Dear members and friends of the West Virginia Conference,

During January and February, I met with lay and clergy leaders in each of the supervisory areas of the West Virginia Conference to share information and to respond to questions. During those times of reflection, prayer, and sharing, I was pleased to report that disciples of Jesus Christ continue to be made and that lives and communities continue to be transformed.

The need for the healing ministry of Christ through the church is more urgent now than ever. Our baptism calls us to respond to the needs of the world, and God promises to strengthen and equip us for this work.

During each of these gatherings, the following topics were covered. Links with additional information are included below.

Conference Mission Projects and Ministries

Mission and ministry continue throughout our conference: throughout the pandemic, our conference mission projects, the New Vision Depot, and our DaySpring Mobile Camping ministry, not to mention local church pantries and outreach projects, served hundreds upon hundreds of families in a variety of ways.

Short videos that highlight some of these ministries are now located on our Conference Website. I encourage congregations to access these videos and use them for mission and offering moments during your worship services and/or administrative meetings.

Your faithful payment of apportionments makes a variety of mission and ministry possible. Each congregation does make a difference for Christ and for the families of West Virginia. The videos for local church use may be found at this link.

Lay Leadership in Ministry

Our lay ministry is on the move and growing. Training, equipping, and resourcing for lay ministry is now being coordinated and planned across the entire annual conference with an eye toward, not reinventing the wheel, but for how we might offer more, in more places and with more people. 

Lay ministry teaching and training is taking advantage of the technology that the pandemic has forced upon us in many ways. Now lay academy classes, local lay leadership training, and CLM courses are being offered online, as well as in person, throughout the Conference, making it possible to engage in courses and training across District boundaries like never before.

Our laity are writing wonderful, inspiring, and motivating devotionals for clergy and laity during Advent and Lent. (You can find the Lenten Devotions here.) These can be used, not just for personal reflection and prayer, but for Sunday School classes and prayer groups.

Kristi Wilkerson, our Conference Lay Leader, leads a conference-wide team of district lay leaders who commit themselves to increasing the involvement of laity in ministry and leadership, locally and across the conference. This team is planning for additional Associate Lay Leaders, who will oversee specific areas of lay leadership.

The Partnership of Three Conferences—West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, and Susquehanna

This is a new thing! Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi and I have been assigned as episcopal leaders to guide these three conferences. The three conferences have much in common and are rich with a diversity of people, gifts, leadership, experiences, resources, and ideas.

We are actively exploring ways to share mission and ministry, resources, and ideas in order to discover and multiply ministry possibilities. You can watch both bishops discuss this partnership by video, here: watch the video.

Supervisory Areas in our Conference

Within the last several years, the supervisory load of our conference superintendents has become unbalanced, with some overseeing many more congregations and pastors than others. To address this reality, superintendents have been assigned oversight of “supervisory areas” rather than geographical “districts.” Currently, we have 9 Districts and 8 Conference Superintendents.

As we move into the 2022 – 2023 appointment year, our conference will work toward redistricting and transition to 7 Conference Superintendents. In addition to rebalancing the supervisory responsibilities and expanding the opportunities for missional approaches and strategy, the reduction in number of Superintendents has allowed for reduction of the Conference budget, helping to keep local church apportionments relatively flat.

Furthermore, the West Virginia Conference has fewer pastors serving in the Conference than it once did, and redistricting helps to keep a larger number of pastors serving our congregations. Literally, this means that two congregations, who probably would not have been appointed pastors, will now have pastors appointed.

We do not have enough pastors to fill all of our full-time appointments. While pastors and congregations have been adjusting to this transitional structure, a plan for the Supervisory areas to become seven districts is being refined, paving the way for a resolution to be proposed to the 2022 Annual Conference. The Annual Conference Workbook will provide additional information when it is ready.

Conference Ministry Structure

During the 2021-2022 conference year, conference ministry areas have been living into to a new ministry structure as we transition from Covenant Council oversight to that of the Core Leadership Team.

Approved by the 2021 Annual Conference, this ministry structure is intended to free up the ministry teams and administrative committees to better advance and multiply the ministry and mission to which they are called.

The Core Leadership Team consisting of 18 lay and clergy leaders from across the Conference, is getting rooted in current ministries, dreaming about future possibilities, and is in discernment about how God might be calling us forward as a conference. Questions for the Core Team may be directed to coreconvener@wvumc.org.

The Boy Scouts of America Bankruptcy and lawsuit

God calls us to care for those who have been harmed and to do all we can to prevent further harm from occurring. To that end, a group representing the UMC continues to work toward resolution for the survivors of sexual abuse and all involved parties, including congregations. United Methodists participated in the bankruptcy mediation process with five goals: 

We will continue to provide updates as they are available to congregations involved in scouting. Questions may be referred to your superintendent.

General Conference planning

Since my visits, it has been announced that General Conference will be postponed to 2024. Questions about what exactly this decision means will be resolved in the coming days. Be assured, our mission as the people of God does not change: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world! You may find my response to the postponement announcement here: click here to read the announcement.

West Virginia Conference Ministry and Leadership Resources

Your Conference staff are ready to assist you in finding the resources you need to help you in your faith and leadership. The Conference website, wvumc.org, is a valuable way to explore what help is available to you and learn how other leaders are facing similar challenges to yours.

We hope you will take note of Portico (see the tab at the top of the site), our learning management system, as a resource for your next steps in continuing education. Whether you are a treasurer, lay leader, considering steps toward licensed ministry, or simply curious, the website has something for you.

I give thanks for the ministry that continues to transform lives and communities throughout the West Virginia Conference and around the world. Not only are we part of a global connection through the United Methodist Church—including Ukraine and in Russia—we are part of the body of Christ.

In the next few weeks, Bishop Moore-Koikoi and I will be traveling across the three Conferences, holding three regional meetings in each conference to share our thoughts and our hopes around the mission and ministry of the Church. The dates and locations of these regional meetings will be shared soon. God indeed is powerfully moving among us, crossing boundaries, and making all things new.

Thanks be to God,

Sandra Steiner Ball
Resident Bishop, West Virginia Conference of The United Methodist Church

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