SEJ: New bishop, new budget, new start
By Jessica Brodie
LAKE JUNALUSKA, N.C.—For the first time in 12 years, South Carolina is getting a new episcopal leader: Bishop Leonard Fairley.
Fairley, who takes the helm of the South Carolina Conference of The United Methodist Church Sept. 1, replaces Bishop L. Jonathan Holston, South Carolina’s leader since 2012. Holston is heading to the Alabama Panhandle Conference, while Fairley leaves the Kentucky and Central Appalachian Missionary conferences.
That was the biggest news from the UMC’s Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference, a three-day gathering held July 10-12 to do the business of the denomination in this region.
SEJ Conference kicked off Wednesday, July 10, with a powerful opening worship service led by Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett, resident bishop of the North Alabama and Holston conferences.
Drawing from John 21, Wallace-Padgett shared how Jesus offered Peter a recommissioning, the same offer he makes for every one of us today. Despite trauma and grief we might have experience during the pandemic and season of disaffiliation in the UMC, Wallace-Padgett said, our call remains the same: Feed my lambs. Feed and tend my sheep.
“Today he calls us to do the same, both within the church and outside the church,” she said. “The best way to move forward as a jurisdiction is to follow Jesus wherever he leads us.”
Beyond episcopal assignments and worship opportunities, SEJ Conference ushered in a host of business, including a realignment of the jurisdiction’s episcopal areas from 13 to 10; changing the names of episcopal areas from city-based titles to regional names; approval to share a bishop with the Northeastern Jurisdiction, a move that will offset some episcopal office costs; passage of a $1.3 million budget for the jurisdiction, which is a 12.3 percent decrease from the last quadrennium; elected a revised slate of people to committees and general agencies, including a new treasurer, David Dommisse, and a new secretary, South Carolina’s the Rev. Kathy James; established a new Petitions Committee along with a new process for receiving petitions; celebrated the retirement of Bishop Bill McAlilly as well as memorialized five who passed away; heard from the jurisdiction’s new Racial Bias Task Force, along with an opportunity for circle discussions to address difficult conversations; and lifted up the many ministries throughout the jurisdiction that enable God’s people to do God’s work across the region.
Read on for all the details.
South Carolina gets new bishop
After a dozen years without a change, South Carolina has been assigned a new episcopal leader with Bishop Fairley.
That news was announced on the final night of SEJ Conference, Thursday, July 11, along with changes for the rest of the conferences in the SEJ.
Elected to the episcopacy in 2016, Fairley has served as the bishop of the Kentucky and Central Appalachian Missionary Conferences, where he is known as a calm, steady leader, exhorting United Methodists there to serve as the hands and feet of Jesus and to make passionate spiritual disciples for the transformation of the world.
A native of North Carolina, he served as a local church pastor and district superintendent for 32 years in that conference before being elected to the episcopacy. He is a graduate of Pfeiffer College and Duke University’s School of Divinity.
He loves to write and has published a book of poetry, “Who Shall Hear My Voice.” Fairley was married to Priscilla Ann Russell until her death in 2013. In January 2018, he married Dawn Sparks, whom he met after coming to Kentucky. Between them, they have four adult children and 10 grandchildren.
South Carolina delegates and others celebrated Fairley with a special reception after the announcements July 11, welcoming him to the Palmetto State with open arms.
He will take office in South Carolina Sept. 1.(Learn more about Fairley here.)
With his wife at his side, Fairley took a moment to express deep appreciation to the large South Carolina contingent that greeted him at the reception, asking for prayer during this time of transition and sharing his hopes for the future ministry collaboration.
“This work is a collaborative nature,” Fairley said. “You are not receiving a perfect bishop. But in the words of John Wesley, we are moving on toward perfection.”
He said he is excited to share the good news of the gospel alongside God’s people in South Carolina.
“My heart is full,” Fairley added.
Fairley replaces Bishop Holston, who served the South Carolina Conference since 2012, an extended term because of the pandemic. Holston has been assigned to the Alabama Panhandle Conference.
South Carolina Delegation Co-Chair Jackie Jenkins said she is thrilled about the appointment of Bishop Fairley to South Carolina.
“We have been blessed and will miss immensely to have the unique leadership of Bishop Holston and his wife, Felicia, who was a beautiful compliment to him,” Jenkins said. He has advanced our conference by way of spiritual growth, development of new leadership, embracing unity and healing, as well as expanding discipleship through the partnership with laity and clergy. These are strengths we’ll miss. Yet we are proud to welcome our new family, Leonard and Dawn Fairley, and look with eager anticipation toward Bishop Fairley’s new leadership and his enhancement of our conference’s stance on moving forward in faith.”
Episcopal areas realign from 13 to 10, officially change names
Among the first items of business during SEJ Conference was formal approval June 10 of a recommendation by the Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy to realign the annual conferences within SEJ episcopal areas.
The new structural plan shifts annual conferences within SEJ episcopal areas and reduces the number of episcopal areas from 13 to 10, including sharing a bishop with another jurisdiction.
