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West Michigan Annual Conference Report
June 1-4, 2006, Grand Rapids
“Giving With Reckless Abandon” was the theme of the West Michigan Annual Conference, held at Calvin College.
The theme was evident throughout the four-day session in visual displays of brightly-wrapped gifts, donations of over 3,000 pairs of underwear for poor children, generous offerings to the Haiti Hot Lunch Program, Vietnamese ministries in the conference and across the church, United Methodist Committee On Relief, the Ministerial Education Fund and the Advance.
The conference received four awards for its Advance giving, including one for having the highest per capita giving in the United Methodist Church: $37 (double last year’s amount). Conference churches gave $2.5 million to the Advance in 2005, with 98 percent of churches participating.
Along with the Detroit Conference, West Michigan members voted to enter a process that would, if successful, merge them into one Michigan Area conference in 2009. Ballots from Detroit’s vote in late May were sealed until after West Michigan voted. The vote to begin the merger process was overwhelmingly positive: 87 percent yes in the Detroit Conference; 78 percent in West Michigan.
The Rev. Theresa Little Eagle Olyer-Sayles was the first Native American woman to be ordained elder and received in full connection in the Michigan Area. Bishop Ann Sherer, Nebraska Area, preached during the service of ordination and commissioning. The conference also celebrated 50 years of full clergy rights for women with worship, liturgical dance, and preaching by the Rev. Molly Turner, who was ordained elder and received in full connection in 1972.
In other actions, the West Michigan Conference:
- Created a Michigan Area Foundation to serve the Detroit and West Michigan Conferences.
- Adopted an “Affirmation of Inclusiveness of the Church” that says the conference seeks to “openly welcome all of God’s children.” The conference also expressed its disappointment in Judicial Council Decision 1032 that allows a pastor to bar individuals from membership in the United Methodist Church.
- Requested West Michigan United Methodists to contact their members of Congress to ask them to co-sponsor the Jubilee Act, which would commit the United States to work for debt cancellation for 50 impoverish countries.
- Supported establishment of a U.S. Department of Peace.
- Thanked President George W. Bush for his support of Millennial Development Goals and encouraged payment of the U.S. pledge to implement the goals.
- Encouraged support of NativeEnergy ? a privately held Native American company that creates wind energy ? as a renewable energy alternative.
- Defeated a resolution that would have removed “domestic partner benefits” from the conference’s health insurance plan.
Added $200,000 to the 2007 conference budget for campus ministry and asked for a study of effectiveness of current ministries.
Membership stands at 67,734, down 197. Average worship is 42,700, down 2,113. Average church school attendance is 15,279, down 3,589.
-- Ann Whiting
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