Category: Kansas East Conference

Jenny and I, along with your lay delegates, Steve Schwarting and Pam Jackson, will be heading over to Salina next week for the Great Plains Uniting Conference. If all goes as planned the Kansas East, Kansas West, and Nebraska Annual Conferences will approve a plan to create the Great Plains Annual Conference encompassing all of Kansas and Nebraska. You can head over to greatplainsumc.org for more information.

If you’re interested, the seventh draft of the Plan of Organization for the new Great Plains Annual Conference, combining the Kansas East Conference, the Kansas West Conference, and the Nebraska Conference can be found here.

Delegates to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference unanimously approved the creating of the Great Plains Annual Conference by the union of the Kansas East Annual Conference, the Kansas West Annual Conference, and the Nebraska Annual Conference. Even though the plan had been previously approved by all three annual conferences, it had to be formally approved Jurisdictional Conference.

Bishop Scott Jones (our current bishop) has been assigned to the Great Plains Episcopal Area (which consists of Kansas and Nebraska, just like the new conference will). Kansas East, Kansas West, and Nebraska will continue as three separate annual conferences for the time being with a uniting conference in 2013.

We just received the results of the vote to merge the Kansas East, Kansas West, and Nebraska Annual Conferences and create a new Great Plains Annual Conference on January 1, 2014. All three conferences, voting independently, approved the new annual conference, by a wide margin. The results of this vote will be far-reaching for all three annual conferences. Within the local church the effects will also be far-reaching, but probably not directly noticeable.

Jenny and I are at Annual Conference. I’ve already found three helpful resources. I’m avoiding entirely new projects and instead looking for ways to improve our existing programs.

The following is excerpted form the Session Summary of the 2011 Kansas East Annual Conference. I was back for a funeral and missed the opportunity to vote, but I think the possibility of a new conference encompassing all of Kansas and Nebraska will be beneficial to the churches and clergy involved, but it probably won’t involve any changes you’ll see on a daily or weekly basis.

The Kansas-Nebraska Transition Team has spent a year discussing the deep changes that are needed to make the United Methodist Church in Kansas & Nebraska relevant to today’s mission field. They believe that our conferences have been given a real opportunity to rethink how we organize for fulfilling the mission of the church. … The Transition Team reported that after much prayer and discussion, they concluded that the best choice is for the three conferences in Kansas and Nebraska to combine to form one conference because dealing with the structures of three conferences would get in the way of the missional work to be done.

… A “five-finger” vote was taken to gauge the depth of the support for the one-conference recommendation. The same vote was taken in the Kansas West and Nebraska annual conference sessions,

When the votes were counted, 86 Kansas East clergy and 106 laity (192 ballots, 44.2 percent) marked five fingers [indicating “I am in full support of becoming one conference”], 52 clergy and 92 laity (144 ballots, 33.2 percent) marked four fingers [meaning “I am supportive of becoming one conference, however, I have a few questions.”], 23 clergy and 33 laity (56 ballots, 12.9 percent) marked three fingers [indicating “I am supportive of becoming one conference, but I have many questions.”], 15 clergy and 15 laity (30 ballots, 6.9 percent) marked two fingers [meaning “I am opposed to becoming one conference, but I am not willing to halt the process.”] and 9 clergy and 3 laity (12 ballots, 2.8 percent) marked one finger [meaning “I am opposed to becoming one conference as it is currently presented.”]. The results in Kansas West and Nebraska also supported the one-conference recommendation, although the numbers were not as high as in Kansas East.

 

A summary of this year’s Kansas East Annual Conference is now available at the conference website in pdf format.

I want to take a moment of personal privilege to brag on my daughter Elizabeth. She and a friend, Isabel Bousson, served as acolytes at the ordination service tonight at annual conference. They both did a great job.

Bishop Jones has an excellent article on conferencing as a means of grace that explains the theological import of what goes on at Annual Conference and hopefully what also goes on in meetings of our local congregation.