A Message from Bishop Dease on the 2024 Appointment Making Season

Message from Bishop: 2024 Appointment Making Process from North Georgia Conference on Vimeo.

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My friends in the North Georgia Conference, it’s Appointment Making Season.

Appointment making is some of the most important work we do in service to the United Methodist church across the North Georgia conference. It’s work churches, clergy, the cabinet and I come together to do.

It is work that really begins each year in the fall by way of the consultation process.  

Consultation is the process by which a Bishop and District Superintendent “confer” with the pastor and SPRC as we work to connect clergy with congregations. The criteria for this discernment is found in the Book of Discipline (Paragraph 427).

As ordained elders and local pastors we have committed ourselves to this process and to itinerancy. The itinerant system began with John Wesley in the British context and continued with Francis Asbury in America. Its impetus was to spread scriptural holiness over the land. It is how Methodism was established across the country. Today, the willingness to move from place to place or “itinerate” remains at the heart of our polity and doctrine. This also includes Bishops.

We clergy offer ourselves to be appointed where the needs of the local church match the skill sets of the clergy.
When we place restrictions on where we can serve, we limit our movement and opportunity to serve in places that might be a blessing and life-giving for us, our family, and the congregation and community that receives us.
  
We are a ‘sent system’ of clergy deployment. Churches do not call pastors, and pastors do not self-select their places of ministry and service.

In my second appointment season with you in North Georgia, I’d like to share the plans for the upcoming stages of appointment making.

It is expected that each District Superintendent will have thorough and sufficient knowledge of the churches and the pastors in her/his district. This allows for fair and accurate representation for the pastor and for the congregation. Throughout the year, as your Bishop, I look forward to getting to know pastors and churches so that I can bring even more to the work of discernment as appointment changes are considered.  

The Cabinet is keenly aware that significant improvement is needed in our approach as it relates to cross-racial appointments. We need more intentional training opportunities as well as a deeper understanding of the various subcultures that are represented in our conference. 

I think it is important to note that in the past, the Cabinet has offered opportunity for appointment reconsiderations. When an appointment was projected, and the pastor of the church asked the Cabinet to reconsider it was called ‘The Adjustment Period’.  This often involved at least one additional week of appointment changes and shifts. 

Our beloved Church, today is in a new season. We have fewer churches. Adjustment is not a viable approach. Please understand that extreme circumstances occur.  For example, an appointment of a pastor to a church where an ex-spouse is a member, or a local church may have been embroiled in an unexpected conflict, or a strategic plan may need a certain expertise. In those extraordinary situations, further conversation will occur.

My friends, our appointive system guarantees a pastor for every church. Every appointment may not be perfect, every preacher or Bishop may not be perfect. Every congregation may not be perfect either. We are all a work in progress and God’s grace has yet to be perfected in us. Therefore, we pray for one another and serve alongside another as we move on to perfection. 

The appointive cabinet will be gathering in March. We will spend one week sharing in devotion, earnest prayer, discernment, and deep listening as it relates to you, the pastors, and you, the laity, who represent the North Georgia Conference. 
After our week together District Superintendents will meet with individual pastors to provide them the church profile and salary of their projected appointment. The chair or a member of the Staff/Parish Relations Committee will also be contacted by the District Superintendent to pick up the profile of their projected pastor.  

Included in the profiles of pastors and churches will be the date planned for an introductory visit where the DS will introduce the pastor to the SPRC committee.

In most cases, the SPR chair will announce the projected appointment to the congregation in April.

Friends, this is holy work, and this is great work. I solicit your prayers for me and the Cabinet as we enter into this significant work in the life of the North Georgia Conference. I am honored to be on this journey with you.     

See you again soon. May God’s peace with you all.
—Bishop Robin Dease