Watch live coverage of General Conference, April 23 - May 4, 2024.
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The General Conference meets once every four years in regular session to set official policy and speak for the international denomination based on its votes on legislation offered up by United Methodists from around the world.
This business meeting — which resembles a session of Congress — brings together equal numbers of lay and clergy delegates from four continents. Their decisions will affect how millions of United Methodists lead the church for years to come, based on changes to the Book of Discipline, which is the denomination's book of law and polity.
After several delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic around the world, The United Methodist Church is finally prepared to convene its General Conference from April 23 to May 3, 2024, in Charlotte, North Carolina. This meeting of delegates — equal numbers of clergy and laity — from around the world is where legislation will be considered that may impact the polity and governance of the denomination.
Officially, this next meeting is known as the 2020 General Conference because the worldwide body — which is the only group that can speak on behalf of the denomination — has not met since a special session in 2019 in St. Louis. The last meeting as a regular session came in 2016 in Portland, Oregon.
The long-awaited regular session set for spring 2024 comes after an era of disaffiliation of congregations related to concerns over human sexuality policies and full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the life of the church. Some of the petitions anticipated to be considered by the delegates involve removing language from the Book of Discipline that has forbidden same-gender marriage conducted by United Methodist clergy and on United Methodist properties, as well as language that has forbidden "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" from serving as pastors.
Prior to General Conference, please check this page frequently for information and resources to help you communicate with your congregations and with each other on these and other important subjects. Additional pages on various themes will be added regularly, and you can find them easily in the left-hand navigation on this page.
During General Conference, check the home page of the Great Plains Conference website — www.greatplainsumc.org — as well as this page for aggregated news and information from the actions of the General Conference delegates in Charlotte.
