icle II. Name.--The name of the Church shall be The
¶ 15. Article IV.--The General Conference shall have full legislative power over all matters distinctively connectional, and in the exercise of this power shall have authority as follows:181. To define and fix the conditions, privileges, and duties of Church membership which shall in every case be without reference to race or status.19
2. To define and fix the powers and duties of elders, deacons, supply preachers, local preachers, exhorters, and deaconesses.20
3. To define and fix the powers and duties of annual conferences, provisional annual conferences, missionary conferences and missions, and of central conferences, district conferences, charge conferences, and congregational meetings.21
4. To provide for the organization, promotion, and administration of the work of the Church outside the United States of America.22
5. To define and fix the powers, duties, and privileges of the episcopacy, to adopt a plan for the support of the bishops, to provide a uniform rule for their retirement, and to provide for the discontinuance of a bishop because of inefficiency or unacceptability.23
6. To provide and revise the hymnal and ritual of the Church and to regulate all matters relating to the form and mode of worship, subject to the limitations of the first and second Restrictive Rules.
7. To provide a judicial system and a method of judicial procedure for the Church, except as herein otherwise prescribed.
8. To initiate and to direct all connectional enterprises of the Church and to provide boards for their promotion and administration.24
9. To determine and provide for raising and distributing funds necessary to carry on the work of the Church.25
10. To fix a uniform basis upon which bishops shall be elected by the jurisdictional conferences and to determine the number of bishops that may be elected by central conferences.26
11. To select its presiding officers from the bishops, through a committee; provided that the bishops shall select from their own number the presiding officer of the opening session.27
12. To change the number and the boundaries of jurisdictional conferences upon the consent of a majority of the annual conferences in each jurisdictional conference involved.28
13. To establish such commissions for the general work of the Church as may be deemed advisable.
14. To secure the rights and privileges of membership in all agencies, programs, and institutions in The United Methodist Church regardless of race or status.29
15. To enact such other legislation as may be necessary, subject to
the limitations and restrictions of the Constitution of the Church.30
18See Judicial Council Decisions 96, 232, 236, 318, 325, 544.
19See Judicial Council Decision 558.
20See Judicial Council Decisions 58, 313.
21See Judicial Council Decision 411.
22See Judicial Council Decision 182; amended 1976.
23See Judicial Council Decisions 35, 114, 312, 365, 413.
24See Judicial Council Decisions 214, 364, 411.
25See Judicial Council Decision 30.
26See Judicial Council Decision 598.
27See Judicial Council Decision 126.
28See Judicial Council Decisions 55, 56, 215.
29See Decisions, 4, 5, Interim Judicial Council, Judicial Council Decisions 427, 433, 442, 451, 540, 558,
567, 588, 594.
30See Judicial Council Decision 215.
General Conference Webmaster: Susan Brumbaugh
PETS Creator: John Brawn
1992 Book of Discipline: ¶ 15
1996 United Methodist General Conference