Along with the Alaska Conference Leadership Team and our Mission District Task Force, your Alaska Conference Delegation to General Conference has been reexamining our move toward becoming a Mission District of the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church.  

We are in agreement that, though we don’t know what our long-term future might be, now is not the right time to seek to become a Mission District.  

In large part, this is based upon the changes we’ve seen since we voted as a conference to seek Mission District status in February 2020. Nearly four years have passed and we are in a different place in our conference and the larger church. A lot has happened.

We’ve seen the following changes:

— New leadership and focus at the General Board of Global Ministries

— Postponement of General Conference 2020

— Disaffiliations from The United Methodist Church

— Positive work accomplished by the Mission District Task Force

Back in February of 2020, we were supportive of the petition that was submitted to General Conference to change our status from a Missionary Conference to a Mission District.

However, at this point in time, with the new reality we’re in, we encourage you to reconsider the previous action we took as a conference in February of 2020.

As your delegation, we are ready to do the work necessary to see that our petition, which has already been submitted and is in the hands of the delegates to next spring’s General Conference, isn’t approved by the body.  

In addition to general information sharing regarding our changed desire within the denomination as a whole, with the assistance of our communicators, we will specifically work with the legislative committee to which our petition is assigned to be sure that, as that committee addresses and votes on our petition, they have the full information including our desire to change our request relative to the already submitted petition.

Assuming we get the support of the legislative committee to which it is assigned, it is likely to then be put on a consent calendar and is therefore unlikely to be pulled from that for introduction, discussion, and vote by the whole body separately.  

Your delegation does feel that this is the appropriate thing to do at this point in time and we ask that you support this request for reconsideration of our previous action taken in 2020.      

Jo Anne Hayden, Lay Delegate to General Conference

Jim Doepken, Clergy Delegate to General Conference