A beginner's guide to General Conference

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The United Methodist Church has no pope.

But it does have a General Conference — the only body that can set official policy and speak for the international denomination.

General Conference brings together lay and clergy delegates from four continents whose decisions will affect how millions of United Methodists do church for years to come.

Think of the two-week gathering as a combination of a United Nations General Assembly, a U.S. congressional session, and a time of rousing Christian worship.

The coming General Conference, now scheduled for April 23-May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina, comes at a particularly momentous time.

General Conference typically gathers every four years. But because of the COVID pandemic, the assembly could not meet in 2020. That means the last regular session was in May 2016 — nearly eight years ago.

In the interim, the denomination has seen a quarter of its U.S. churches depart under a disaffiliation policy that began in 2019 and expired at the end of 2023.

What comes next for the international denomination will be largely up to General Conference itself.

Read more at this link.