LAKELAND — Delegates to the Dare to Share Jesus 2001 Florida Annual Conference Event May 29-June 1 in Lakeland will vote on 11 amendments to the United Methodist Church’s Constitution.

If approved, the amendments will change the church’s language regarding baptism and membership, create a new paragraph seeking to eliminate racism, change the definition of "young person" and recognize that the United Methodist Church was created more than 30 years ago.

The amendments were approved by the 2000 General Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. They must now be approved by two-thirds of the combined number of the present and voting members of the 65 annual conferences in the United States and 52 conferences in Europe, Africa and the Philippines. The Council of Bishops formally ratifies the amendments after they are approved by the annual conferences.

Four of the amendments change language in the Preamble and several paragraphs of the Constitution that refer to the union of the United Brethren and Methodist Churches in the future tense.

Another amendment seeks to change the article titled "Inclusiveness of the Church" to make it consistent with "The United Methodist Baptismal Covenant Service," approved by the 1984 General Conference, and "By Water and the Spirit," an official statement of baptism for the United Methodist Church, approved by the 1996 General Conference.

The change will replace the sentence that makes the taking of "appropriate vows" the only requirement for membership in the denomination with one that says those who are baptized are "admitted as baptized members" and those who take the "vows declaring the Christian faith become professing members."

If approved, the amendments will change the church’s Constitution to make it agree with the baptismal covenant and statement of baptism the church is already using. The covenant and statement were challenged before the Judicial Council, the church’s high court, in 1996 because they did not agree with the Constitution.

Four additional amendments change language elsewhere in the discipline from church members to professing members to calculate general, jurisdictional, central and annual conference delegates and to determine who is eligible to be elected officers of a charge or church.

The General Board of Discipleship last month trained one person from each conference to interpret the amendments. The Rev. Bill Barnes, pastor of Orlando’s St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, attended the two-day training in Nashville.

Barnes said the change to the Constitution should have been the first step in the process of changing the church’s language related to baptism and membership because it supports the decisions made more than 16 years ago when the baptismal service was changed.

The change is minor, but it completes a process that brings a major change to the church. "The change…is really very insignificant. It’s just changing language," Barnes said. "The theology behind it, though, is very significant."

Barnes said the amendments change a pattern in the denomination that was set more than 200 years ago. Early Methodists didn’t have priests available to perform sacraments, including baptism, so they placed more emphasis on personal commitment and evangelical response.

"This recovers more of the sacramental aspect of baptism," he said. "Baptism is God’s work for us. It’s claiming the grace of God."

Another proposed amendment would insert a new paragraph titled "Racial Justice" into the Constitution. This paragraph says the church recognizes "the sin of racism" has caused pain and will "confront and seek to eliminate racism…in every facet of its life and in society at large."

The final amendment changes the definition of "young person" as it relates to the composition of the annual conference. The current text calls for "two young persons under twenty-five (25) years of age" from each district to be a part of annual conference. The amendment would require attendance by one person between the ages of 12 and 17 and one between the ages of 18 and 30. It also requires that the young people be "professing members."

The proposed Constitutional amendments are printed in the annual conference workbook, which was mailed to all delegates. A copy of the workbook is available on the conference Web site, http://www.flumc.org. The amendments are also available through the General Board of Discipleship’s Web site at http://www.gbod.org/worship/default.asp.

For more information on the amendments, contact Barnes at 407-876-4991 or bbarnes@st.lukes.org.