Annual Conference meets in Charleston, W.Va., shows commitment to difficult issues.

Annual Conference showed persistence and a commitment to deal with difficult and divisive issues in its deliberations in Charleston, W.Va., July 3-7. Through days of meetings, moderator Chris Bowman, a pastor at Martinsburg (Pa.) Memorial Church of the Brethren, guided an engaged and lively delegate body through a maze of issues, motions, and amendments with intelligence and clarity. Ronald Beachley, executive minister for Western Pennsylvania District, was chosen as moderator-elect, to lead the 2006 Conference in Des Moines.

Total attendance of 4,038--including 920 congregational and district delegates--easily topped last year's gathering of 2,844 in Boise and came close to the Baltimore registration figure of 5,029 in 2001. It was announced that San Diego, Calif., will be the Conference site in 2009. Next year's Conference will take place in Peoria, Ill., July 2-6.

Extensive discussion and an extremely close vote on a substitute motion revealed deep division in the delegate body over the report on "Congregational Disagreements with Annual Conference Decisions." Similar discussion with regard to other business items--particularly the denominational name, doing church business, and multi-ethnic church and cross cultural ministries--gave a sense that the delegate body also was deeply divided over how open to diversity and differing opinions the church ought to be.

There were indications that Annual Conference leadership may be moving to invite more open conversations, in pre-Conference meetings of the Standing Committee of district delegates. The committee talked about hurts and brokenness in the denomination and sought ways to hear concerns that do not come through established channels.

The report from the committee on "Congregational Disagreements with Annual Conference Decisions" was adopted with an amendment deleting the committee's suggestion that in extreme cases of disagreement, district conferences not seat congregations. The Conference also adopted reports on "The Functions and Qualifications of the Local Church Moderator," and on "Denominational Name." That committee reported overwhelming support for the name Church of the Brethren but called for attention to processes for dealing with controversial issues in the denomination.

A study committee was elected to answer the queries on "Becoming a Multi-Ethnic Church" and "The Need for Cross Cultural Ministries," which had been joined together as one business item. The Conference turned down Standing Committee recommendations that the issues be referred to the districts and Congregational Life Teams, on the urging of representatives of a multi-ethnic group that gathered in ad hoc fashion the evening before the business item came to the floor. The action did include some of the other Standing Committee recommendations, that cross-cultural ministries become an increased priority in the denomination and that a progress report be made each year for five years with reassessment in 2010 by Annual Conference.

The Conference first elected six members of a seven-member, ethnically diverse study committee, which also will include an ex-officio representative of the American Baptist Churches, to answer the concerns of the two queries. When it was announced in the final business session on July 7 that no African-Americans were elected to the committee, delegates reopened the business agenda and overwhelmingly passed a motion that the study committee choose an eighth member from the African-American nominees on the original ballot. Conference officers also heard counsel that the representative of the American Baptist Churches be African-American. The elected study committee members are Darla Kay Bowman Deardorff, Ruben Deoleo, Nadine L. Monn, Neemita Pandya, Gilbert Romero, and Asha Solanky.

Another five-member study committee was elected to answer a query on "Doing Church Business," to report in 2005. Committee members are Joe Detrick, Matt Guynn, Verdena Lee, Dale Posthumus, and David Shetler.

The General Board's resolution on Iraq was adopted with hardly any discussion. The resolution called on members and congregations to be "a constant witness to Christ as a living peace church of today against all war and the violence of its nature." The resolution also called on the US administration and Congress to take responsibility for their involvement in the war.

In other business, a 3.1 percent cash salary increase for pastors was approved, the delegates received a "Ministries and Mission" report from the five Conference agencies, and two new fellowships were welcomed: Koinonia Fellowship in Charlottesville, Va., and Sunrise Church in Harrisonburg, Va.

In elections for denominational offices, Joan Lawrence Daggett was elected to the Annual Conference Council; Joanna Wave Willoughby to the Program and Arrangements Committee; James O. Eikenberry to the Committee on Interchurch Relations; Herman Kauffman to the Pastoral Compensation and Benefits Advisory Committee; Diane Harden to the Association of Brethren Caregivers (ABC) board; David B. Eller as trustee for Bethany Theological Seminary; John A. Braun to the Brethren Benefit Trust (BBT) board; Michael Benner as at-large member of the General Board; and Robbie Miller to the On Earth Peace board.

The Conference also affirmed appointments to the boards of Conference agencies: for ABC, Eddie H. Edmonds, John Katonah, and John Wenger; for Bethany, Jerry A. Davis, John D. Miller Jr., and Charles Boyer, who was elected by the alumni; for the General Board, district appointees Ken Wenger, Mid-Atlantic, Dale Minnich, Western Plains, and Susan Kinsel Fitze, Southern Ohio; and for On Earth Peace, David Jehnsen and Bev Weaver.

For more detailed information about Annual Conference 2004 in Charleston, W.Va., see the Annual Conference pages at www.brethren.org.