Charge Wide Town Hall Meeting Set for May 28, 7 p.m. in Vienna
We will host a town hall meeting for members of both of the churches on our charge on Tuesday, May 28, at 7:00 p.m. in Wesley Hall at the Vienna UMC. The meeting will be an opportunity for our church members to share opinions, ask questions, and gain clarity regarding the recent decisions of the General Conference. To submit questions in advance, e-mail the church at theviennaumc@gmail.com or fill out one of the question forms available in each church on Sunday morning.
The event will be led by Mike Ramsey, our lay member of the annual conference, Linda West, our Vienna lay leader, and our pastor. We will talk about the impact on our local churches and review the possibilities of any actions our churches might desire to take in response. We look forward to a respectful and loving exchange of ideas and information.
Recent Decisions at UMC General Conference Driving Local Conversations
The recent General Conference of The United Methodist Church held in Charlotte, NC made multiple changes in our church polity that are driving much local conversation. Your church leadership is digesting this information and is fully prepared to guide us through a discernment process and any needed actions in response to these changes.
Our South Georgia Conference has a number of resources available for you to discover the changes that happened and to hear from our conference leadership on these issues. Click here for these resources...
A Statement from Our Vienna UMC Church Officers - March 5, 2023
On February 26, 2023, the Vienna UMC Church Council directed the key officers of our church to draft a statement for the congregation to communicate where our church stands regarding the escalating issues in our United Methodist denomination and the increasing number of congregations choosing to disaffiliate. These officers met on
March 5, 2023, and have drafted the following statement (which we support unanimously):
In response to questions from our members, the Vienna United Methodist Church held a public informational meeting on November 6, 2022, at 4 p.m. in which our lay member of the Annual Conference, Gary Turner, and our pastor, Tony Crosby, shared information and answered many questions on the issues in our denomination from the nearly fifty persons in attendance. Churches in many, if not most, of our annual conferences are facing the hard deadlines of the expiring terms of ¶2553 in our Book of Discipline that was approved at the special session of the General Conference in 2019. The opportunity for churches to disaffiliate from the denomination will end under those terms on December 31, 2023. Without any special called annual conference meetings, that means that the practical deadline for most churches is the summer annual conference sessions of 2023. That remains the reality for many churches and in most annual conferences.
However, South Georgia (and a small number of other conferences) has extended an official “grace period” into the end of 2024 to allow an additional window of opportunity to ascertain the future direction of the UMC from the 2024 General Conference in April of 2024. These conferences will be taking advantage of the already existing authority of an individual annual conference Board of Trustees to close a local church under ¶2549. Our bishop, David Graves, has said that we will use the term “depart” rather than “disaffiliate” since we will be working under a different paragraph of the Book of Discipline. Our bishop and our conference trustees will allow churches to leave the denomination under the current terms and guidelines of ¶2553 into the end of 2024. Our conference trustees have adopted that as an official policy and our annual conference affirmed that policy with a vote at our June 2022 session. With this reality, our bishop has encouraged South Georgia churches to wait and see what options are available following the 2024 General Conference. There will be a called annual conference session in the fall of 2024 to vote on any local churches who may wish to leave after we have observed the happenings and any policy changes or decisions coming out of the General Conference in 2024.
We, along with others in leadership, observed a consensus at the informational meeting that our church’s best interest is served by taking advantage of our conference’s “grace period” and delaying action so we can evaluate any results from the 2024 General Conference. Our leadership did not hear from any among our membership asking our church to move toward a vote on disaffiliation. Now that our conference’s deadline has passed for any move for disaffiliation in 2023, your church officers and the others on the Church Council will watch the ongoing situation diligently and listen intentionally along with other South Georgia churches taking this path. We continue to welcome and encourage your questions, feedback, and patience with these difficult times and with our church as we discern the best path forward for our congregation throughout 2024. Please keep us, the Church Council, our bishop, our conference leadership, and all our denominational leaders in your prayers.
Linda West, Church Council Chair
Michael Ramsey, Lay Leader
Gary Turner, Lay Member of the Annual Conference
Johnny Cumbus, Chair of Trustees
Jason Hayes, Chair of Finance Committee
Joe Hinson, Chair of SPR Committee
Tony G. Crosby, Pastor