Annual Conference 2005 - Friday Business Page

Standing Committee members met in small groups during an envisioning session.
Photo by Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford

Executives of the Annual Conference agencies consulted with Standing Committee.
Photo by Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford

Standing Committee member David Stauffer makes a point during discussion of a resolution on the Brethren Medical Plan brought by BBT.
Photo by Nevin Dulabaum

STANDING COMMITTEE MAKES RECOMMENDATIONS ON NEW BUSINESS
The Standing Committee of representatives from the 23 districts of the Church of the Brethren held three days of meetings prior to Annual Conference in Peoria, Ill. The committee began meeting Wednesday, June 29, and will continue through noon Saturday, July 2. Annual Conference moderator Jim Hardenbrook chaired the meeting.

One of the committee’s main functions is to make a recommendation to the Annual Conference delegate body on each item of new business. The committee voted to recommend approval of the “Updates to Annual Conference Polity” and the “General Board Revisions to Polity.”

The committee also recommended for approval the “New Mandate for the Review and Evaluation Committee.” This is a regularly scheduled review and evaluation of the denomination’s ministries occurring every ten years, with the committee elected in the fifth year of the decade to report in the seventh year. This year the committee has a revised mandate in light of the multiple agency structure of the denomination put in place since the last regularly scheduled review. Standing Committee engaged in a brief discussion of the question of whether the Council of District Executives will be subject to the review.

Standing Committee recommended for approval a new business item not printed in the Annual Conference booklet: a resolution on the Brethren Medical Plan brought by Brethren Benefit Trust (BBT). The committee recommended that a study committee of four members be elected to evaluate the Brethren Medical Plan and the need for a denominational health insurance plan. The plan is for church employees including pastors, district employees, agency employees, employees of church-related organizations, and their families.

“We on the board believe that the Brethren Medical Plan’s future is in peril,”said BBT chair C. Richard Pogue. In a video presentation, BBT explained that the plan is in a “death spiral” in which claims are outpacing premiums and younger and healthier members are leaving the plan. “We believe the Brethren Medical Plan is important to the whole church.... Decisions about its future ought to be made by the whole church,” Pogue said. The resolution asks for the election of a study committee and calls for eligible employer groups to participate in the plan from 2006 at least through the end of the study. “Your board and its staff are exploring every avenue that we know” to save the plan, BBT president Wil Nolen told Standing Committee. “We want to know if the church really wants this plan.”

A new “Strategic Plan to Guide the Staff and Volunteers of the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference” was adopted by Standing Committee. The plan was brought by the Annual Conference Council, and had been reviewed by Standing Committee at last year’s meeting in a previous draft. The plan’s mission and vision statements, list of core values, and objectives will be shared with the Annual Conference delegate body for information only. The plan also includes a ministry analysis of the Conference, strategic actions to achieve the objectives, an implementation plan, and an evaluation plan. The entire plan will be made available on the Annual Conference website, reported executive director Lerry Fogle. The plan is considered a working document, said Hardenbrook, and further suggestions for the plan from Standing Committee and others will continue to be received and considered by the council.

New members were elected to subcommittees of Standing Committee. New members Don Fitzkee, M. Anne Whited, Larry Dentler, and Glenn Bollinger joined continuing members Bruce Hostetler, Kathryn Ludwick, Ron McAdams, and Sue Ellen Wheatley on the Nominating Committee. The appeals committee for 2005-06 will be David Stauffer, Emily Mumma, and Kreston Lipscomb, with Charles Simmons and J. Michael Varner as alternates.

Brethren Benefit Trust president Wil Nolen (center) and board chair C. Richard Pogue (right) were among those consulting with Standing Committee from the church agencies.
Photo by Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford

A consultation with the Annual Conference agencies was held with executives and board chairs of the Association of Brethren Caregivers, Bethany Theological Seminary, Brethren Benefit Trust, the General Board, and On Earth Peace. A representative of the Council of District Executives also gave a short presentation. Agency representatives answered three questions: “How has your agency been able to fulfill these calls?” (referring to the Annual Conference theme, “Fixing our eyes on Jesus,” and the Church of the Brethren tagline, “Continuing the work of Jesus...”), “What has caused you to go hmmm...?” and “What have you been able to celebrate?” The representatives also answered Standing Committee members’ questions in small groups.

