Oct. 29, 2002
Close Up: AIDS pandemic hits hardest in Africa
A UMNS Report By Lesley Crosson
Sub-Saharan Africa is dying, in part, because of a cultural taboo.
Cultural and religious traditions make talking to people about the HIV/AIDS epidemic almost impossible because it is a topic so closely associated with sexual behavior. Yet an estimated 28 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and new cases are cropping up at an alarming rate.
"People are no longer dying of ignorance (of the causes of the disease). We are now working on changing behaviors," says Tabitha Manyinyiri, the former community health nurse at United Methodist-related Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe.
It is ironic that Africa University is working so hard to produce future leaders when many students have died or will die of the disease before they can make a difference, Manyinyiri says.
"If they die five years after graduation or even before they can graduate, where are our future leaders?" she asks. "We have a house on fire, and we need to find a way to put out the flames."
In the face of this pandemic, the United Methodist Church is reaching beyond the walls of its sanctuaries to offer spiritual and material comfort to people who might otherwise suffer and die unattended. The spreading devastation of HIVS/AIDS has given the church's education and relief efforts a new urgency.
World AIDS Day, observed Dec. 1, will focus attention on such efforts by organizations around the globe - and the dire need that drives them. Countering stigma and discrimination is the theme for World AIDS Day 2002.
A taboo topic
The fight to control the spread of the disease and to provide spiritual and material comfort to the afflicted and their families may be the largest battle ever fought door to door, family to family.
Despite the many workshops organized for youth and adults and the training programs to sensitize pastors, the church still is working to break down resistance to talking about HIV/AIDS.
Caroline Njuki, a staff executive with the denomination's Board of Global Ministries, remembers the extreme discomfort of a young United Methodist pastor at a church in a Ugandan village where some 65 percent of the worshipers are young people. Njuki, assigned at the time to the board's HIV/AIDS initiative, explained to him that she had to address the issue and asked if anyone had talked to the youth.
"If the ground could have swallowed him, he would have been so happy to be swallowed. It really mortified him," she says.
After the service, discussing HIV/AIDS with adult members of the church was no less difficult. Njuki says the group looked "very uncomfortable" as she gave them information about the disease. "Usually I say even more, but I knew I shouldn't get carried away. Still, I had to let them know that if we can't talk about this we are dead because first we must change what is necessary and what is possible to change."
Njuki also left pamphlets and other information with the congregation and directed members to other ecumenical resources.
During the past two years, the Board of Global Ministries has offered and funded an ambitious ministry of education, health and relief concentrated in Africa, where a full two-thirds of the world's 40 million reported HIV/AIDS-infected people live. Work also is being done by conferences and local churches in the United States and by students from Africa University.
The combined efforts are showing signs of success.
The board coordinates several HIV/AIDS initiatives through the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the church's health and relief unit. The work is supported with $250,000 in World Service funds.
The money has helped pay for workshops, health supplies, pamphlets and assistance to United Methodist hospitals, orphanages and families caring for HIV/AIDS patients. Although the board provides resources and support, Cherian Thomas, the agency's staff executive who directs the HIV/AIDS initiative, notes that the actual work is being done at the local level in places like Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Uganda and other severely affected countries.
The children's plight
In Zimbabwe alone, it is believed that at least one-third of the country's 11.3 million people are HIV-infected. The National AIDS Council in Zimbabwe estimates that more than 700,000 orphans in the country have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS-related deaths.
The congregation of Inner City United Methodist Church in the capital city of Harare is dealing with the human results of those statistics through its ministry with families and children. Much of its work centers on caring for children orphaned by AIDS.
In a voice weighted with sadness, the Rev. Irene Kabete, district superintendent for the Zimbabwe East Conference and pastor of Inner City Church, says her congregation has lost "plenty" of members. "Now, we have more orphans in the church because the father died and then in a few years the mother died."
About 40 young children between the ages of 7 and 16 come to services at the church each Sunday. The children live in institutions and attend church during the week. "We talk to them during lunch hour, and we are trying to put them into homes. We are paying the fees for them to go to school," Kabete says.
Each Sunday, she adds, four or five new children show up needing the help. "We ask our people to help find places for them to go to school, and we pay the fees for them. Every few months, we collect food and clothing from our parishioners, and then we send the clothing to the kids." The congregation also welcomes street kids into its feeding program for soup and bread three times a week.
