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Conference to elect eight delegates to General Conference

Profiles of Clergy Candidates     Profiles of Lay Nominees
Letter to Lay Members     Letter to Clergy Members
Petition of Support for Clergy Delegates
Nomination Form for Lay Delegates

At the annual conference session this May, members of the Baltimore-Washington Conference will be voting to select eight clergy and eight lay delegates who will represent them at the 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

An additional eight clergy and eight lay delegates will be elected to represent the annual conference at the 2008 Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference, at which bishops are elected and assigned. An additional four clergy and four lay delegates will also be elected to be reserve delegates to Jurisdictional Conference.

The number of General Conference delegates from the Baltimore-Washington Conference is down by two this quadrennium due to a decline in local church membership.

The formula for determining the number of delegates that will represent each conference is outlined in paragraph 502 in the Book of Discipline. According to this formula, the total number of delegates is set at 1,000. One clergy delegate is elected for each of the 26,000 members in a conference?s local churches.

In 2005, the Baltimore-Washington Conference had 200,010 members in its local churches, down 7,947 members from 2001.

Conference secretary, the Rev. Al Clipp, released a series of gbwc_superuserelines for those who wish to be considered as delegates during the balloting process at annual conference, which will be held May 24-26 in Washington.

Letters outlining these gbwc_superuserelines were sent to clergy and lay members of annual conference.

According to Paragraph 36 of the 2004 Book of Disicpline, each nominee must be a member of a congregation of the Baltimore-Washington Conference; must have been a professing member of The United Methodist Church for at least two years prior to the election; and be an active participant in The United Methodist Church for at least four years prior to the election.

An alphabetized list of the nominees and their biographical information will be included in the packets lay members receive at annual conference.

Every clergy person was entitled to be considered as a delegate for General Conference. Nominations were not made for ministerial candidates.

The nominees whose names will be placed on the ballot already notified Clipp in writing prior to April 1, 2007.

The Rev. Mark Smiley will oversee the election of these delegates at the annual conference session.

For more information, contact Clipp at or Oden at
(410) 647-0218.