2013 New England Annual Conference & A Call for Accountability

Today,…With a car stuffed with T-shirts, water, traffic cones, and assorted race sundries…, I head off to the New England Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.

For those of you outside of the Methodist fold, the Annual Conference is a unique beast.   For those of you who may not have met this beast; each conference represents a geographic division and is composed of equal numbers clergy and lay representatives from the local church.    For Methodists, the Annual Conference is the primary unit of denominational governance and the foundation of our connection with every other Methodist.

The Constitution of the UMC states it this way:

“The annual conference is the basic body in the Church and as such shall have reserved to it the right to vote on all constitutional amendments, on the election of clergy and lay delegates to the General and the jurisdictional or central conferences, on all matters relating to the character and conference relations of its clergy members, (¶ 33. Article II)

But it is so much more than that.

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