Article Retracted

May 18, 2015

10:17 AM

Upon the discovery of several unintentional errors, a previous article, "Plan UMC Originators Are Men of Their Times," has been retracted and deleted from this website. While I stand by my original thesis -- that Plan UMC is a restructure proposal created by church insiders for the benefit of church insiders -- I find that my errors in memory are sufficient to warrant retraction of the article, along with apologies to the Rev. Don Underwood, the Rev. Clayton Oliphint, the Rev. Morris Mathis, Dr. Don House, Lonnie D. Brooks and Joe Whittemore for the errors.

-- Cynthia B. Astle, UM Insight Coordinator

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PLAN UMC CREATORS

Cynthia, with great respect for our long friendship, I think you've misrepresented the the facts about the origin of Plan UMC. It was the product of a host of people, a whole bunch of whom were not white men from Texas. The Call to Action that started the ball rolling came from the Council of Bishops; the Connectional Table, with cooperation from the COB, formed the Interim Operations Team; the IOT commissioned the Towers Watson and APEX reports; those reports, along with the Call to Action triggered the IOT Plan which was submitted by the CT; the IOT Plan triggered Plan B and the MFSA Plan; the Plan B team negotiated with MFSA folks to include some elements of the MFSA Plan into Plan B; the IOT Plan and Plan B were merged to form Plan UMC; Plan UMC was amended significantly in plenary by Julius Nelson, the leader of the delegation from Liberia, to increase the African representation on general agencies; and that plan was approved by a 60% vote in plenary.

I don't think there has ever been a more broadly originated piece of legislation to be carried by a General Conference than that one.

LONNIE D. BROOKS more than 10 years ago