization, the eight already-existing central conferences in Africa, Europe and the Philippines have been renamed regional conferences. Outside the U.S., regional conferences also elect bishops.

The major change is the creation of the new U.S. Regional Conference, which will have the same authority — long held by the former central conferences — to adapt parts of the Book of Discipline, the denomination’s policy book, to its own context. Regionalization, among other things, also specifically allows each region to adopt its own marriage rites and ordination standards.

The Interim Committee on Organization is separate from another similarly named body, the United States Regional Committee established under the Discipline’s Paragraph 507. The regional committee, consisting of all U.S. General Conference delegates, will consider all General Conference legislation that pertains solely to the U.S., and report back to General Conference for a vote. It is possible this legislative committee, with the full General Conference’s assent, could refer legislation to the U.S. Regional Conference.

The interim committee’s voting members — selected by the Council of Bishops — come from all five U.S. jurisdictions, which will still be the bodies that elect U.S. bishops even with the formation of the new regional conference.

The committee also includes three advisers from the Philippines, Switzerland and Western Angola — parts of the church long experienced with the kind of decision-making body that the committee is now forming in the U.S. All members also are recent General Conference delegates.

During the meeting, committee members heard from the Rev. Joseph Estadilla of the Philippines and Christine Schneider of Switzerland about how their respective regional conferences do their work.

“It’s such a privilege to get to build this new thing that the church has worked so long to bring to fruition,” the Rev. Emily Kincaid told UM News. She is the committee’s newly elected secretary and executive pastor at First United Methodist Church in Pensacola, Florida.

The Rev. Sung Chung, cabinet executive and dean of the Western Pennsylvania Conference cabinet, shared a similar sentiment.

“I think we are very open to where God is leading us in a new stage,” he said, “and so I’m excited for this venture.”

As the interim committee is planning the first U.S. Regional Conference, a different group — the Standing Committee on Regional Conference Matters Outside the USA — is finalizing proposals around what can be adapted in the Discipline’s section dealing with administration and what should apply worldwide.

Whatever General Conference decides about the standing committee’s proposals will have an impact on what policies regional conferences can adopt going forward. The legislative assembly is scheduled to meet May 8-16, 2028.

In the meantime, the committee planning the U.S. Regional Conference has plenty of details to iron out.

The Book of Discipline calls for the regional conference to bring together all the U.S. General Conference and jurisdictional delegates as well as their reserves. The Rev. Aleze Fulbright, the outgoing General Conference secretary, told the committee that means the gathering must accommodate more than 700 voting delegates and their reserves.

Rick King, chief financial officer for the General Council on Finance and Administration, estimates that the cost of travel and accommodations for those delegates over a four-day meeting would cost between $1.5 and $1.7 million. 

However, the already existing regional conferences do not receive direct support from apportionments — shares of church giving that support denomination-wide ministries. The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries provides some financial support for regional conference meetings in Africa. The Episcopal Fund, which does receive apportionments, covers bishops’ travel costs. 

However, aside from coverage for the bishops to attend, there is no dedicated source of funding for the U.S. Regional Conference. That means the committee will have to find other ways to raise money for this first meeting — possibly looking to U.S. annual conference and jurisdictional conference budgets for support.

Early in their meeting, the committee members named stewardship of resources as one of their primary values.

Being good stewards of both church funds and delegates’ time and energy weighed heavily in members’ discussion of the various times when they could hold the regional conference.

The Book of Discipline requires regional conferences to meet within a year after General Conference.

The members considered scheduling the regional conference to follow immediately after jurisdictional conferences, which will elect bishops July 12-15, 2028. They also considered holding the gathering in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when many people are on vacation and students are out of school. Finally, they considered meeting in the spring 2029, either before or after Easter, which is on April 1 that year.

Committee members were cognizant that those elected to serve as delegates will be required to take time off to attend three big church meetings — General Conference, jurisdictional conference and now regional conference. Only the U.S. has jurisdictional conferences.

All options had both advantages and disadvantages, and committee members took their time considering those.

“I’m glad we’re not rushing,” the Rev. April Casperson told UM News. She is the director of enrollment management at United Methodist-related Methodist Theological School in Ohio.

“We’re trying to balance financial stewardship with building relationships, but there is a genuine spirit of collaboration and information sharing.”

Most of the five jurisdictional conferences already have contracts to meet at five separate locations across the U.S. Trying to bring everyone together in one place would involve breaking contracts.

Meeting around Christmas brings added travel costs and the possibility that winter storms could leave delegates stranded at the airport.

Ultimately, the committee narrowed down the options to spring 2029.

Although the vote was not unanimous, members committed to press forward together toward those dates. The committee’s newly elected executive committee will help narrow down whether the U.S. Regional Conference will take place during Lent or after Easter.

“When we walked in here, for the most part, we didn’t know each other,” said the Rev. Phil Rogers, pastor of Shepherd of the Hills United Methodist Church in St. George, Utah. “And now it feels like we’re a fairly cohesive group. And I’m really grateful to God for that gift.”

The group’s subcommittees dealing with finance, logistics, programs and rules plan to start meeting online. The committee also has about $45,000 funding already allotted for another in-person meeting.

“I feel assured that we have some gifted leaders that have come together,” said the Rev. Kim Jenne, the committee’s newly elected chair. “As usual, Christ continues to draw leaders forth, and I think we’re up to the task.”

Jenne is the director of connectional ministries and assistant to the bishop in the Missouri Conference.

“We’ve got some challenges to work through,” she added. “But we’re going to do it with joy; we’re going to do it with love, and we’re going to do it with courage.”

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