Some 3,000 children are confined to orphanages in the Zimbabwe countryside. Africa University students assist by helping the orphans plant vegetable gardens for nutritious meals, as well as by constructing housing and teaching the youngsters income-producing skills, such as growing vegetables for sale.
Several other orphanages are being built through a combination of ecumenical church, non-governmental organizations and government efforts, according to Peter O. Fasan, the board's HIV/AIDS consultant in Zimbabwe. He emphasizes, however, that institutions "are really not the best way to look after these children." Ideally, he says, all children should be cared for by relatives and friends in their villages or homesteads.
Some 1,500 Zimbabwe youngsters are cared for through the Uzumba Orphan Trust, (United Methodist Advance No. 982842-6), which allows children orphaned by AIDS to stay in their homes and receive regular visits from trained caregivers. About 400 home caregivers in Zimbabwe have been trained to help families caring for HIV/AIDS patients.
'Manna from heaven'
The material resources that appear to be having the most immediate effect are the Healthy Homes and Healthy Families kits provided by UMCOR. Local congregations in the United States donate the kits, which are supplemented by medicines provided by Interchurch Medical Assistance. The kits contain clean sheets, rubber gloves and other items to care for patients and to help prevent the spread of the infection to caregivers. (More information is available at http://gbgm-umc.org/health/hfk/kit.stm.)
Interchurch Medical Assistance has shipped 250 of the kits to Sierra Leone and 40 to Zimbabwe - a mere finger in the dike against the tidal wave of the pandemic but one that has been invaluable to volunteer home caregivers. Fasan says one "overjoyed" volunteer compared the kits to "manna from heaven." Before the kits arrived, the volunteers had few or no few items to leave with the families.
Thomas reports that another 135 to 140 kits are in stock at Interchurch Medical Assistance and will be shipped. The doctor urges local congregations to contribute even more of the valuable kits.
The epidemic continues to take its heaviest toll on the continent of Africa, where widespread communications and access to new drugs to treat the virus are nearly non-existent. Through the combined efforts of the non-governmental organizations, ecumenical organizations and governments, at least some relief is increasingly available.
While infection rates remain high, people are responding to those efforts. It may be some time before evidence emerges of widespread changes in the behavior responsible for spreading the disease, but the fear and reluctance to confront it show signs of breaking down, one person at a time.
"Many patients are terminally ill," Fasan says. "Death is inevitable. But there's a general feeling that the care given to patients allows them to die in dignity and with the knowledge that the church cares."
Crosson is a writer living in New York City. She is a former staff member of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
top
Oct. 29, 2002
Commentary: What would Wesley do about global AIDS?
A UMNS Commentary By the Rev. Donald E. Messer
Countless Christians ask every day: "What would Jesus do?"
In light of the unprecedented global HIV/AIDS pandemic that the United Nations has declared "a global emergency," United Methodists might ask not only "what would Jesus do?" but also "what would John Wesley do?"
Of course, it is impossible to prescribe or describe what the founder of Methodism would do in the face of the worst health crisis in 700 years, but we can draw some insightful clues from his practical theology and his practice of ministry in relation to issues of medicine, health, illness, suffering and death.
Despite the plea of the United Nations for "faith-based" organizations to get deeply involved, to date, the efforts of Christian congregations and denominations-with few exceptions--have been minimal. More than 20 years into the global pandemic, only a few have even allocated a miniscule portion of funds to a mission and ministry of healing directed at the global HIV/AIDS crisis.
Worse yet, in many places and times, people of faith contribute to the stigma and discrimination that adds to the suffering, encouraging greater silence, and, therefore, furthering the prevalence of the deadly HIV virus.
The global statistics are overwhelming: 40 million people are infected worldwide; 7,000 people die daily, 1,600 people each day are infected. Some 26 million people have already died. Devastating personal, political and societal consequences are escalating.
Therefore, the United Nations calls on every segment of society to come to the rescue, specifically mentioning faith-based groups as essential to the global effort.
Conservative Newsweek columnist George F. Will asserted several years ago that what the world desperately needs is a new John Wesley, actually "a lot of Wesleys." Reflecting on the global AIDS crisis and Wesley in a Jan. 10, 2000, column, Wills wrote: "In 18th-century England, rapid modernization and urbanization brought social disintegration that was exacerbated by a chemical plague, of sorts, a product by the new science of distilling ... gin. Traveling 250,000 miles on horseback to deliver 30,000 sermons to largely illiterate audiences, Wesley enkindled a broad cultural, meaning behavioral, reform."
