2nd Listening Session with District Superintendent (2023-5-8)

(6:30)    <-- Video Time Point

(Rev. Craig Cockrell)

Let's begin with the word of prayer. Would you bow with me?

 All mighty God, we come before you tonight as children before our father, as as weak, and as directionless as the small child, we are dependent upon you to lead the way.  So the Lord, we ask you to bless us with your presence and your insight and your inspiration, so that we may say what your words are we may think what your thoughts are, and we may live our lives, as you wiould have us live. So Lord, bless us as we gether here this evening.  In Jesus name. Amen.

(7:15)   <-- Video Time Point

Well how many of you were at the last listening session? Almost everybody?  Who was’nt at the last listening session?  OK, so you've been through all this before, so really there's not more to add I want to talk a little bit about the process. After this evening's listening session, which I don't think is going to last very long because we've already spoken before, but if you have questions. I'm here to listening to answer and then following this at some point, your church council will gather and they will vote whether or not to move ahead with the disaffiliation process or to step out of that process. There's no deadline to being in or out. The trustees are working on a policy I think I said this last time. I think after these annual conferences that policy will be out so that if it any point a church wishes to leave the united methodist church that's still possible. So the door doesn't close certainly not this year not next year. So many churches are waiting to see what happens at the big general conference in 2024 in May 2024 before they make the final decision and that's fine.  However you want to proceed church council gets together and they vote yes or no on continuing with the disaffiliation or not.

(8:55)

If they vote not to, than everything is just on hold and you've done the work you need to at this point and will wait to see what happens in the future with God leads. if you want to continue with the process, then we'll set a date for a church conference vote which means every member of the church. You have to be a member of the church, but every member of the church gets to vote on whether or not to leave the United Methodist Church or stay. Because it's such a big decision, the discipline when they came up with this possibility of leaving, they said it has to be 67% 2/3 of the church have to vote for disaffiliation to leave.  So we've had churches that have voted 56% to leave we had one from one church in Hobbs that voted to stay by one vote.  So if there's been some very close votes and I think I said this last time but if you decide to proceed with disaffiliation, I hope that most of you are a one heart and mind, but this is what everyone wants to do because what we're finding in most churches is that it divides the church, (10:39) 

and it  causes some people to leave, no matter which way the vote goes. There are people who feel like they lost.  In church  that were happy and loved each other, and work together to find that they are looking at each other with suspicion. Who did it? I wonder who that person?  I wonder how that person voted and it changes their hearts about the way they feel about the church. Saint Stephen's (UMC) they were the church of voted 56% to leave and so they did not leave which meant that, the majority of people wanted to leave but 44% said they did not want to leave so there's a real split in the church and people left who were angry that the church didn't go the way they wanted to and other people left who were just upset that the church had to vote in the first place. 

So it just creates a lot of dissension and division in a church unless you are a one heart.   So I just encourage that once your church council votes, we will set a date for a church conference which all members get to vote and you have to have 67% to leave anything less than that, you stay in United Methodist or anything more than that,  that's fine.  In fact I hope that if you vote to leave that it's 90%, 99% 100%.   Most churches there's a very small churches that are voted 100%.  Most churches, there's always a few people who say we don't want to leave even if the church does it.  it's a difficult decision.  Then you've done most of your homework, all of the decisions that are in the the process about how you will re-organize as a new church, whether you go global United Methodist or whether you go independent. It is entirely up to you once you leave.  But you have to establish yourself as a church as a as a nonprofit organization you have to be recognized by the federal government 501(c)(3), and by the state government and so there are processes for that you have to find insurance for your employees. You have to find the insurance for the building and there's just a lot of work that has to happen. (12:53)

Once that happens plus, there's the cost of disaffiliation. In the part of the discipline that opened up the possibility of disaffiliation.  There basically two categories of cost. One is for pension.  All the pastors in the united Methodist church that you have had in your church, including Pastor Kim, most of his pension is through the United Methodist Church, and so even if he leaves the United Methodist Church, his pension is still run by that same organization and so there's a cost for the pension to help ease that burden as the church leaves and then there's a cost for administrative cost for the annual conference because suddenly when about 1/3 of all the churches leave the conference, our conference budgets going to fall through, and we're going to go from three district superintendent to two district superintendent. We're gonna working on our budget but part of that  cost is to help the conference get through that point so that it can be self sustaining.  So I don't remember, Sam,  what was the latest estimate of cost that you saw? Still the January one. ----Not clear voice from Sam --- We got the same figures Sam does and I do and I'm thinking there's a fair chance that it is gone down since then, but it's still an estimate, so what will happen is: if you have a church conference vote I will bring the final number to you and exactly what it cost and that will be your number that will be locked in so that it if he goes up where it is if he goes down unfortunately it stays where it is so that you know what you're voting when you vote, but the current is about $115,000.

