News From The PNW Conference

Two weeks ago, the Council of Bishops hosted its Leadership Gathering in Calgary. According to a summary of the event published last Monday, the gathering was ‘non-legislative,’ centered on ‘holy listening and faithful imagination’ about the church of tomorrow. One-third of the approximately 300 participants were 35 years or younger, appropriate given the goal of looking toward the future.

For weeks, United Methodists have been following a story out of the Horizon Texas Conference, where the conference filed a lawsuit against the Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, the conference’s largest church, to restore language in the church’s bylaws after the church council removed provisions giving the denomination, and the congregation itself, oversight. Members voted overwhelmingly over the weekend to leave the denomination, a decision that will inevitably be challenged.

On October 27, clergy and lay members of the PNW Conference met to discuss four plans developed by the Council on Finance and Administration, in consultation with the Connectional Table, to reduce the proposed 2027 PNW Conference budget by $243,000. A recording of this Q&A Opportunity is now available on the Special Session resource page.

Different as they are, these stories share a thread. Each invites us to ask how connectionalism should function in a rapidly changing church.

• What will the church of tomorrow look like, and how will we relate to one another in it?
• As some thriving congregations seek greater autonomy while others struggle, can our connection honor real differences among churches and still hold us together?
• How do we right-size our structures so they can nimbly support local congregations?
  
  

These are big questions, and we won’t answer them in a single meeting or vote. But we do get to practice answering them, and the PNW Conference has a chance to do that together at the upcoming special session on November 10. May God walk with us as we move forward as a church, liberating our thinking from rigidity and anxiety, and holding us together in love.