The image that Wesley and his followers continue to portray to the George Wills of this is one of compassionate, evangelical folk who care about the bodies and souls of human beings, especially the poor, the sick and the marginalized. To understand why, we need to re-examine our own distinct and dynamic theology and practice, mission and ministry, heritage and hopes.
More people probably "act" their way into new ways of thinking than "think" their ways into new ways of acting. Wesley's understanding of Christian faith and life was imbedded in the real-life issues of health and illness, life and death.
Wesley was so moved by widespread illness and suffering among the poor people of England, that by 1746 he even decided to practice medicine himself. He opened dispensaries, where every Friday he diagnosed and treated patients.
Wesley incorporated into his mission and ministry the best knowledge available in his time about medical care. In 1747, he published Primitive Physick: An Easy and Natural Way of Curing Most Diseases. Wesley urged its distribution along with devotional tracts, declaring, "If you love the souls or bodies of men, recommend, everywhere, the Primitive Physick and the small tracts." Obviously, Methodist people took this injunction to heart as the volume went through 23 editions during Wesley's lifetime.
Wesley could not have imagined a continent like Africa with potentially 40 million orphans. His heart, however, was broken by the plight of orphans, and early Methodists established in 1740 an orphanage near Savannah, Ga.
The precedent of Wesley, following the pattern of Jesus, going everywhere to preach, teach and heal the sick has been a powerful motif for Methodists over the centuries. Why hasn't our slogan, "the world is my parish," translated into an aggressive and compassionate program against global AIDS?
Seven lessons from the life and ministry of John Wesley are instructive as we face the global AIDS crisis.
First, shunning and stigmatizing the sick was not John Wesley's way. Wesley did not discriminate among the sick, helping some and ignoring others. In his sermon, he defined the sick as "all such as are in a state of affliction, whether of mind or body; and that whether they are good or bad, whether they fear God or not."
Second, Wesley denounced indifference and demanded involvement. He was appalled that the rich in his society were so unconcerned about the horrendous health conditions of the poor. Further, Wesley was adamant that visiting and caring for the sick was of the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In his famous sermon "On Visiting the Sick" he cited Jesus in Matthew 25:36: "I was sick and ye visited me." Such a work of mercy was "a means of grace" and "necessary to salvation."
Third, Wesley stressed compassion, not condemnation, of persons who were ill. Lack of compassion and inaction in the Christian community to the global AIDS crisis stems in large part because of the church's negative attitudes toward homosexual persons. Now HIV/AIDS has become an "equal opportunity" disease, and is transmitted primarily among heterosexuals. Married women in the "two-third's world" are now the most vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS. Still Methodists show few signs of organized compassion and care.
Fourth, Wesley believed love was the way of salvation. Wesley spoke of love as "the medicine of life." People struggling with HIV/AIDS look to faith communities to offer prayer and care, hope and health and spiritual strength to deal with the ugly stigma and discrimination inflicted by an uncaring world. What the world needs is Wesley's "therapeutic grace," emphasizing the healing power of love for body and soul.
Fifth, Wesley was a champion of social justice, but did not wait for the political authorities to act. Wesley did not hesitate to chastise governments and society for their failures. For him ministering to the poor and their needs was included in the job description of every Methodist. If that is the Methodist mandate, why have not Methodists everywhere formed action agencies designed to reach out in healing ministries to persons living with HIV/AIDS? Why are programs specifically focused on global AIDS still the exception rather than the rule?
Sixth, Wesley sparked a major movement of behavioral change among the people called Methodists. Just as people must change their behavior in order to prevent and eliminate AIDS, church leaders also must change their own behavior: no more stigma and discrimination, compassion must replace condemnation, and involvement must triumph over indifference. General Conference 2004 must commit money to fight global AIDS, not just write another resolution calling on others to act. Both the official, churchwide General Board of Global Ministries and the unofficial Mission Society for United Methodist have declared that AIDS education, prevention, treatment and care must become a priority agenda in the church's mission.
