| Delegates make decision on proposed forum
By Michael Wacht
LAKELAND — Delegates to the 2002 Florida
Annual Conference Event May 28-31 here will have the opportunity to
vote on a proposal calling for the creation of the new Conference
Table.
“We’ll present the resolution as part of the
CCOM’s [Conference Council on Ministries’] report,” said Bill
Walker, the conference’s director of connectional ministries. “We’ll
ask the bishop to invite specific action on it. The delegates will
vote to approve and/or amend the resolution.”
Walker said the Conference Table is new to the
Florida Conference. “It’s a forum at which all are welcome to
address matters of strategic concern to our conference and at which
some are expected,” he said. “It’s not designed around
membership. It’s designed around helpfulness.”
The Conference Table will have no decision-
making power or official authority, but it will be required to report
its discussions and recommendations to the annual conference. It will
be a place where people can “discern, consider and reflect upon
recommendations to the annual conference,” Walker said. “The major
conference entities don’t talk to each other easily. It’s not that
they don’t want to, but there isn’t a forum for that. This creates
that forum.
“My mental vision is the tribal council, in
which there are persons who sit around and talk. Then, there is a
larger group that sits around that and listens and participates.”
The topics for discussion will be matters that
will “aid us in becoming the missionary conference that is our
vision,” Walker said. Those topics will be brought to the Table by
the conference’s laity and clergy. The Table’s meetings will be
held across the conference so as many people as possible have a chance
to attend.
Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker will act as chairman
of the Table, and the conference lay leader, T. Terrell Sessums, will
be the vice chairman.
Along with the open invitation to anyone in the
conference, there are 17 people who will be expected to attend. Among
them are representatives from the cabinet, conference Commission on
Finance and Administration, CCOM, Division of Ministry, Office of New
Church Development and Church Redevelopment, and communications. If
the office of Congregational Transformation is approved, it will send
a representative. There will also be a number of at-large
representatives appointed by the bishop to help ensure fair
representation based on gender, clergy/laity status and ethnicity.
Walker said the meetings will be videotaped, and
information from the Table’s discussions will be available on the
conference’s Web site.
Walker hopes participants will learn about each
other, the work they do and how they are connected.
“It’s just people talking to each other, but
we’re so desperate for that, it will be transformational in itself,”
Walker said. “There’s also the expectation that God will be
present among us.”
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