In an “envisioning time” a subcommittee led small group discussions of two questions: “What is the best way to develop and call leadership in the church?” and “How to answer the call to be in loving relationship and respectful dialogue especially when we disagree?” These are the two questions that “rose to the top” at envisioning sessions led by Standing Committee members at district conferences over the past year, said Nathan Polzin, a member of the envisioning committee. The small groups used a model process for doing envisioning, briefly listing statements in favor and statements against, then brainstorming options for answering the questions. The options lists were brought back to the large group and will be passed on to the envisioning subcommittee for next year’s meeting. Concerns raised during the discussion will also be communicated to those planning the TOGETHER: Conversations on Being the Church, Hardenbrook said.

Standing Committee received reports from districts given by the district delegates that make up the committee; from the international Church of the Brethren given by Merv Keeney, executive director of Global Mission Partnerships for the General Board; from the Anniversary Committee planning the 300th anniversary celebration for the Church of the Brethren in 2008; from those working on TOGETHER: Conversations on Being the Church; and from the Annual Conference Council during which appreciation was given to Earl Ziegler and Chris Bowman, who are ending their terms of service on the council. The Nominating Committee gave a preliminary report on a process for making online nominations for denominational positions. The process is to be up and running later this summer, and will include automatic e-mailing of nomination forms to the Annual Conference office, and automatic notification of nominees by e-mail.

MODERATOR REPORTS HOPE AND TRUST ON THE RISE IN THE CHURCH
Annual Conference moderator Jim Hardenbrook reported to Standing Committee, reviewed his travels for the past year, and listed the churches he has visited and events in which he has taken part.

Through his travels, he has found that “hope and trust are on the rise in our denomination,” he told the committee. “Also I want to say that trust and hope are fragile.” Congregational renewal and new church development are close to the top of most district agendas, he said, but added, “I remain concerned about the health of our congregations.”

He put two questions to the Brethren congregations he visited: What is God up to? and How do we get in on it? Some congregations “are strong and visionary. They ask those questions and they answer them adequately,” he said. “Some are struggling...they ask those questions and say we don’t want to get in on it,” he said.

In a year when no new queries are coming to Annual Conference, Hardenbrook reassured the district delegates that it is still important to meet. “We’re going to talk about what it means to be Brethren and what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ,” he said. “It could be that we have more important concepts and deep thinking that has to be done.... It’s very challenging to me that this little denomination continues to make an impact on our world.”

MEMBERSHIP NUMBERS REFLECT GLOBAL SPREAD OF CHURCH
In a report on the global Church of the Brethren to Standing Committee, Merv Keeney gave recent membership numbers for Church of the Brethren bodies in Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, India, and Brazil. Keeney is executive director of Global Mission Partnerships for the General Board. “Membership numbers may help to convey the spread of this global body of Brethren,” his report said.

A 2002 gathering of statistics of membership and participation in the Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN–the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria) revealed just under 150,000 members. “Churches report 1,643 members in Dominican Republic (2005), 4,300 in India (2001), and 131,201 in the United States (2004),” Keeney reported. In Brazil in a count made this year, there are 73 “notarized” members “and nearly 200 who have professed Christ and been baptized, and see themselves as Brethren, but have not taken this legal step,” Keeney reported.

Keeney also noted that this year’s Annual Conference is the first since 1983 to invite a preacher from outside the US. Nvwa Balami of EYN was the last representative of the global Brethren to preach at a Conference, 23 years ago. This year Anastacia Bueno Beltre, a pastor and past moderator of the Church of the Brethren in the Dominican Republic, will preach for worship on Tuesday evening, July 5.

Members of the 2005 Annual Conference news team, a ministry of the General Board, contributed to this report: Regina Roberts, Jesse Reid, Hannah Edwards, Sarah Kovacs, and Nevin Dulabaum, photographers; Kathleen Campanella, Karen Garrett, Jill Kline, Frank Ramirez, Frances Townsend, Sarah Leatherman Young, and Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford, writers; Amy Heckert, technical support; Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford and Becky Ullom, editors.