COE Chair the Rev. Kim Ingram, joined by Vice Chair Christine Dodson and Secretary Alex Shanks, shared their committee’s recommendation on the new boundaries for episcopal areas and the number of bishops available for assignment within the SEJ.
In January, the COE had recommended reducing the number of episcopal areas within the jurisdiction to 10 from the current 13. This would involve several formerly separate episcopal areas joining to become episcopal areas containing more than one annual conference.
However, given the funding decrease in the wake of disaffiliations, the recent General Conference reduced the number of bishops serving across all five United States jurisdictions to 32 from the current 39. The Southeastern Jurisdiction will get nine bishops, Northeastern six, North Central six, South Central six, and Western Jurisdiction five.
The COE’s revised plan for the Southeastern Jurisdiction, approved June 10 by the body, includes nine episcopal areas plus a 10th whose bishop will be shared between the SEJ and the NEJ. Because of the change, no new episcopal elections were held at this year’s conference. With the retirement of Bishop Bill McAlilly from the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference, that leaves 10 bishops to be assigned this year—three to in-jurisdiction multiconference episcopal areas, six to single conference areas and one to be shared between two jurisdictions.
The dual-jurisdiction sharing means the SEJ will get some help toward its reduced budget.
As the COE told the body, delegates will consider a budget that reflects a decrease from the last quadrennium, but sharing a bishop with NEJ means the SEJ will split expenses, receiving $194,186 to cover half of the bishop’s office expenses.
Also during SEJ, the body approved an official name change for the 10 episcopal areas to reflect their mission settings rather than a city in the region. The new names with their newly assigned bishops are as follows:
Alabama-Panhandle Area (Alabama-West Florida and North Alabama Conferences): Bishop L. Jonathan Holston
Florida Area: Bishop Tom Berlin
Georgia Area (North Georgia and South Georgia Annual Conference): Bishop Robin Dease
Holston Area (shared with an annual conference in the NEJ): Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett
Kentucky-Tennessee Area (Kentucky, Central Appalachian Missionary, and Tennessee-Western
Kentucky): Bishop David Graves
Mississippi Area: Bishop Sharma Lewis
North Carolina Area: Bishop Connie Shelton
South Carolina Area: Bishop Leonard Fairley
Virginia Area: Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson
Western North Carolina Area: Bishop Ken Carter
$1.3M budget for SEJ passes
Also during the SEJ Conference, the body approved the budget and other CFA recommendations for the next quadrennium.
Delegates approved a $1.3 million budget for 2025-2028, a 12.3 percent decrease from the 2021-2024 budget.
The budget was developed and recommended by the SEJ’s Committee on Finance and Administration.
“This budget is projected to be sufficient for ongoing operational costs,” CF&A Chair Frank Dunnewind told the body, noting it can provide for a global youth event and another called SEJ session if needed.
Delegates also approved CF&A’s recommendation that this $1.3 million be apportioned to the annual conferences, as well as the election of David Dommisse as the SEJ treasurer.
New slate elected
Another key happening during SEJ was election of a host of people to SEJ committees and general agencies this quadrennium.
The body elected College of Bishops nominees, including a new Conference Secretary (South Carolina’s James) and Secretary-Designate along with members of the Committee on Investigation, Committee on Appeals, Committee on Plan of Organization and Rules of Order, and Committee on Program and Arrangements.
The COB nominees were modified just prior to the election when an oversight, correction and apology were announced by Bishop Tom Berlin along with a revised slate that included two Hispanic/Latinx persons. The body also added a Native American person to the slate.
After this, the body elected a slate of people brought forth from the 30-member Nominations Committee, comprising two clergy and two laity from every annual conference in the jurisdiction. See article, here.
Racial Bias Task Force offers update, discussion opportunity
Another key opportunity during the 2024 SEJ Conference was the chance to hear an update from the Racial Bias Task Force on their findings and recommendations since the last jurisdictional gathering.
The Racial Bias Task Force was created in 2022 by the COE after a formal request from the SEJ to study the impact of racial bias in the process of selecting episcopal candidates and recommend potential reforms that might reduce harmful racial bias.
South Carolina’s the Rev. Ken Nelson started the report by sharing the long history of racism within Methodism.
“Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it,” Nelson said, noting the UMC’s jurisdictional systems are born in sin and shaped in inequity.
“Too often we have been on the wrong side of history,” he said, and it was not until 1988 that the UMC even acknowledged racism as a sin in the Book of Discipline.
Nelson shared a video that lifted up voices from the past—people who were part of the UMC’s United States Central Jurisdiction, which was created in 1939 to separate and divide the church, formalizing the segregation of the church more strictly. It has since been dissolved.
Next, the Racial Bias Task Force offered several poll questions designed to help assess the scope of their work, while also assessing episcopal nominations and the voting process while also assessing whether any biases exist in the SEJ.
The task force offered a number of its findings. They also offered recommendations, including the following:
Assess and align how episcopal candidates are named across annual conferences.
Assess the spoken and unspoken requirements for episcopal candidacy in the SEJ.
Further standardize the process by which candidates make themselves available to be elected.
Offer mental, emotional and spiritual support for episcopal nominees following conferences.
Deploy a task force to assess the implicit bias and racism inherent in the jurisdictional model as a whole.
