Release # 057 {2921} April 25, 1996
DENVER (UMNS) -- United Methodism's chief missions arm will continue to be headquartered in New York City, the church's top legislative assembly said April 25 here.
The decision by a margin of 584 to 354 ended for at least the next four years a debate that has continued for the past eight years. The headquarters is located in the Interchurch Center at 475 Riverside Drive in New York.
In 1992 General Conference approved by a narrow margin a study committee's report that the missions agency should move its headquarters to a site to be chosen during 1993-96. A task force named to conduct that search eventually chose Reston, Va., as the best site to re- locate the board, which has more than 400 employees.
The proposed relocation to Reston would carry a total price tag of about $72 million, according to the committee. Because of the cost, and other factors, the task force recommendation was rejected unanimously in the legislative committee.
Instead, delegates called on a standing committee of the General Council on Ministries and General Council on Finance and Administration to continue its assigned duties of reviewing the suitability of all locations of the denomination's boards and agencies.
Although standing pat on Global Ministries' headquarters site, the conference ended another debate that has spanned 30 years by voting to reorder the church's ministry.
The new plan calls for two separate offices of ordained ministry: deacon, one who pleges to serve God and the church through "word and service" to the community; and elder, who serves through "service, word, sacrament and orders." At present there are both ordained deacons and elders, but the ordination as deacon is usually a first step toward ordination as elder. There also are people consecrated as diaconal ministers.
The two-step ordination for clergy would have been retained by the Council of Bishops that submitted the proposals debated here, but a legislative committee opted for the one-step process for elders and a separate process for deacons. Also rejected was a proposal by the bishops for a new category of "lay ministry steward" -- individuals who feel called to special service.
Also approved April 25 was continuation of a special program on substance abuse and related violence. Launched in 1992, the program coordinates various drug and alcohol education and prevention initiatives across the denomination.
By a vote of 778 to 26, the delegates mandated a national comprehensive plan for town and country to be developed under the oversight of the National Division of the Board of Global Ministries for the 2000 General Conference. The plan would be comparable to the "Holy Boldness" plan for urban ministry developed this quadrennium.
The Conference approved a plan for the National Committee on Deaf Ministries by a vote of 704 to 39. Also approved by a large margin was continuation of the Interagency Task Force on AIDS, pending budgetary approval.
The Judicial Council, the church's "supreme court" re-elected Tom Matheny, Hammond, La., attorney, to an unprecedented sixth term as president. Matheny, first elected to the court in 1972, has been president since 1976.
The Rev. John Corry, Nashville, Tenn., was elected vice president succeeding Sally AsKew, Elberton, Ga., who took the secretary's post vacated by the retiring Wayne Coffin, Oklahoma City.
Lay alternate members of the court elected April 25 included Daniel K. Church, Akron, Ohio; Sally Brown Geis, Denver; Jon R. Gray, Kansas City, Mo.; Ed Hill, Amarillo, Texas; Jack W. Plowman, Pittsburgh; and T. Terrell Sessons, Tampa, Fla. Clergy alternates are the Revs. Charles Brockwell Jr., Louisville, Ky.; Richard W. Cain, Upland, Calif.; John Collins, New Rochelle, N.Y.; Larry Duane Pickens, Chicago; Robert K. Sweet Jr., Reading, Mass.; and the Rev. Jane Tews, Gilbert, Ariz.
After being warmly welcomed to the conference April 24, Bishop Arthur Kulah of Liberia told a news conference April 25 that his life has been in danger in his homeland so often that he thanks God each day for safely arriving home from his office a few miles away.
The bishop, who said he would return to Liberia "to be with my people," warned that the bitter fighting that has plagued Liberia since the end of 1989 could spread to other West African countries unless the United Nations and United States government "take a very decisive role in bringing peace to Liberia."
In another of a series of dramatic events at the 1996 General Conference, a telephone call linked the delegates by trans-Atlantic telephone with Bishop J. Alfred Ndoricimpa who was denied an entrance visa to attend the conference here. "Our churches are growing," Ndoricimpa said from Nairobi, Kenya. "God has been taking care of our people."
--Robert Lear
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