newsletter

As many of you know, Central is a congregation of the United Methodist Church, and for the first half of next week, our staff will be attending the Texas Annual Conference, a yearly business meeting for our geographical area of the UMC. We’ll spend some time connecting with other churches, approving things like salaries and budgets, learning from keynote speakers, and more. You can learn more about the work of annual conferences in general HERE and the themes and schedule for this year’s conference HERE. There are also a couple of events that members of our staff will be involved in that are open to anyone, and we’d love for folks to come if you’re able! You can read more about those below.

This year, our conference will be voting on four proposed amendments to change the Constitution in the United Methodist Book of Discipline, the document that governs the UMC worldwide. These proposed changes won’t affect the day-to-day work of Central in a huge way, but as a UMC congregation, we still want our folks to be as informed as you want to be! The most significant issue we’ll be voting on is related to worldwide regionalization of the UMC. This is an effort to create new regional conferences that will each have equal power to adapt portions of the Book of Discipline within their respective regions. The U.S. would become its own Regional Conference, allowing it to make decisions that contextually address outreach and ministry needs. This would help our denomination as a whole to be less U.S.-centric and more flexible and context-specific. We’ll also be voting on amendments related to gender/disability inclusion, racial justice, and educational requirements for clergy members. If you’re interested in learning more about these amendments, you can find resources HERE.

If you have any questions about anything related to conference, including any of the amendments we’ll be voting on, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or Michael!

-Pastor Julia