LAKELAND — Electronic voting may have gotten off to a slow start at the 2003 Florida Annual Conference Event, but the job eventually got done and a diverse group of clergy and laity were elected to represent the conference at the 2004 General and Jurisdictional conferences.

Voting began May 28 and ended May 30 in Jenkins Hall at the Lakeland Center here.

For the first time the conference used electronic voting devices to speed up the voting process. Clergy and laity were each given color-coded electronic devices with numbers and yes/no buttons to cast their ballots in place of paper ballots or raising their hands.

Although it often took minutes to display voting results, the process was faster and more accurate than methods used in the past.

In an effort to emerge from the past and into the present, many speeches from the floor encouraged voters to be inclusive and elect a delegation reflective of the church’s African-American, Haitian, Hispanic and Korean members and different age groups.

Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker called for a centering moment of prayer before each vote and encouraged diversity across age, gender, geographic and racial lines.

After the annual conference event, Whitaker told the “Review” he was pleased with the delegates elected, which included representatives from five of the conference’s ethnic groups and each of its 14 districts.

Of the 74 people elected 36 are women, and there is at least one representative from each of the six age categories established by the election procedures committee, including 15-year-old Allison Mitchell, who will turn 16 later this year. Clergy elected both full-connection elders and deacons.

“I think including all kinds of people in the delegation is very important because we need to include all kinds of people in the life of the church,” Whitaker said. “We would be more effective in making decisions at general conference if we have the most representative kind of delegation.

“That’s true not only for the Florida Annual Conference, but for all of the annual conferences…I thought it [the delegation] was as representative as you could expect from a voting process like this. I think they will serve the Florida Annual Conference very well.”

The Rev. Dick Wills will head the Florida Conference delegation at the 2004 General Conference April 27-May 7 in Pittsburgh, P.A. He was the first person elected.

“It’s such a humbling experience that my peers have voted in such a way for me to represent them,” said Wills, who became a probationary clergy member in 1965 and is currently serving as senior pastor at Christ Church United Methodist in Ft. Lauderdale. “We will seek to do God’s will for our church. I’m just so thrilled and pleased to be a part of this delegation.”

The 937 clergy and 989 laity representing the Florida Conference’s 743 churches elected the following lay delegates to the 2004 General Conference: Mary Alice Massey, T. Terrell Sessums, Joseph Ha, Lynette Fields, Bill Walker, Amy Miller, Nelida Mora Morales, Emily Ann Zimmerman, Disney Weaver, Judith Pierre-Okerson, Betty Sue Mason, Allison Mitchell, Gail Christy-Jones, Ressie Mae Bass and Leland McKeown.

Clergy delegates elected to General Conference are Dick Wills, Jorge Acevedo, Debbie McLeod, Jim Harnish, Anne Burkholder Daniel, Bill Barnes, David Dodge, Candace Lewis, Geraldine McClellan, Jacques E. Pierre, Teri Hill, Aldo Martin, Phil Roughton, Dan Johnson and Clarke Campbell-Evans.

Lay delegates elected to Jurisdictional Conference are Joyce Waldon Bright, Mike Wacht, Kit Carson, Annie Woods, John Dowell, Russ Tabbert, Bud Fowler, Frances Jennings, Shelia Flemming, Bill Fackler, Barbara Stricklin, Pam Alexander, Jose QuiÒones, Blue Whitaker and Frank Furman.