Re: JCD 1101

http://archives.umc.org/interior_judicial.asp?mid=263&JDID=1183&JDMOD=VWD&SN=1100&EN=1110

The Council clarified that the constitution does not list local pastors not under appointment as members of the annual conference and therefore the General Conference cannot give them that membership without changing the constitution.

That would have to be brought in 2012.

Local pastors who have retired or were not appointed may attend annual conference as visitors (lobbyists!) or they may be elected to come as lay members from a local church.

Local pastors are extremely vulnerable in our system and can be dropped from appointment and thereby automatically from being licensed either by the district committee’s removing the license (and hence removing appointability) or by the Cabinet failing to give an appointment. Fair Process rights are given to local pastors by several paragraphs but they only count when there is a written complaint. Cabinets can easily avoid bringing forward a written complaint (even when there is one) by not treating it properly but simply using these other two ways to arbitrarily drop the local pastor.

Local pastors are presumed to have another vocation and thus are not necessarily seen as being hung out to dry, despite the fact that many give up their secular employment to be pastors. Further, Cabinets use local pastors as fillers for situations where no ordained clergy can be brought in (salary too low or no ordained clergy are available). Valuable as local pastors are, Cabinets are glad to have them be expendable and not on the list of those for whom appointments have to be made.

Once local pastors can become annual conference members upon retirement, they would be in a position to vote for legislation that could put them on the guaranteed appointment list.