2024 Holy Conferencing

John Wesley listed "holy conferencing" as one of the means of grace, by which he meant believers gathering to worship and pursue the will of God together. 2024 is a big year of conferencing in The United Methodist Church!

Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth has officially called the 151st session of the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference for June 13-16 in Richland, WA at Central United Protestant Church. Annual conferences are regional gatherings of local United Methodist congregations; the PNW Conference includes WA and the panhandle of ID (as well as a few churches in British Columbia). The theme of this year's conference is "Being Well," based on the story of the woman at the well in John 4:4-17. Bishop Cedrick has set health and wellness, in all its many forms, as one of the mission priorities of our conference. CUMC's lay voting member of Annual Conference is Michael Keffer. Any member or friend of CUMC is also welcome to attend as an observer.

Annual conferences in the United States are organized into jurisdictions. Our conference is part of the Western Jurisdiction, which also includes the Alaska, California Nevada, California Pacific, Desert Southwest, Mountain Sky, and Oregon Idaho conferences. Each annual conference elects delegates to their jurisdictional conference, which meets every four years to set mission priorities and elect bishops. The Western Jurisdiction Conference will be July 10-13 in Spokane at Spokane Valley UMC. There will be opportunities to volunteer at this conference, so stay tuned!

The big conference this year is the General Conference, a gathering of United Methodists from around the world. The General Conference meets every four years but, because of the pandemic, it has not met since 2016! The General Conference is the only body that can set official doctrine and policy for The United Methodist Church. Each annual conference sends lay and clergy delegates; our lay delegate is Skyler Marston-Bihl and our clergy delegate is Rev. Elizabeth Ingram Schindler. This General Conference marks a critical turning point in our denomination as we emerge from a long season of church disaffiliations. General Conference will meet April 23-May 3 in Charlotte, NC. Read more about the General Conference here.