Methodist Council

We’re back at High Leigh Conference Centre in Hertfordshire, this time for the Methodist Council. There are two significant differences between our last meeting here for the Connexional Leaders Forum in January. The snow has gone (compare this picture with the earlier one on the blog), although it feels just as cold outside, and the paperwork for this meeting is significantly greater, a few pages for CLF compared with an inch thick agenda of over 350 pages for Methodist Council. This is a sign of the immense amount of work going on as we now head towards Conference.

We started the meeting remembering the situation in Fiji and Haiti receiving updates about the difficult situation in both countries. The military Government in Fiji has now announced that anyone who criticizes the government led by Commodore Josaia Vorege (Frank) Bainimarama, or even passes on an email containing such criticism, faces life imprisonment for treason. This leaves Methodist Church in Fiji leaders very anxious about what the future holds, and even more in need of our prayerful support.

Email, blogs, Facebook pages and tweets can be powerful things but they can also be destructive when people post something they later regret because of the hurt it causes others who become aware of the posting. It has been recognised that the Methodist Church should develop guidelines in this area and therefore Council discussed a paper about the respectful and responsible use of social media, a paper which itself had been the focus of much discussion on a number of internet sites.

Council did not shy away from some difficult and challenging areas. We discussed a paper about the “Living Wage” and the response to the Conference resolution asking that the 1976 statement on the abortion should be revised. We revisited the decisions of Conference about how to make fair changes to the ministers’ pension fund. We discussed our response to racism and extreme views within the Church and we read with sadness about the situation in Israel/Palestine in a report prepared by the working group set up by Conference. The latter was a well timed report as tomorrow David and I travel to Jerusalem to see for ourselves the reality of daily life there.

A whole series of papers helped us to consider our future strategy with respect to our World Church partnerships, and in particular the forthcoming all-partners consultation that will take place before Conference in June. We also looked at the implications of devolution for the Methodist Church in Britain, and what we understand by our Connexionalism.

Early this morning David presided at a service of Holy Communion at which I preached. It was a clear sign of our partnership. Later Council was invited to explore the possibility of a change to the current pattern of having a President and Vice-President, instead moving to a President with 2 co-Presidents, one lay and one from the Diaconal Order. Offices could be held for 1 year as at present, or for 3 years. This led to a very interesting discussion which concluded with an agreement that the Conference should be offered an increased number of options for possible change from which it could choose, including whether the Presidency/Presidium should include 2 or 3 people.

Despite the size of the agenda, and the major issues to be covered, we managed to complete our work on time. We are though conscious of the large amount of work we continue to ask others to do on behalf of the Council, Conference and Church.