29 May General Conference Begins in Ontario

The 2013 General Conference got underway at 9 am Wednesday, May 29, at Emmanuel Bible College in Kitchener, Ontario. General Conference is an international meeting held every three years. Each national conference can send two delegates.

Seven of the ten national conferences are represented.

1. United States (Bishop Phil Whipple and Jeff Bleijerveld are the delegates).
2. Canada (Bishop Brian Magnus and Paul Plato, a layperson, are the delegates).
3. Jamaica (Bishop Isaac Nugent and Pastor Winston Smith)
4. Honduras (Superintendent Juanita Chavez and Ms. Iveth Raudales)
5. Hong Kong (Superintendent Yiu Kin Keung and Mr. Daniel Ko).
6. Sierra Leone (Bishop John Pessima).
7. Mexico (Bishop Denis Casco).

Three national conferences are not attending: Nicaragua, the Guatemala, and the Philippines.

Donna Hollopeter, associate director of Global Ministries, is serving as secretary.

Two persons representing mission districts are also attending. A mission district consists of UB churches in a country which have not yet organized as a national conference, and are under the supervision of an existing national conference. We have mission districts in Haiti, India, Germany, Thailand, Macau, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Attending are:

• Rev. Gonzalo Alas, a Honduras pastor now serving in El Salvador and overseeing the churches there.
• Rev. Oliam Richard, superintendent of the UB churches in Haiti. He won’t arrive until Wednesday night (a plane crash at the Port Au Prince airport in Haiti threw everything off and caused his delay).

Rev. Alas’s visa was initially rejected by the Canadian embassy, but Brian Magnus’s Parliamentary representative stepped in and got him cleared. The delegates from Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica were not so fortunate–either they were denied entry visas, or they started the process too late.

Bishop Brian Magnus of Canada is chairman of the international executive committee, a position to which he was elected in 2001 when the United Brethren denomination first reorganized with an international structure. He is chairing the General Conference, as he did in 2005 (in Huntington, Ind.) and in 2010 (in Honduras).

Magnus began the meeting with a devotional on “Growing Spiritually in Life.” He addressed leadership issues such as responsibility, finances, difficult relationships,

The General Conference meetings last Wednesday through Friday. However, most persons will be in Canada through Sunday. Here’s what the schedule looks like:

Mornings: business sessions of the General Conference.
Afternoons: an excursion of some kind (Thursday is Niagara Falls).
Evenings: a service in one of the Canadian UB churches.
Saturday: a big missions conference for the UB churches in Canada.
Sunday: delegates will be dispersed to speak in various Canadian UB churches.

The business session agenda for the three days looks like this:

• National conference reports and updates (15-20 minutes per country).
• National conference mission efforts reports (outreach efforts within and outside of their own borders).
• Approval of any changes made to national conference governing document. This is mostly an accountability check to make sure national conferences haven’t taken actions which might violate the international Confession of Faith, Core Values, Constitution, and By-Laws.
• Miscellaneous issues.