Seventh, Wesley's understanding of Christian perfection prompted him to expect Methodists to be deeply involved in the world. Perfection did not mean fleeing from conflict or controversy, but to be in the forefront of the struggle for life over death, healing over illness, comfort over pain. In A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, Methodists can find a summons for engaging constructively in combating global AIDS. Wesley wrote: "Beware of sins of omission; lose no opportunity of doing good in any kind. Be zealous of good works; willingly omit no work, either of piety or mercy. Do all the good you possibly can to the bodies and souls of men."
The church of John Wesley is very late in getting involved, but for the sake of its own salvation, now is better than never. As an African proverb suggests, "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today."
The penultimate questions are "What would Jesus do?" and "What would John Wesley do? and "what should United Methodists do?" The ultimate spiritual question, however, is "what will I do?"
Messer is the Henry White Warren Professor of Practical Theology and director of the Center for Global Parish Ministry at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He is also president emeritus of Iliff. He can be reached at DMesser@Iliff.edu.
Commentaries provided by United Methodist News Service do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of UMNS or the United Methodist Church.
top
Oct. 21, 2002
Grants available for young people's ministries programs
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) – Funds are available for creative ministries throughout the United Methodist Church that are designed to enhance the lives of young people.
But applicants should act quickly. The denomination's initiative on youth and young adults has set a Nov. 15 deadline for grant applications.
Funded projects will address the causes of critical issues related to young people in their local settings, emphasizing how their work can have an impact on the priorities of the United Methodist Church. Local congregations, annual conferences, central conferences and other United Methodist entities can apply.
The Shared Mission Focus on Young People currently provides funding for 46 ministries around the world selected by the four program agencies of the United Methodist Church: Board of Church and Society, Board of Discipleship, Board of Global Ministries and Board of Higher Education and Ministry.
Grant applications are sent to the general agencies, and a team of the agency's staff and Shared Mission Focus on Young People representatives selects recipients. Grants will be awarded up to $15,000 a year.
Grant applications are available online at the Shared Mission Focus on Young People's Web site, www.idreamachurch.com. Contact Ciona Rouse, communications and projects coordinator, at (877) 899-2780 or crouse@gbod.org, for more details.
top
Oct. 25, 2002
Budget woes continue to plague mission agency
STAMFORD, Conn. (UMNS)--Despite severe cuts to staff and programs, the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries continues to struggle with its finances.
In his report during the Oct. 21-24 annual meeting, Board Treasurer Stephen Feerrar summarized the decline in assets and outlined challenges for 2003, including constraints on cash flow, the need for ongoing cost containment and the importance of future financial development for program initiatives.
Feerrar acknowledged the difficulty the agency faces with "dwindling assets and escalating costs" as the needs of the world increase. He said he struggled with the fact that the denomination gives less than $4 per member to its international mission agency and seems inclined to reduce that figure even further.
As he had in his report last spring, Feerrar showed directors how the downward financial spiral occurred for general board funds, excluding funds of the Women's Division and Health and Relief division.
Finance committee minutes from the April 2000 board meeting forecast that the agency's unrestricted funds would be reduced from $128 million to $34.6 million by 2004. In reality, the unrestricted net assets had nearly dropped to that level by August 2002.
While the spending down of reserves, beginning in the late 1990s, was intentional, the economic slide was not. "The preservation of our financial assets was lost to a vicious stock market," Feerrar declared.
He noted that more than $100 million worth of assets have been used to fund operations and programs since 1998. "While we were applying our assets to mission, the stock market was taking back the gains it had given us," he explained.
The slide has continued as the third quarter of 2002 proved to be the worst quarter of stock market performance since the Great Depression, according to the treasurer. At this point, the agency has only $8.5 million in unrealized capital gains "across all classes of financial investments."
As of Aug. 30, the board had borrowed $9 million from pooled funds. "Our cash borrowings are fully extended now," Feerrar said. "We are managing on a very strict cash flow basis."
"Extraordinary increases" in liability and insurance costs also are impacting cash flow, but relief is expected for the last four calendar months as more denominational funds become available.
The treasurer advised against further depletion of unrestricted funds and pointed out that any equity sale would result in realized losses.
The agency has underspent its budget in 2002, especially in program areas, as a cost containment measure and budget reductions will continue in 2003, according to Feerrar.
"I expect and pray that we have been through the worst of it," he told directors.
top
Oct. 29, 2002
Judicial Council decisions carry added concurrence, dissent
BALTIMORE (UMNS) -- The fall session of the United Methodist Church's equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court will perhaps be most remembered for the number and content of concurring and dissenting opinions filed on a docket of 25 items rather than the actual content of some of the decisions.
