Welcome to United Methodist Insight

December 6, 2011

4:35 PM

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Welcome to United Methodist Insight, an educational project conceived and developed by United Methodists profoundly concerned about the future of our global denomination.

Many proposals for how we live and serve together as a global church will come before the 2012 General Conference April 24-May 4 in Tampa, Florida. For more than a year there have been discussions, reports, blogs and more on reorganizing the church's structure, ministry, and systems. We seek new understandings of how we relate to one another around the world, how we evaluate the effectiveness of our ministry and how we go about God's missions.

This website is intended to bring wide-ranging reports, analyses and opinions together in a single place for the benefit of General Conference delegates and those concerned about the church's future. UM Insight is intended to be educational. It has no official ties to any of the church's various caucuses or organizations. It is not funded by any church-related organization. Most of all, it will not advocate for any proposal or position on General Conference legislation.

Instead, UM Insight will publish as wide a range of alternatives and perspectives as it can locate in the next five months to help prepare decision-makers and influencers for the global legislative assembly. The project will ask sharply focused questions about various proposals in order to provide as many facts as possible to help delegates discern the potential effects of the alternatives presented to them.

Above all, our goal is to give all United Methodists with an open, transparent and easily accessed forum for information and discernment leading up to the 2012 General Conference. Readers are invited to comment, recommend articles and essays for reprinting, and suggest ways in which United Methodist Insight can serve the church better as we prepare to shape our future.

For further details, please see our About Us page.

Cynthia B. Astle, Project Coordinator

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Response to Western Jurisdiction proposal

A modest response to the proposal from the Western Jurisdiction

By J. Richard Peck

The College of Bishops of the Western Jurisdiction proposed a helpful alternative structure for us to consider.

The Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops proposes that each of the five offices proposed by Connectional Table be governed by 15-member boards and three members of each board would be named to a 15-member coordinating body.

The bishops also suggest that the role played by COSROW and GCRR be continued in some fashion

Assuming that COROW and GCRR are continued as separate agencies with their own 15-member board of directors, there would be little reason to un-incorporate or re-name GBCS, GBGM, GBSC or GBOD; just change their present governing boards to 15-member boards that might each be composed of 5 persons from the jurisdictional pools, three central conference representatives, two bishops and five members chosen at large.
Each group––including COSROW and GCRR––would name three people to a coordinating council.

That leaves the fifth office composed of GCFA, GCAH, and UMCom. The college proposal does not address the traditional practice of separating finance from program, so why not continue these three agencies with each having a 15-member board of directors with three representatives to the coordinating council?

Under this plan GCUMM and UMW could fit into an identical structure with 15-member boards and three representatives each.

If the top staff executives of Pensions and the Publishing House were to be added to the coordinating council, that council would consist of 35 people. Those 35 could name ten persons based on the need for ethnic or regional balance to form a 45-member council.

Peck is a retired New York Conference clergy member who has attended 11 General Conference sessions and he served as editor of the Daily Christian Advocate at four of the sessions. He served as the staff member of the legislative committee of Connectional Table that prepared the legislation based on the Call to Action report. He presently serves as communications coordinator for the General Commission on United Methodist Men

richpeck27@hotmail.com

Rich Peck more than 14 years ago