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Conference Secretaries for United Methodist Global Ministries from the Western Jurisdiction gathered together February 28-March 1, in Mill Valley, California, along with the California-Nevada Conference and Global Ministries staff members. The Conference Secretaries for Global Ministries (CSGM) are lay and clergy who promote relationships between annual conferences and Global Ministries. The CSGM has the important role of educating, connecting and partnering with local churches to share ...

In 2022, the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference passed a resolution "Identifying and Opposing Apartheid in the Holy Land."  On March 15, 2023, at 9 am Pacific Time, Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) and United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR) will put on a webinar on "Apartheid Free Communities"   The international human rights community agrees that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people amounts to apartheid. In the first two months of 2023, we have seen the current Israeli ...

Submitted by Greg Nelson with the Oregon-Idaho chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action Each year at the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference Session, among the budgets, appointments, reports, and celebrations are conference legislative items. Many of these actions and standing resolutions are intended to help us live out the values of The United Methodist Church as it exists in the Oregon-Idaho context. This article is one in a series to highlight legislative items related to social ...

Dear Annual Conference Members,   We are hopeful that our Western Jurisdictional Conference will meet in November 2022 to elect bishops. We anticipate selecting four individuals to consecrate as bishop who, together with Bishop Oliveto, will lead the West in this next chapter of our life together.   The WJ committee on episcopacy, in collaboration with the jurisdictional leadership team, inter-ethnic coordinating committee, and first elected delegates, are inviting the annual conferences of the ...

For three years, Rev. Dr. Brett Webb-Mitchell has been a dedicated, passionate advocate for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Oregon-Idaho Conference of The United Methodist Church. As funding for his position runs out, February marks his last month on the staff of the Oregon-Idaho Conference. “Brett has expanded our advocacy with LGBTQ+ siblings in the life of the Oregon-Idaho Conference and beyond,” said Bishop Elaine JW Stanovsky. “He has led us forward on a path to becoming a more loving, more ...

Get your hands on a paperback copy of the 2019 Conference Journal by ordering your own print-on-demand copy. The 2019 Journal is available for purchase, at a discounted rate, through Lulu.com (linked here in the text). The Oregon-Idaho Conference journal features details on church structure, legislation, finances, history as well as clergy, laity and institutional directories. Please contact your District Administrative Assistants if you're having any trouble accessing and ordering your copy ...

As the Oregon-Idaho Conference and the Western Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church continue to proclaim they are a “home for all” post-General Conference 2019, there were a few legislative items passed during the annual conference session in Eugene that are reactions and calls for action from churches and leadership in the local Conference. Approved on the Consent agenda was Action Request no. 4, which calls for structural change in the United Methodist Church. Be It Resolved That the...

The Oregon-Idaho Conference has voted to send a diverse group of clergy and lay delegates to General Conference 2020 in Minneapolis. Head of the delegation will be Rev. Wendy Woodworth, who is an openly lesbian clergywoman serving Salem’s Morningside UMC a part of Open Door Ministries of Salem-Keizer. Back for another turn as lay delegate will be Jan Nelson, an openly lesbian member of Salem Morningside UMC and lay leader for the Conference. Additionally, the Conference selected  Mark Bateman...

In some ways Taylor Gould’s commissioning as a provisional elder in the Oregon-Idaho Conference is a big deal; but in others it’s not. Gould, 26, identifies as bisexual/queer, and was one of six individuals commissioned and ordained Friday night in Eugene, Oregon. She’s will be the first queer person in the Conference to be a candidate for ministry under the new, more punitive rules for LGBTQ+ persons adopted at General Conference that will take effect in 2020. But she’s not the first openly ...

In this CrossOver year where the United Methodist Church has been discerning whether to stay together or split apart, Greater Northwest Area Bishop Elaine Stanovsky knows the church isn’t going to be the same. “General Conference (2019) sought to chart this new way forward,” she said in her opening episcopal address. “But it may turn out to be a tipping point that tears us in two.” Since that gathering in February, she said she’s heard from people at every point along the spectrum who feel ...