Offer resources for delegation heads and caucus groups about best practices for the discernment of episcopal nominees that would include qualities necessary to fulfill the requirements of the episcopal office stated in the Book of Discipline.
Offer resources for training on implicit bias for delegations and caucus groups, including hiring a diversity, equity and inclusion specialists to help.
Claire Bowen, senior consultant at the Candler Center for Christian Leadership, along with the Rev. Nathan Malone shared about two small group “circle gatherings” to be held during SEJ, each to dialogue about racism using processes outlined in “3 Practices for Crossing the Difference Divide,” by Jim Henderson and Jim Hancock.
“We live in a polarized culture and our churches are not immune,” Malone said, noting the practices help all learn how to listen to and from each other.
The practices are as follows:
I’ll be unusually interested in others;
I’ll stay in the room with difference;
I’ll stop comparing my best with your worst.
As Malone and Bowen explained, don’t expect agreement in the groups. Expect clarity. Clarity and understanding equal informed action.
After their report, Dr. Sharon Austin asked from the floor for a point of privilege, expressing the pain she is still experiencing and the trauma she endured as an episcopal candidate at the 2022 SEJ Conference. She said the report could not capture the hurt and feelings of those six persons of color who were episcopal nominees in 2022—herself along with Byron Thomas, Ken Nelson, Sharon Bowers, Edie Gleaves and Isomar Alvarez.
“People are more than a report,” Austin reminded the body.
Presiding Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson called for a moment to pray for those six candidates and for the conference to have deep reflection. Following the moment of silence, Bishop Haupert-Johnson shared a prayer.
Delegates then spent Wednesday and Thursday afternoons in two circle discussions, dividing into small groups in rooms around the conference and retreat center.
New Petitions Committee established with new process for receiving petitions
The SEJ now has a new Petitions Committee and a new process by which the body will receive petitions.
The body approved two recommendations for amendments to the Plan of Organization and Rules for the SEJ. The amendments were part of the report offered July 11 by the Rev. Jasmine Smothers.
The first reflects changes to the SEJ Nominating Committee: language changes updating Red Bird to its new name, the Central Appalachian Missionary Conference; striking a deadline that is no longer feasible; proposing an amendment to allow bishops to have more flexibility about who convenes; and changing the time for the Nominating Committee to convene.
The second, which creates a Petitions Committee, defines a new process by which the SEJ will receive petitions and removes the work of petitions from the Agenda Committee. It also removes redundant language.
SEJ remembers five, honors McAlilly retirement
Also during the conference, the body celebrated the retirement of Bishop William T. McAlilly, who steps down after 12 years as an episcopal leader. Elected to the episcopacy at the SEJ Conference in 2012, McAlilly was assigned as the resident bishop of the Memphis and Tennessee Conferences and helped merge those two conferences to form what is now the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference of the UMC. Over the course of his career, McAlilly served in a wide variety of ministry settings in Georgia and Mississippi. His son, Chris, his daughter, Laura, and his wife and lifelong ministry partner, Lynn, joined McAlilly onstage. His five grandchildren, daughter-in-law, and son-in-law also were in attendance.
The SEJ also commemorated the lives of five who died in the last quadrennium: four bishops—Marshall L. “Jack” Meadors Jr.; Carlton Printess “C.P.” Minnick Jr.; Thomas Barber Stockton; and Timothy Wayne Whitaker—and one bishop’s spouse, Syble Spain.
With a sermon titled “We Make our Way by Walking,” McAlilly shared about the lives of each person, all highlighting their lifelong faith in God.
Other happenings during SEJ
Also at SEJ, the body heard from Bishop Ken Carter, who offered a hope-filled address Wednesday, June 10, on the state of the church (see article here).
The body celebrated a host of ministries and agencies of the jurisdiction, learning about their mission and vision, including Gulfside Assembly, Candler School of Theology at Emory University; Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center; the SEJ Commission on Archives and History; Hinton Rural Life Center in Hayesville, North Carolina; the Intentional Growth Center at Lake Junaluska; and SEJ United Methodist Volunteers in Mission.
The body also engaged in a service of communion at the start of the event, and closed the event with a reaffirmation of their baptismal covenant, led by Bishop Sharma D. Lewis and Bishop David Graves.
For more scenes from the conference, visit the SEJ Flickr page, found at https://www.flickr.com/sejumc, or visit the jurisdiction’s website at https://www.sejumc.org.
What Happened at the SEJ Conference?
S.C. assigned a new bishop: Bishop Leonard Fairley
Other bishops assigned; Bishop Holston going to Alabama Panhandle Conference
Episcopal area names officially change
Episcopal areas realign, going from 13 to 10 areas
SEJ to share bishop with NEJ
$1.3M budget for SEJ passes
New treasurer, secretary elected
Revised slate elected to committees, general agencies
New Petitions Committee established with new process for receiving petitions
Optimistic state of the church projected: “Much to build upon”
McAlilly retires
Service of Remembrance honors five
Racial Bias Task Force offers opportunity for circle discussions
Ministries celebrated
Attendees celebrate reaffirmation of baptisms