It is always a delight to gather with our colleagues who share in the ministry of being district superintendents. The camaraderie and fellowship are always enjoyable and, as we exchange victories and challenges, it is a time of growing as well. We gathered in Orlando last week as a group to share in a time with the General Superintendents and then, at the invitation of the General Board of Administration, to be a part of the presentation and discussion of memorials (resolutions) for the 2008 General Conference.

I sent the following email to the General Board Members on Monday:

I wanted to thank you so much for the opportunity afforded to the District Superintendents to be a part of the General Board of Administration meeting last week. This gesture made all of us feel valued and I believe gave you further sensitivity to the feeling from those of us who are working more closely with our membership at the local church level.

I also want to express appreciation to the Board of General Superintendents for your leadership in the extremely crucial area of membership by presenting the statutory memorials. While some on both edges of this issue may not be happy, I believe that your action does bring us to a stronger place of commonality. Had you not “stepped up to the plate,” it is my opinion that we would be leaving another General Conference with much unrest.

We will continue to pray with you that God’s will be done in all the matters before our General Conference this summer.

Most of our time was spent examining Memorials that will be presented to the General Conference, with the most prominent of those items being the ones related to membership issues. Before I get into some particulars about the Memorials, I want to share some statistical information that serves as a good backdrop for the entire discussion on membership.

Some interesting statistics for The Wesleyan Church include:

• Ten-year Change in Churches by Ethnicity (1997-2007)

White (92% – 87%)

Integrated (1.7% – 3%)

Asian (1.6% – 1.1%)

Black (1.8% – 2.5%)

Hispanic (1.9% – 6%)

Native American (1.1% – .4%)

• 44% of Churches average between 1 and 50 in attendance but represent only 11% of overall attendance.
• Only 10.1% of Churches average more than 1000 in attendance but they represent 20% of overall attendance.
• Assessable income from the 1-50 Churches is 10% of denominational income and the income from the 8 churches that average over 2000 is 14%.
• 901 Churches use Covenant Membership only (53.28%) and 790 Churches use Covenant and Community Membership (47.72%).
• 6 Churches that are larger than 500 in attendance have more Community Members than Covenant Members.

As we reviewed some of this information we were assigned these two questions:

1. What is this information saying?
2. What kind of questions should we be asking?

(How would you have responded?)

The Membership Memorial presented by the Board of General Superintendents was discussed at length by the General Board (with input from the DS’s) and will be presented to General Conference as recommended. I will share what I understand to be summary changes of this and related memorials: (Please understand that this represents personal recollections and does not represent the official minutes of the meetings. Also, any changes approved at General Conference will not be effective until the publication of The 2008 Discipline.)

• Denomination Membership Structure will be: Covenant Members, Community Members and Junior (or Student*) Membership.
• Covenant Membership is the standard for all elected leadership positions in The Wesleyan Church at local, district and general church levels and these persons would be required to affirm and follow the Articles of Religion, the Covenant Membership Commitments and the Elementary Principles.
• Community membership is changed as follows: Community members must affirm the Articles of Religion (in addition to salvation and baptism); they will have the privilege of voting on issues presented to the Local Church Conference except votes on the receiving of Covenant Members; the right to be transferred to any other Wesleyan Church upon approval of the receiving church.
• Junior (or Student*) Membership will be for those children and youth who have been saved from sins; they will be received in a formal ceremony and must either become Covenant or Community Members by age 19. The local church is to also provide for their training toward spiritual maturity and the understanding of the importance, privileges and commitments of membership.

*This document was amended to change the name from Junior to Student Membership.

(Interestingly, this memorial contains most of the recommendations that were presented to the 2000 General Conference by a membership study commission. That proposal was essentially gutted and our present Community Membership structure is what was left following that General Conference. You may want to reference again my response to these proposals in the letter to the General Board.)

Another Memorial submitted by the Board of General Superintendents and recommended by the General Board was in the area of Special Directions. (These are not Membership Commitments; they are official admonitions to the members, ministers and officials of The Wesleyan church.) This memorial includes some significant, and in my opinion, much-needed rewrites in some of the areas. Most notable include: An excellent (opinion again) introduction; Care of the Body and Substance Abuse; The Lord’s Day; Public School; Use of Time and Entertainments. (When these are available electronically, I will share them. At this point, it would require a lot of entry.)

The delegates to the General Conference will receive the official version of all the Memorials in a timely way. I encourage you to begin praying for God’s will to be done in the election of denominational leaders and in the discussion and decisions of this body. As time allows, I may be able to share some additional memorials and items of discussion. I hope that this is helpful for you and gives you a greater sense of being “in the loop.”

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