Judicial Council: Plan UMC is unconstitutional
In a shocking development, the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church has ruled that the “Plan UMC” restructuring proposal is unconstitutional. The plan had received preliminary approval by the General Conference earlier in the week.
Two main aspects of the ruling: First, that that the plan would “co-mingle” the oversight of the church between the Council of Bishops and the new proposed General Council for Strategy & Oversight. (That oversight is the responsibility of the bishops.) And second, that the proposal would intrude on the authority of the General Conference to solely determine funding for the church’s ministries (by ceding part of that to the new General Council for Strategy & Oversight).
The Council stated in its ruling, “We have reviewed the plan to determine whether any part, portion or all of Plan UMC can be saved and conclude that it cannot.”
In the remaining time left to the General Conference – which is not much – actions will undoubtedly taken to see if the assembled delegates agree.
The conference is preparing to recess for supper and will reconvene at 7:30 EDT this evening.
Update: A story on attempts by conference leadership to salvage something from the Plan UMC proposal are apparently underway during the dinner break. See the story at this link.
[...] proposal is unconstitutional. So it turns out this is not the last General Conference-related post. Go here if you want the lates update as of 5:00 pm EDT on 5/4/12. [...]
[...] to take the stage for her grand finale, the Judicial Council issued a startling ruling that the Plan UMC restructuring proposal was unconstitutional on a number of fronts. Plan UMC, for those of you just waking up from a two-week nap, had emerged [...]
This, sadly, indicates a surprising lack of preparation on the part of the Connectional Table (CT) and their Interim Operations Team (IOT). The same defects that the Judicial Council found in “Plan UMC’ were present in the CT/IOT plan and all of the variants considered by General Conference. Given that the Judicial Council found “Plan UMC” unconstitutional in a unanimous finding, these defects were not subtle form the perspective of someone familiar with United Methodist “cannon law.” For the CT/IOT to develop such a far reaching reorganization proposal without getting an informal constitutionality review from someone familiar with UM “cannon law” boggles my mind. It would have been regrettable, but not surprising, if the defects had been the result of hasty crafting of legislation at General Conference. However, for them to go unnoticed in something that had been in the planning as long as the CT/ IOT Plan seems indicative of poor planning at the very least.
John — I tend to agree on the point you are making here. I have wanted to go back through the Plan UMC proposal, as well as the original CTA plan, to read over the sections that would have ceded the oversight and funding powers to the new General Council on Strategy & Oversight. But up to this point I simply haven’t had the energy. My hope is that the experience this time around will result in a more sound proposal in 2016, when a new effort at restructuring will surely be made.