May 12, 2021
Dear Beloved in Christ:
Greetings in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
This has been a challenging year for all of us as we navigate the complexities of doing things in new ways during a pandemic. I realized just today that in the call letter for Annual Conference 2021, issued April 6, 2021, I did not include some language required by the rule we passed in October 2020. Please forgive the oversight.
Rule VI. C. 11 states "If the Presiding Bishop, for reasons of prudence, safety or urgency wishes to call for a regular session of the Annual Conference in which some or all actions of that Annual Conference are taken up by remote voting, the Bishop shall announce this to the Annual Conference membership in the same manner as the Bishop calls an Annual Conference. The announcement shall provide that if 10 percent of the members oppose use of remote voting by submitting their signatures within 30 days of the announcement, there will not be remote voting used as proposed by the Bishop."
While I did inform the members that we will hold the sessions virtually, using remote technology, I did not expressly include language allowing the contesting of those plans.
Since then, we've secured a contract with Good News TV (GNTV), our long-standing A/V company, to again assist us with the technological support, and have plans to use their improved secure voting platform, in which each individual voting member has a secure log-in code. We feel confident that this will enable us to engage in holy conferencing to complete the business of the Annual Conference. This work, which includes the Clergy Session, is required before we can ordain and commission the Class of 2021 and further our shared mission and ministry.
In order to proceed faithfully, our conference secretary will call for a suspension of the rules to allow remote voting at both the clergy session on June 9 and the regular business sessions of the Annual Conference June 10-12. This will require a 2/3 majority. I do hope and pray that we will be able to gather and complete our work together next month.
Thank you for your understanding, care, love and support.
In Christ's Love,
Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar
