Retired Clergy: Register & Vote!
A crucial part of the upcoming 2025 annual conference sessions is voting to ratify the four constitutional amendments passed by the 2024 General Conference in Charlotte including world-wide retionalization. All clergy – included retired clergy – are voting members of their annual conference.
Because of the way ratification works, it is important for retired clergy to register for their 2025 annual conference session and take part in the ratification votes. In most annual conferences it will be easy for retired clergy do this. Retired clergy will be able to participate and vote from the comfort of their own homes if their annual conference allows online ratification voting. Conference are not required to allow this, so it is important to verify whether one’s conference will allow online voting. If not, retired clergy will need to attend in person.
Why is it so important for as many retired clergy as possible to take part in the voting? Because the UMC constitutional amendment process uses aggregate voting.
In aggregate voting, each annual conference holds its own vote during its regular session. But instead of counting the votes by annual conference, the annual conference’s votes are sent to the Council of Bishops where they are held until every United Methodist conference in the world has held its ratification vote. Then each conference’s votes are combined with all the votes of all the other annual conferences and counted together.
So, it does not matter how many annual conferences vote in favor of ratification. Instead what matters is whether two-thirds or more of the combined vote from all the annual conferences favors a constitutional amendment. A large number of supporting votes in one conference can offset the dissenting votes of another conference. So having lots of retired clergy in each of the Western Jurisdiction annual conferences take part in the ratification votes would help offset the votes from less favorable annual conferences.
The graphic below also tries to show how strong conference turn outs by an annual conference can offset the votes of another conference.
General Conference adopted the constitution amendments on world-wide regionalization 586 to 164, a 78% vote which was far more than the required 2/3rds vote. A substantial number of delegates from Africa and the Philippines were among those voting for these world-wide regionalization constitutional amendments. There is a strong network of leaders in both Africa and the Philippines working for ratification. Even so, it is important to get every possible yes vote. Retired clergy taking part in the 2025 annual conferences is an important part of helping this happen.