UMC General Conference 2024
The General Conference of the United Methodist Church met from April 23 through May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Meeting every four years, General Conference is the only entity that speaks for the denomination. The United Methodist Book of Discipline, updated every four years, incorporates changes made by General Conference. Delegates from Africa, Europe, Asia and the U.S. attended the 11-day gathering to set policy and direction for the church, as well as handle other important business.
We encourage you to read about what happened at General Conference and refer to the links below providing trustworthy and accurate sources for the news from the General Conference. Please contact Pastor John at email at pastorjohn@stmatthewsvf.org with any questions.
WHAT
General Conference is the top governing body of the United Methodist Church. It meets every four years to decide, update, and revise church policy (except for certain restricted constitutional statements). In the time leading up to General Conference, members of United Methodist churches, clergy, annual conferences, and General Church agencies and boards (like the Board of Discipleship, Finance and Administration, etc.) can submit petitions on changes, revisions, or additions to the Book of Discipline (our guiding document of procedures and structure). Those petitions are then organized by topic, assigned to committees for review (to combine like petitions, etc.), and then are brought to the main sessions for final decision. General Conference also decides how we will pay for that work by approving a budget – which is then “apportioned” to the annual conference and local churches.
WHO
General Conference is made up of delegates from all over the world. Delegates are members of United Methodist churches (or in the case of clergy, members of their Annual Conference). Each “area” has an elected delegation. We are in the Eastern Pennsylvania Area, which runs from Philadelphia to Lancaster, up to Scranton, and over to Easton. Because of the number of members in Eastern Pennsylvania churches, we are apportioned 8 delegates to General Conference (4 clergy and four laity).
WHERE
In 2019, a called Special General Conference met in St. Louis, Missouri. The April 23 to May 3 meeting will be in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sites are selected based on the ability to host meetings of 1,000 people, house and feed that many people for 10 days, and have adequate access international transportation available to the site by delegates from around the world.
WHY
The founder of the “Methodist Movement” was John Wesley. Beginning in 1744, he met annually with his preachers, assigned to “charges,” to “confer” on matters of their common ministry. [Hence the word Annual Conference and Charge Conference in our polity.] Wesley would ask three questions: “What do we teach? How do we teach? What do we do?” And ever since those questions were first asked, they have remained the essence of what happens at each United Methodist General Conference.
Resources
There will be a lot of information in the press about our General Conference. Some reports will be helpful, others may be well-meaning, but inaccurate. Still, others might be biased. Below are a few official denomination sites that you can access to find out what is actually being said and decided. Each one has a basic explanation of how that site is related to our denomination so you know who is sharing that information.
UMC.ORG
This is the official site of The United Methodist Church, where one can gain an understanding of who we are as “the people called Methodist.” For General Conference information visit:
UPPER ROOM
While The Upper Room seeks to enable all Christians to walk with God, it is also our denomination’s devotional “chapel.” Since there has been so much turmoil in our denomination in recent years, and there will be important decisions about the future of our denomination made at General Conference, the Upper Room created a General Conference prayer guide for United Methodists to use beginning April 7.
UM NEWS Website
This official news site of The United Methodist church has information about all kinds of things we are doing in mission and ministry, as well as issues that effect our ability to do mission and ministry. It has a great article that further explains General Conference.
RESOURCE UMC
This site is an official information site of the United Methodist Church. It gives a lot of information that is helpful to understanding what is happening at General Conference, including an overview and video presentation of what it is and does.