 Thank you I was preaching yesterday and nobody got me any water and my throat really got dry when I was preaching yesterday. Nobody thought of that,  but thank you!

 Yeah it's something over $115,000    

 (15:57)

Yeah I can tell you what it is from here.  We have the same numbers.  So pension liability is, do we have the same numbers? Oh there it is OK.  $89,615 and 16cent is the total share of pension liability and then the total share of shared ministries is 150. Oh you know that's a total share of everything total share for shared ministries is $19,215 and $.81 for a total of and there's some other smaller portions in there. Total of $115,242 and three cents and I believe it's less than that now. I don't have the most current figure but will have a more current figure when and if you decide to vote  so that's the estimates.  If you go to a church conference vote and you vote to leave that will be the cost the final cost will be on known to everyone that day.

(17:19)

And then you will have---.  What I understand our plans to have a Fall annual conference special call conference like the one we're having later this month, it'll be just for disaffiliations because there's several church that are not going to be able to get everything they need done before by either of the conferences this spring either May or June.  As a matter of fact I do my listening session  for the church up in Aztec the first week of June, so they're even further behind you and so they'll be some others this fall, so they're talking about having a  special call conference somrtime this fall. They ‘ll probably tell us about that when we get through these annual conferences I don't know exactly when that’s going to happen.

(18:11)

But the Bishop has assured us the door will remain open and the possibility of churches to choose to disaffiliate will still be there, so don't be afraid that you're gonna lose a deadline that it's gonna close on you that’s not going to happen.  So then,  after you vote to disaffiliate, you put together all your paperwork and there's some,  there's some a list of things you have to do for that as well not too many we want a copy of your membership records for instance, and some other things along with the check for the disaffiliation costs, and then the trustee, the Conference Board of Trustees will look over to make sure you have all the paperwork in order  and the money in order and they will recommend that the conference go ahead and have disaffiliation so we're going to see it for the first time later this month the 20th of this month I think it is Saturday then Saturday and that I'll be the first time we'll see this process so will be interesting.   So you'll have a number of months to get what you need to get done before the special called conference in the fall and it will be, there’ll be plenty pf time to get things done.

There’ll be people in the Conference office that  will help you along the way with all the details they’ll answer any questions.  But it's also  my job to do the best I can to answer any question so I don't know if anyone still has any questions that you like to ask if this point? I answered a number last time but I'd be glad to answer some more now.

(19:53)

It's OK if you don't have questions---  You got to have microphone if you have a question.

(Sam Choy) I do have one.  (DS)Hi Sam! 

(Sam Choy)

On the coming May 20th, Special called conference, how many churches are on the list of disaffiliating and which district from? 

(DS) OK that is a good question. A matter of fact the trustees are getting together on Thursday and Friday of this week down at Sacramento camp and they're going to be going through all of the churches to make sure that they have their paperwork ready something in the neighborhood of about 35 churches somewhere in there about 30 of them are from the Clovis District, which is the far eastern district that borders Texas and there's no accident because it's most of the influence to choose to just affiliate has come from Texas that's where it started. Houston is Ground Zero for disaffiliation and so the Texas conference 50% more than 50% of their churches are leaving and some other Texas conferences similar numbers.  Northwest Texas which is our sister conference, which is right across the border on the eastern side, they voted four fifths 4/5 of the churches are leaving.  They will have between 20 and 30 churches when  it's all said and done left from about 100 and 160 or 70 churches that only be 20 or 32 just left.  It's like a,-- I don't wanna make it an analogy of virus, but it kind of is that there's a geography to it, Church you seem to have influence over a nearby churches. So all those Texas churches influenced those New Mexico churches for the most part, and in the many of those 30 of them are from the Clovis district at about five or four from the El Paso district and then a couple from the Albuquerque so I would say 35. It's somewhere in that neighborhood. I think maybe 37 something like that so it’s quite a few will we probably won't know for sure, I mean some people will know at the called conference and we don't expect I mean some people at the conference who will vote Noble because they don't want to see people leave. But we don't expect any problems with the vote at the special called conference.  Some conferences in other parts of country they have done things very differently, and they have (kind of) been at war with each other in some conferences.  New Mexico Conference has always been very grace-filled and loving, and we want churches to be where they want to be including yours.   Any other question…?

