Re: JCM 1118

http://archives.umc.org/interior_judicial.asp?mid=263&JDID=1235&JDMOD=VWD&SN=1100&EN=1118

Once again, the Council chose to not just stop with saying it had no jurisdiction. They laid out their rationale for refusing to rule on the questions. That was wise because the issue is a hot button one in our denomination,

A layman in Alaska asked if Paragraph 4 in our constitution superceded PP 214 and 225. Actually he wondered if P 4 had any effect on the other two. The ruling would have been the same.

The layman was trying to resolve the problem some believe was established in JCD 1032, that the pastor has the right of discretion over the readiness of a person wanting to join the church.

While that pastoral authority has been an unwritten presumption in the denomination, including the period when African-American people attempted to join all-European American churches during the Civil Rights conflict in the United States, this tradition was challenged in 2005 when a pastor persuaded a gay man that he was not ready to join a denomination with strong anti-homosexual laws in the Discipline. The bishop insisted that the pastor have to take the gay man into the church and the pastor refused, leading to the challenge handled in JCD 1032.

The Council carefully tried to sort through the three questions asked by the layman and why they could not take jurisdiction.

First, the Council showed how the membership process between a pastor and an eligible candidate for church membership is the work of the annual conference. But then the Council went further to indicate that the three questions did not pertain to some action taken by the annual conference in its session.

Belton Joyner, in his dissenting opinion points out that P 2610.2(j) has a plural in the word “conferences,” implying to him that the interpretation of the current and past Councils which restricts their jurisdiction to the agenda of the specific annual conference may need to be reviewed.