We started our day with a devotional moment that turned into a holy moment of worship. We began by hearing from Dr. Luther Oconer, professor of Global Wesleyan Theology at Asbury Seminary. His text was from Acts 6:1-7 and he talked, somewhat in jest, but also with some seriousness how this passage may have described the disciples’ “Convening General Conference”. He spoke about how in this passage we see the native Hebrew converts to the faith making room for the Hellenistic Jews who had come to profess Christ. He challenged us to make room for all at the table. And how we need to operate from a place of trust instead of a place of fear. And how we needed to be a people full of the Spirit. And that God’s way is better than our way. After his message, he led the assembly down to the altar to worship.

As we headed into plenary, Bishop Webb reminded us that were were not moving into business but that the work that we were doing was a continuation of the work that God had already been doing. That it was about God having his way in our General Conference.

And it was a big day of movement. There were several consent items that passed, and a few other items with minimal discussion. However, there were three significant petitions that were passed today.

The first was the passage of our Constitution. While we are a church, led by the Holy Spirit, our organization functions in a governmental style. We need a constitution to help us organize our efforts. Items that are in the constitution are by design extremely difficult to change which is why they must be our most foundational values and that we must make sure we get it right. As part of our discussion, I was able to go to the floor and offer an amendment that eventually made it into our final Constitution.

While there are several helpful parts in our constitution, I think one of the most significant is this sentence from Article V.2: The right of a local church to be free from a forced closure or trust clause shall not be abrogated. This means that a trust clause will not be a part of our church and churches will control their property.

The second significant action that we took was to determine how we will elect full-time bishops in 2026. It is a complicated process, so I will give you the high points:

1. Each Delegation can nominate 1 person from their Annual Conference and 1 person from another Annual Conference.
2. Bishops must be elected by 60% of the body and are elected to a particular episcopal area which is approximately 6-8 Annual Conferences.
3. Bishops may only serve 2 six-year terms.
4. Only half of those elected this year can stand for election in 2026
5. Bishop Jones and Bishop Webb (or standing bishops) have been granted exceptions from these rules.

Overall, I think our new model is great. It gives us a flexible episcopacy and does not increase our connectional giving. It also means that bishops are not elected for life. After they end their term(s) they become “bishop emeriti”. 

Our third and final action for the day was to approve the plan for THIS election cycle so that we leave here with interim bishops to help Jones and Webb with their work. We determined to elect 6 part-time bishops who would serve for the next 2 years as interim. We voted to allow all of those already nominated to stand for election and also that each delegation that had not submitted a nominee could do so by tomorrow morning. Our delegation decided not to put a name forward. We will begin elections sometime tomorrow afternoon.

My committee (Ministry and Local Church) still has most of their work to propose, so it will be a busy day of conversations around the requirements for ordination and the ordering of our life as a church. We also still have a few committees that still need to be populated with members.

There seems to be a realization for our delegates that we are building something that will last way beyond us for generations to come. There is a good spirit here. We are all going in the same direction, we just don’t always agree on the best way to get there. However, we are working together and there is a collegiality even when we disagree. I am excited to see how God moves us to act tomorrow!