Members of the nine-member Judicial Council wrote four concurring opinions and three dissenting opinions to accompany some of the decisions handed down. Two cases were deferred, and one was remanded to a bishop. All three should come before the spring session.
Both dissenting and concurring opinions were filed on two docket items related to whether or not an annual conference's clergy session (formerly called executive session) has the authority to ask the council for declaratory decisions without the vote of the full conference session, including lay delegates.
One such case originated in the California-Pacific Annual Conference. Its 2002 clergy session asked for a declaratory decision on whether a bishop and district superintendents are permitted to vote in an administrative hearing about placing clergyperson on involuntary leave of absence.
The council decided that the bishop and district superintendents "shall not participate as voting members" and may not be present before and after the hearing has concluded prior to the issuing of the decision. "To do so would violate fair process," the council said in its decision.
The other case came from the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference. There, the clergy session of the conference perceived a potential conflict between two paragraphs of the church's rulebook. The session asked the Judicial Council to decide if an administrative complaint must contain the words "administrative complaint" to be valid.
The council said the two paragraphs are not in conflict and correspondence with the affected clergyperson shall include the term "administrative complaint."
In both cases, a concurring opinion was signed by four members of the council: the Rev. Keith Boyette, the Rev. C. Rex Bevins, the Rev. John G. Corry and James W. Holsinger. In their concurrence for the Illinois Great Rivers case, they said, "The Judicial Council has jurisdiction in this matter — because the request for declaratory decision was made by the clergy session during its meeting on matters solely with the province of the clergy session and É constituted an action for and on behalf of the annual conference."
Sally Curtis AsKew, Mary A. Daffin, Sally Brown Geis and the Rev. Larry Pickens signed a dissenting opinions, adding "The Judicial Council does not have jurisdiction É when the request comes from the clergy session only." They also said the Discipline gives the clergy session authority only over questions relating to matters of ordination, character and conference relations of clergy.
The council overruled a bishop's decision in the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference on questions related to an administrative proceeding. "Since Bishop Sharon A. Brown Christopher does not have the authority to decide issues solely related to a judicial or administrative matter, her decisions are not of affirmed," the council said.
A dissenting opinion, filed by Boyette, Daffin and Holsinger, said that the questions addressed to the bishop were "proper questions of law which the bishop was authorized to answer." They further commended the bishop for voiding actions of the cabinet, the board of ordained ministry and the annual conference in regard to improperly placing a clergywoman on involuntary leave.
The council agreed with the bishop's decision of law in the East Ohio Annual Conference, where a member of the conference asked at the 2002 session if the substitution in the 2001 ordination service of the words "in the name of the Triune God" for the words "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" was in violation of the church's rules.
The bishop ruled that the question was not proper as it did not relate to business of this year's conference, but he went on to say that the wording used was not correct.
The council ruled that it does not have jurisdiction in such cases, where the question is not properly raised, but five members attached a concurring opinion adding that the substitution, although used in many United Methodist worship services, "is not language which the General Conference has approved for the consecration of bishops, the ordination of elders and deacons, the consecration of diaconal ministers and the commissioning of deaconesses and missionaries." Signing the opinion were Holsinger, Bevins, Boyette, Corry and Daffin.
On an entirely different matter from the East Ohio Annual Conference, the council agreed with Bishop Jonathan L. Keaton that a question about using interest generated from capital raised for funding pre-1982 pension liability to fund health care costs, as raised in the 2002 session, is moot.
Again a concurring opinion was written delving into the "significant issues raised by the precedent that has been set — regarding the use of funds raised to pay pre-1982 pension obligations." The opinion, signed by Pickens and Boyette, cites earlier council decisions noting that it is appropriate for the conference to use funds from its capital funds drive "to provide for pre-1982 pension obligations and any reserves needed to assure that the obligations will be met. — Furthermore, in expanding the use of interest for health care benefits we would find that these resources should only benefit pastors with pre-1982 service."
In another case related to funding health care benefits, the council heard oral arguments from the North Georgia Annual Conference. The current decision commended the conference for the changes it had made in the ways it was funding and providing health care benefits as a result of an earlier Judicial Council decision. The earlier decision had voided a plan put forward after adoption by the conference in a special session Oct. 17, 2000. Bishop Lindsey Davis led the oral presentation team. Council member Sally Curtis AsKew, the spouse of a retired North Georgia clergyman, recused herself and took no part in the deliberation or decision.
