A Brief Recap and An Invitation to the World Conference in 2029

by Matt Bridges

Greetings from the World Methodist Council (WMC)! Recently, we met in San Salvador from August 12-17. It continues to be an honor to represent the New Mexico Annual Conference and the United Methodist Church as a delegate to the WMC. The council meets every couple of years as a council where the international conference and celebration take place every five years (“quinquennium” is a fun word to say, isn’t it?). The theme for this year’s meeting was based on Romans 14:17, “The Kingdom of God is Justice, Peace, and Joy in the Holy Spirit.” Each day was filled with reports from all around the world around the main tenets of justice, peace, and joy. These reports come out of committee work, or through facilitator-led panel discussion and they can cover a variety of topics. One fascinating and complicated panel was learning from the Methodist Church of the UK, the Methodist Church in South Africa, and the Methodist Church in Hong King, about ministering across great divides from various kinds of conflict. Whether from the perspective of learning about how denominations navigate through agreement and disagreement along topics of LGBTQIA+ inclusion (UK), apartheid (South Africa), or political divides across pulpits (Hong Kong), we learned about the strength of our Wesleyan heritage to remain at the table together, struggle together, and hold each other both sacred and accountable. Being a part of the WMC locks in for me the beauty and power of connectionalism. I’ll never forget the cacophony of love being sung out across nineteen plus languages in Sweden three years ago during the last conference. I am looking forward to more of the same and have gotten to experience a piece of that at this council meeting.

It’s a truly life-giving and fascinating council to be a part of. The current president of the WMC is Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett of the United Methodist part of the connection. The WMC comprises more than eighty Wesleyan denominations, representing over 80 million people, across 130 or so countries. And as our general secretary stated, “Over the past several hundred years, the center of Christianity has gradually shifted from the Global North to the Global South. Today, we are now moving to another new era, which is called the ‘Polycentric Mission Era’.” This is an apt way to describe both the progression and contemporary understanding of Christianity worldwide, and Methodism/Wesley movements in particular.

The work of the WMC consists of connecting with each other, learning from each other, listening to each other’s stories, making joint statements on any number of issues, and providing resources for each other about spreading the gospel worldwide. It certainly can be a complicated process with plenty of agreement, disagreement, and seeking to agree to disagree. We remain united across any decision however through love and honor for our Wesleyan heritage and our love of Christ. Because of so many differences across language and cultural lines, we use a “consensus method” of discernment and voting and that serves the body well. In particular this time, language was a point of contention, confusion, and wounding as most of the conference was in English, despite our council meeting in San Salvador. While there are logistical reasons for some of this, it also spoke to longer and deeper wounding of language barriers and assumptions/expectations of dominant languages to be spoken. We resolved as a council to truly discern a way forward in finding solutions which truly create a unity across languages—no small task, and no small price tag—but I was very happy to vote for this. 

Our final item at our final meeting was to discern invitations from multiple countries and expressions of Methodism who would like to host the upcoming World Methodist Conference in 2029. I am thrilled to announce that the Council has accepted the invitation from Methodist Church in the Philippines, in Manila. If you are interested in joining me in a 2029 WMC Conference in Manila, let’s connect! I would love for folks from the NMAC to join in this wonderful opportunity and continue a legacy of Methodist unity and connection that dates back to 1881.

If you are interested in finding out more about the World Methodist Council in general and its parts, please visit the website at www.worldmethodistcouncil.org.

P.S. As one amazing part of our conference and council, we made pilgrimage to the home (“el hosptalito”), cathedral, and tomb of—Arch Bishop, Saint, Prophet, Activist, child of God—Oscar Romero. This was a very moving experience personally, and also along with our Methodist family.

               P.S.S. Please enjoy the pictures provided of our UMC delegates and then also our North American table which includes Mexico/Central America and Canada.