Is the General Conference Delay Legal?

The further delay of the United Methodist Church General Conference raises a number of questions. One of those questions is whether the Church’s Constitution has been violated. We were told by the Commission on General Conference in March that the already delayed meeting of the 2020 General Conference, which was scheduled for later this year, cannot be held due to ongoing constraints related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This additional postponement was met with frustration by those eager for resolution to ongoing denominational conflict and lack of accountability. The chief reason given was a backlog in visa applications, which might hinder some international delegates from attending the meeting. There is now no plan to hold General Conference before 2024. But it’s hardly clear that the members of the Commission have the authority to delay General Conference beyond the quadrennium. To the contrary, it would seem they do not. 

What may the Commission do? 

Let’s begin with a look at the Commission’s responsibilities under the 2016 Book of Discipline. It’s important to note that the Constitution of the United Methodist Church requires that the General Conference shall meet once every four years (Section II, Article II; ¶14). The Commission on General Conference is authorized to set the location and dates of General Conference up to four quadrennia in advance (¶511.4). Now here’s a crucial point: the Discipline authorizes the Commission to set the quadrennial dates and location of General Conference up to sixteen years ahead of time, but the Discipline does not authorize the Commission to delay the meeting of the General Conference beyond the quadrennium. That is to say, if the Commission on General Conference fails to schedule a meeting of the General Conference every four years, then the Commission has violated the Constitution of the United Methodist Church. This is precisely what happened. The Commission’s authority to schedule General Conference is not authority to delay General Conference.

What has the Commission done? 

It is important to remember that the Commission has attempted to justify the delay of General Conference by appealing to ¶511.4.d of the Discipline, which charges the Commission with taking “necessary measures to assure full participation of all General Conference delegates.” When the Commission delayed General Conference for the third time, part of the rationale was that they couldn’t assure maximum delegate participation due to global travel restrictions. But the point must be made that the Discipline does not provide for the cancellation or delay of the quadrennial meeting of General Conference due to the possibility that some delegates may have difficulty getting there. Rather than assuring “full participation of all General Conference delegates,” the Commission has assured no participation of any General Conference delegate. In direct contradiction to our Discipline, the Commission on General Conference has taken away the voice and vote of all delegates to General Conference. In effect, the members of the Commission have disenfranchised the one body authorized to speak for the United Methodist Church. 

What are the consequences?

The effects of this delay are significant, since the General Conference was set to consider The Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation, which would have provided a uniform and denomination-wide process to govern the movement of local churches from the United Methodist Church to the Global Methodist Church and any other denominations formed under the Protocol. This plan would also have significantly decreased the cost of disaffiliation by transferring the local church’s pension liability to the new denomination. The Protocol had support from both sides of the conflict and was likely to gain General Conference approval in some form. But that won’t happen now. The Protocol is dead. 

The consequence is that the process for disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church will now vary from one annual conference to another. The Council of Bishops has decided to use ¶2553 for all disaffiliations, and the Judicial Council has deemed ¶2553 to provide minimum requirements for disaffiliation, although these may be increased at the discretion of annual conference officials. Thankfully, we have some bishops who desire a peaceful and amicable process and are eager to help all churches get where they want to be. That posture is to be commended and is a model of charity which others should follow. Other bishops, however, have already indicated that there will be significant additional costs to disaffiliating churches beyond those defined in ¶2553. This inconsistency would have been avoided had General Conference been allowed to convene and consider the Protocol. But the failure of the Commission on General Conference to keep its disciplinary mandate to hold General Conference every four years has created a situation in which churches across the denomination stand to lose millions of dollars beyond the minimum cost of disaffiliation. If the Commission violated the Constitution of the United Methodist Church, then those churches have cause for complaint because their duly elected delegates to General Conference were stripped of their right to consider a uniform and potentially less expensive plan for separation. And while it’s true that General Conference might have rejected the Protocol, the problem is that we’ll never know, because the one body that speaks for the Church has been silenced by a committee.  

What should be done now?

We are left with the question of what to do in light of these circumstances. Unfortunately, there seems no way to counteract the Commission’s violation of the Discipline, unless the Council of Bishops calls a special session of General Conference to act on the Protocol.  Despite these unfavorable circumstances, annual conferences still have the power to make the Commission’s defiance of church law a matter of record by asking the Judicial Council for a declaratory decision on the constitutionality of delaying General Conference an entire quadrennium. The process to request such a decision is straightforward. Any annual conference delegate – lay or clergy – may make a motion on the floor of his or her annual conference session asking the conference to request a declaratory decision on (1) whether the Constitution of the United Methodist Church allows for the delay of General Conference beyond the quadrennium and (2) whether the Commission on General Conference violated the Constitution of the United Methodist Church and the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church by failing to set a date for the quadrennial meeting of General Conference. If that motion is affirmed by the voting body of the annual conference, the Secretary of the Annual Conference will submit the request to the Judicial Council for consideration. 

Now some might object by saying, “It’s done. Why drag it out any longer?” But consider a possible scenario. If history is any guide, a number of disaffiliation disputes are likely to be adjudicated in the courts. This has been the case in other denominations that have split under similar circumstances, and it’s already been the case in the North Georgia Annual Conference where the bishop sued one local church for millions of dollars in assets. The parties involved in that suit have now reached a settlement; nevertheless, the likelihood remains that some United Methodist disaffiliations will end up in the courts. If the Commission on General Conference, as an agent of the United Methodist Church, violated the Constitution of the United Methodist Church, then the argument could be made that the denomination has essentially breached its contract with its constituents. In that case, our constituting documents have been broken. A local church could argue in court that its elected delegates were unlawfully denied the opportunity to consider the Protocol, a breach with potentially significant negative financial implications for local churches. A necessary first step would be a Judicial Council decision that the Commission has, in fact, violated the Discipline. To set this process in motion, annual conferences should ask the Judicial Council to review the constitutionality of the General Conference delay. That decision might carry weight in legal disputes over local church disaffiliations.

In the end, we find ourselves in a situation in which ecclesial order is a thing of the past. This situation lacks integrity and is unacceptable. And it will only deepen the fracturing of the Church. If General Conference does not meet, it cannot speak on behalf of the United Methodist Church to guide us in this difficult and painful season. We are in this regrettable state because the body required by the Discipline to set a date for General Conference to meet – once every four years – has refused to do so. It now remains for annual conferences to hold the Commission accountable by making this constitutional violation a matter of judicial record. 

Matt O’Reilly is an ordained elder in the Alabama-West Florida Conference, Lead Pastor of Hope Hull United Methodist Church, and Director of Research at Wesley Biblical Seminary. He is the author of Paul and the Resurrected Body (SBL Press) and The Letters to the Thessalonians (Seedbed). Connect at theologyproject.online.

Church LifeMatt O’Reilly12 Comments