(23:00)

Any other questions ? yes !

(Okchu Lee )  OK , you had requested to report church membership numbers. When we were doing the voting, all those  people (with membership) are not attending regularly and if also they were not (participated) voting for, so what do you count those people who were not attending events that day.  Who were not in a voting time,  do you count them as a No or ...?

(D.S.) No! It has to be members of the church who are present for the vote. They have to be in the room and I'll depend on Pastor Kim and others to make sure that it's only members who vote.  Not just attending who are attending!  Has to be members! and we've had rarely have we had those issues but we had one church where some people got some people who are not members of the church to vote and we had to redo the vote. It's only happened once.  So we just want to be very careful. I will have ballots that you'll fill out and somebody I don't know I'll depend on Sam or Pastor Kim to come up with a couple of people who will know who the members are and you only get a ballot if you're a member, but only the people who are present vote but if you suddenly have 50 people who are on your membership rolls who have not attended in a year and they show up, they get to vote.  Hopefully it's the people who are active a part of the church who are members, that we want to hear from and the membership records that we're asking for after the vote is taken that's for historical purposes just so our conference historian has the membership of the church from way back when all current.  It has nothing to do with the voting.   Thank you.   Sure. Sam, behind you.

(25:10)

(Mikyong Kim)

OK  There was a question on Undecided. They were in attendance and How does that count or doesn't count? 

(DS) That has been a problem in some conferences and,  in our conference, we have decided that undecided don’t count.  You either have to vote Yes or No.  You can't vote  uh, you can't abstain, that's the word they’ve been using itself.  You cannot abstain in New Mexico. Is it either it’s one yeah either one or the other okay yeah because in some conferences if you abstain it counts as a  ‘no’ vote, and  so that's not good. We want, we want people to vote their conscience,  we want people to vote where God wants their hearts to be.  We don't want there to be any problems. We want to be clear and transparent, and every every process that we're doing here.  Good question though! Now All right. Any other question?  Well I do not need to drag this on because I hear myself speak all the time. I don't need to hear myself speaking to you.

(26:38)

 Shure

(Okchu Lee)

 It is about payment.  Even though we all our church member decided to get out from UMC, but we are not able to pay for those payment, what would you suggest?  

(Answer by DS) You have to have all the homework done and you have to have a cost of disaffiliation, so you have to figure that out, and each church has done it differently. Some churches have taken out loans to pay to make the payment. You know you have to have the money.

(Okchu Lee) Maybe we can pay is in installments ?

(DS) Well, until that conference, as long as you're done by the conference, I think you could probably do that.  Now, for instance, that the deadline for this conference was 1 May so you had to have all the paperwork and all the checks in by 1 May. So they'll probably say they have a conference in the middle of October. It'll probably be 1 October that will be the deadline so you'll have to be paying attention to when the deadlines are.  But yes, you can make installments all the way up till that conference for that deadline and as long as you have it by then okay you are fine. 

Many churches like I said before, are waiting until the general conference 2024 to see what happens there.  I don't expect I honestly don't expect what happens at general conference 2024 to please anybody.  I think everybody on all sides will be upset because that’s how General Conference usually ends up.  But if you didn't if you didn't just affiliate this fall because you didn't have enough money saved up, or whatever, you would still be able to disaffiliate the next annual conference in June 2024, the Bishop has assured us of that.  So you know there’s some Churches have just been in a panic because they thought oh we have to get it done now, or we, or we missed the chance.  No! The bishop wants  churches to be where they want to be,  so that door is open.  

All right any other questions? 

Thank you for coming out. I appreciate you fitting this evening into our schedule. I didn't expect the room to full before. I knew that it was that an evening a weekday evening but I am glad to see your face is again and you'll have a church Council vote whenever you have your church council vote and either I will be back to handle the voting for the church conference or the next district superintendent which is Randall Partin. Many of you know him well he was the Bishop’s right-hand person and he's going to do that and be the Albuquerque district superintendent. So he's gonna be a busy guy but regardless they'll be someone here who will do that vote for you all.   Pastor Kim, Would you close us in prayer?  Could I ask you to do that?

(Pastor Kim)

Father God. We confess that we are week every moment so that we need the wisdom from you Lord. Rule of us with the heart of Jesus Christ so that we may follow what you want Father. And then Father bless all the churches in the United Methodist Church so that all the churches may follow your will whatever you want. Lord God Tahnk you for today’s meeting with District Superintendent. Lord God, bless our superintendent also we prayed in Jesus name. Amen.