Council member Sally Brown Geis, who is from the Denver Area, recused herself from the three cases originating in the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference. In one, the council affirmed Bishop Warner H. Brown Jr. in his decision of law that the legislative process used at annual conference was constitutional and did not abridge any member's rights by limiting making of motions and voting in committee to assigned members of that committee.
Brown's responses to questions of law about the presentation and publication of the annual conference budget drew mixed support from the council, affirming one and not affirming two others. The council ruled that a conference is not required to publish its annual budget in its conference journal, but "best practices would suggest that it do so"; that the Discipline sets forth what is to be included in certain lines of the budget; and that a budget that does not state expected income, including estimated apportionments, is not complete.
The third case from Rocky Mountain Annual Conference questioned a staffing plan. "A conference personnel committee may have the responsibility of reviewing and evaluating conference job descriptions and reviewing and evaluating persons in those jobs" but it is unlawful for the conference council on finance and administration to do so, the council ruled.
In the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference, Bishop Elias G. Galvan was asked for a decision of law on whether a clergyperson could refuse to answer any questions that are intended to review his eligibility for certification as an elder in the United Methodist Church. The bishop responded, and the council agreed, that the question was improper because it involved a judicial or administrative process and was, therefore, moot and hypothetical.
In the Kansas East Annual Conference, the bishop was asked if the conference's policy to require pastors to report reasonable suspicion of child abuse contradicts the church's rule about pastors' keeping confidences inviolate. This occurred after the conference defeated an amendment that would have added an exception limiting the policy requirement when required under the confidentiality rule. The bishop said the policy did violate the Discipline in this regard, and the conference subsequently reconsidered and passed the amendment, rendering the issue moot. The council agreed.
A Baltimore-Washington Conference case that dealt with fair process for a clergy member arose in the clergy session. The council decision notes, "Bishop Felton E. May has correctly delineated the process by which a clergyperson may be placed on involuntary leave of absence." The council affirmed his ruling that a motion made in the clergy session of the conference to place a clergy member on involuntary leave was out of order.
The restructure plans of the Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia annual conferences were approved by the council after the conferences made needed changes to comply with an earlier council decision and the 2000 Discipline.
East Ohio Annual Conference's sexual ethics policy was remanded to the conference and the current policy was voided. In its decision, the council directed "Appendices and any other material directly related to the policy must be adopted by the annual conference and included when the policy is resubmitted for review and approval by the council."
Questions asked of Bishop Sharon Zimmerman Rader related to licensing and appointment of a local pastor during the Wisconsin Annual Conference session were ruled moot and hypothetical by her because they were unrelated to the business of the conference. The council agreed.
Two docket items from the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference were determined by the council to be instead parliamentary rulings, over which the council has no jurisdiction. They related to a question on having a lay member of annual conference from each church and one about using church buildings for dialogue on homosexuality that would have added to the Discipline's description of clergy misconduct.
In a case from Northern Illinois Annual Conference, the bishop's response to questions involving a campground was also deemed a parliamentary ruling by the bishop. Council member Larry Pickens recused himself from this discussion.
The council also noted that a request for a declaratory decision on equitable compensation of women pastors in the Kansas West Annual Conference did not meet the requirements for declaratory decisions as set forth in the Discipline. The council does not have authority to rule in such cases. Likewise the council does not have jurisdiction in a case from the Illinois Great RiversAnnual Conference about changing by-laws of the conference foundation.
"Bishop Edward W. Paup is not affirmed in his decision of law and is directed to answer the questions that were posed to him" during the regular session of the Alaska Missionary Conference, the council has decided. He is to submit his answers to the conference journal and to the Judicial Council within 90 days of the publication of the decision.
Cases deferred until spring 2003 include a request from the General Council on Finance and Administration for a declaratory decision relating to the number of bishops assigned to each jurisdiction, a review of the Virginia Conference bishop's decision of law related to clergy retiree health plan eligibility and consideration of the bishop's decisions of law regarding the West Virginia Conference plan for pension and health care funding. A related question in the West Virginia case was determined to be a parliamentary ruling and out of the council's jurisdiction. The council plans to meet in Fort Worth either just after or just before the Legal Forum in April.
Back to the Top
