Info about laity nominees will be available on website

By Joseph Harris, Conference Secretary

A new online opportunity is offered to learn about the women and men nominated for election as Oklahoma’s lay delegates to the denomination’s 2012 General/Jurisdictional Conferences.

For the first time, lay nominees have been invited to record audio statements, which will be made available at www.okumc.org.

The traditional booklet with each lay nominee’s profile also will be mailed to churches’ Lay Members to the 2011 Annual Conference, to be held in Oklahoma City on May 29-June 1. Those profiles also will be posted online.

An equal number of clergy and laity, elected by their peers at the 2011 Annual Conference, will form the General/Jurisdictional delegation from Oklahoma.

All voting will take place on May 30.

Who may serve as a lay delegate to General/Jurisdictional Conference?

 The Book of Discipline contains United Methodist policies and laws.

Paragraph 36-Article V lists the conditions that must be met for election as a General/Jurisdictional Conference lay delegate.  

• The delegates, without regard to age, shall have been members of The United Methodist Church for at least two years next preceding (two consecutive years immediately preceding) their election. 

• They also shall have been active participants for at least four years (active in The United Methodist Church at least two years before they became members for the two years immediately preceding their election as a General Conference delegate) next preceding their election. 

• They must also hold membership in a United Methodist church within the boundaries of the annual conference electing them when the General Conference, jurisdictional conference, or central conference to which they are elected is held.  

• They must follow the nomination procedures described in the Standing Rules of the 2010 Annual Conference Journal.

• A person does not have to be a church’s Lay Member to the Annual Conference to be elected as a General/Jurisdictional Conference lay delegate.