Recommended Reading: Darryl Stephens on Worldwide Guideposts for the UMC

While much has been written about the recently-concluded General Conference, I particularly recommend this piece by Rev. Dr. Darryl Stephens, which puts the bishops' "A Way Forward" proposal regarding the sexuality debate within larger organizational and historical contexts. Dr. Stephens connects this debate to larger issues of the global ambitions but US-centric structures of the denomination and links those debates to the 2008 merger of The United Methodist Church and the Methodist Protestant Church of Côte d'Ivoire. He then follows up by identifying several areas of work for the denomination if it is to live up to its global ambitions.