One of the significant decisions taken by the recent General Conference was the passage of the Worldwide Regionalization legislation. The legislation, some of which still needs to be ratified by annual conferences over the next year, would restructure the church to convert existing central conferences into regional conferences, create a regional conference for the United States, and give regional conferences greater local control in adapting structures, ministries, and policies for maximal missional effectiveness in their contexts.
Since regionalization will now go to the annual conferences for ratification, and since, if ratified, the church will need to go through a process of living into regionalization, there is more discussion of regionalization that needs to happen, even with General Conference approval. Therefore, UM & Global offers the following resources to assist in conversations about regionalization and what it means to strive to be a church that structures itself in internationally equitable ways:
A brief description of David Scott & Filipe Maia's recent book, Methodism and American Empire
All UM & Global articles tagged with the term "regionalization"
A collection of UM & Global articles on "The UMC as a Global Church," with study questions
A collection of UM & Global articles on "Culture, Context, and the Global Church," with study questions
A collection of UM & Global articles on "The Global UMC in Ecumenical Perspective," with study questions. Some of these articles served as early drafts for David Scott's chapter in Methodism and American Empire.
A collection of UM & Global articles on "Church Autonomy and the Commission on the Structure of Methodism Overseas (COSMOS)," with study questions. These articles provide additional background information on the COSMOS process described by Joon-Sik Park and Phil Wingeier-Rayo in their chapters of Methodism and American Empire.
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