United Methodist Church
General Conference 2004

Pittsburgh, April 27–May 7

The General Council
on Finance and Administration

Bold re-visioning of the General Church will not be considered at the 2004 General Conference. A Reconfiguration Task Force made recommendations to the 2000 General Conference which were resoundingly defeated. While the recommendations under consideration are not as sweeping this year, their impact would be significant.

The General Council on Finance and Administration recommends altering the formula used to determine the number of Bishops assigned to each Jurisdiction. The proposal would mean that every jurisdiction, except the Southeastern, would elect one less Bishop at Jurisdictional Conferences. If it passes, 9 Bishops (2 elected this year) would serve the 12 conferences in the US Midwest. The GCFA hopes to reduce expenditures from the Episcopal Fund, which is saddled with extraordinary retiree medical costs for the 90 retired Bishops (there are 50 active Bishops in the US and 18 active Bishops abroad). If the resolution passes, the Jurisdictional Conferences, meeting 2 months later, would determine which conferences would share a Bishop. There is much speculation that Northern Illinois Conference may share a Bishop, perhaps with Illinois Great Rivers Conference or the Wisconsin Conference.

The General Council on Ministries (GCOM) is proposing merging with the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA). The functions assigned to each body would accrue to the new entity. The one "Connectional Table" would control monetary and ministerial direction for the several general agencies (except the Publishing House and the general Board of Pensions). This is a scaled down version of the original concept by GCOM, which called for merging almost all general agencies into one body managed by a board of about 150 persons. Reacting to strong resistance from the Board of Discipleship, among others, the single agency idea was dropped, and the "Living Into the Future" proposal is a replacement. One representative from each annual conference, 3 from central conferences, the heads of each general agency, 14 Bishops and 12 at-large members would serve on the new entity. GCFA is not co-sponsoring the recommendation with GCOM.

The quadrennial budget will be a point of considerable discussion. GCFA intentionally spent reserve funds for all agencies in the last quadrennium. General church apportionments are to increase slightly (except for the Episcopal Fund, which will see a 24% increase). In effect, general agency budgets, in aggregate, are being reduced by the amount of reserve funds spent in the last quadrennium. GCFA feels strongly that larger general church apportionments would not be sustained by the annual conferences. As is customary, the budget presented by GCFA includes only those items the Discipline requires in the next quadrennium. Additional requests, for items such as renewing the Igniting Ministry campaign for another 4 years, are not yet integrated into the total request and could dramatically impact the final expenditure figures.

This General Conference will consider significant proposals on the Episcopal services offered annual conferences and on the centralization of control over the several general agencies. The narrowing of resources indicates a broadly held desire to constrain general agency expansion, largely from GCFA’s concerns for cost containment.

Lonnie Chafin, Conference Treasurer