The Praying Our Way Forward team of the Council of Bishops has released details of a Day of Prayer, which will take place from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. CST in the St. Louis America’s Center Convention Complex on Saturday, February 23, the first day of the 2019 Special Session of General Conference. The event will be live-streamed at www.umc.org/live. The denomination-wide 'Praying Our Way Forward' initiative launched on New Year’s Day 2017 with 75 weeks of focused prayer for The United Methodist ...

Self-Nomination Process Opens February 1 for Clergy, Remains Open for Laity and Clergy Through March 4 Members of the North Georgia Annual Conference will elect delegates to the 2020 General and Jurisdictional Conferences during the 2019 Annual Conference Session, June 11-14, at the Classic Center in Athens.  General Conference is the global gathering of The United Methodist Church where mission and ministry priorities are established and The Book of Discipline is reviewed for revisions. ...

Photo: North Georgia's Delegation at work at their final gathering before the 2019 Special General Conference By SYBIL DAVIDSON   North Georgia's delegation to General Conference 2019 has been preparing for their work in St. Louis for more than a year. They held their final in-person meeting last month.  Gathering at Mount Pisgah UMC in Johns Creek, delegation chair Mathew Pinson offered the devotional. Pinson was elected to the role in 2015 for the 2016 General Conference and reaffirmed for ...

The Advance Edition of the Daily Christian Advocate (ADCA), the official journal of the General Conference of The United Methodist Church is accessible online now. The Book of Discipline requires that the ADCA be available to delegates at least 90 days before the opening day of General Conference. For the 2019 Special Session, which officially opens February 24th in St. Louis, that date is November 26. “At their October meeting, the Commission on the General Conference voted to release the ADCA ...

In a decision released October 26, the United Methodist Judicial Council found the the One Church Plan to be largely constitutional, the Traditional Plan was found to have significant constitutional problems, and the Judicial Council deemed that it did not have jurisdiction over the Connectional Plan. Using the General Conference legislative process, individual members of the Commission on a Way Forward will work alongside delegates to think through how all three plans might be amended based ...

The final report of the Commission on a Way Forward has been released in all four official languages of the General Conference: English, French, Portuguese and Swahili. The report will be presented to the 2019 Special Session of General Conference. Subject to final copy editing, the report will be printed in the Advance Daily Christian Advocate (ADCA) in November. Here is a statement from the moderators of the Commission and the President of the Council of Bishops on the release of the report: ...

Nashville, Tenn.: The final report of the Commission on a Way Forward to the Special Session of the General Conference in 2019 will become available once it has been translated from English into the other three official languages of The United Methodist Church (French, Portuguese, and KiSwahili), anticipated by July 30. "The Commission on the General Conference and the Council of Bishops join the whole church in the desire that everyone within the United Methodist family have access to these ...

The Council of Bishops, in partnership with The Upper Room, is launching Phase 3 of Praying our Way Forward. Phase 1 involved 84 members of the Council of Bishops praying for The United Methodist Church’s way forward for 15 minutes daily, from August to December 2016. This was followed by Phase 2, which resulted in 18 continuous months of daily individual and corporate prayer by faithful members of annual conferences around the globe. North Georgia United Methodists held a week of prayer March ...

Rev. Jasmine Smothers of the North Georgia Conference has served on the 32-member commission. (Photo courtesy of Commission on a Way Forward) NASHVILLE, Tennessee — The 32-member Commission on a Way Forward for The United Methodist Church concluded its ninth and final meeting in Nashville May 16. The Commission met nine times over 17 months. The Commission reviewed a wide variety of petitions presented as legislation to previous General Conferences regarding human sexuality and examined how ...

May 7, 2018 WASHINGTON, D. C.  The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church has completed canvassing the votes of annual conferences on the five constitutional amendments that were approved by the 2016 General Conference.  Summary of Votes by Annual Conferences Amendment Total "Yes"  Votes Total "No" Votes % of Yes Votes Amendment I 31,304 15,753 66.5% Amendment II 29,049 18,317 61.3% Amendment III 42,639 4,578 90.3% Amendment IV 43,770 3,340 92.9% Amendment V 38,087 ...