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How I got elected to General Conference
By Joe Kilpatrick

A wise pastor told me I could see the best and the worst of the United Methodist Church as a General Con­ference delegate. I did. Anyone can become a delegate to General Conference, but most people don’t know how to begin.

There are three basic rules for campaigning to be a General Conference delegate: pray, learn the process, and be an aggressive Christian.

1. Pray. I began praying for renewal to come to the UM Church years ago, and I felt God encouraging me to get involved. The sense of God’s empowerment proved to be vital; He saw me through disappointments with my insuffi­ciencies and the frustrations which came from dealing with people who disagreed with me.

2. Learn the process. Many people have been United Methodists long enough to know the basics about how the church operates, but a campaigner needs to know much more. Here are some things I learned in my first attempt:

• Go first to friends whom you believe to be knowledgeable and evangelicals. Your objective is to find friends who also want to be delegates, who have similar opinions on the issues, and who are willing to have mutual support discussions.

• Find allies in your conference who have been elected before and ask them for campaign ideas. I developed friend­ships with several who had been delegates to both General and jurisdictional conferences.

To gain leadership exposure, I accepted an assignment on a committee of the annual conference’s UM Men and expanded contacts with the conference leadership of that group. I was also active in Boy Scouts and was involved in leading a conference committee to promote scouting within the UM Church.

• Study the history of voting in the annual conference journals for past elections. Develop an understanding of the number of votes to be cast and how many it takes to win. Get a feeling for the number of ballots taken (the number of times that a vote is cast by the delegate). Do the ballots come morning, afternoon, or evening? Does the number of people voting decrease at night? When is it easiest to get a majority and win?

• Learn some things about the lay life and work committees. Some annual conferences allow one-minute speeches by candidates at a meeting prior to annual conference. Others recognize candidates at a district conference prior to annual conference. Much of this type of activity is a function of conference and district committees on lay life and work. It is vital to find out what, if anything, committees are doing about the election process for lay delegates.

• Be selective in your communications. It seems odd that you can say too much to the wrong persons, but it’s possible—just like in any other campaign. But don’t worry if you make a mistake; God is a great redeemer.

3. Be an aggressive Christian. I’m an accountant, a self-employed CPA running a small business, and not particularly aggressive. I had to learn how to be self-promoting. Let me suggest some tactics I used:

• Write campaign letters. I mailed two letters to each annual conference lay delegate. My first letter, I was told, was the first the delegates received. It was an endorsement letter printed on church letterhead signed by my pastor and the chair of my local church’s administrative board. The conference Council on Ministries supplied a list of lay del­egates and with the help of my wife and a retired neighbor addressed, stuffed, and mailed the envelopes using bulk church postage rate.

The second letter was timed so that the delegates received it just before annual conference. This letter, printed with my picture on it, was a series of two or three sentence endorse­ments by friends. I listed their names, churches, and posi­tions so that it was obvious I was being endorsed by a variety of folks—men, women, laity, pastors and local church leaders from both large and small churches. In both letters I clearly stated my position on issues—particularly homosexual ordi­nation and God language.

Campaigning isn’t as expensive as you may think. My costs totaled about $300. If your funds are limited, ask your friends to help with your campaign costs.

• Work with allies. When I went to annual conference I had agreed to encourage my friends to vote for 12 of my fellow campaigners. They agreed to do the same for me.

• Campaign at annual conference. On the first morning of annual conference I arrived early at the registration area to hand out copies of my second letter to those arriving at registration. I had wondered if I was being too aggressive, but my campaigning looked mild by comparison.

 Write a position paper. As the balloting continued during the week, a fellow campaigner and I composed a posi­tion paper. We asked a number of the evangelical candidates if we could list them as supporting traditional positions on homosexual ordination, God language, and church-growth objectives. We felt this helped several of them move up in the balloting as annual conference delegates began to under­stand something of the issues connected with their names.

Of the 12 of my fellow campaigners, three were elected delegates to General Conference. Eight others were elected delegates to jurisdictional conference, and four were elected to general boards and agencies of our church. (The four who made it to membership on the general boards and agencies were women and African-Americans, illustrating the impor­tance of inclusiveness among your allies.)

It is my prayer that greater numbers of evangelical, char­ismatic, and renewal-minded people will get involved in the process of General and jurisdictional election. God has said that He will bless what we set our hands to doing. I believe he meant what he said and is powerful to perform his word.

Practical Tips
Before you write a campaign letter, think about who will be reading it. If you are a layperson, the people who will elect you are mostly ordinary church members. Many are elderly, retired, and quite a few haven’t done much beyond the local church. Think about the electors as friendly, loving people. Show respect for their maturity and judgment.

Make a list of the things you have done in the church, the different charges where you have been a member or pas­tor. Think about the special meetings, seminars, or groups that you have attended at each conference level. The objec­tive is for the voters to identify with you and respect your interest in leadership.

Organize your history in a logical way. I talked about my work with scouting, being church treasurer and a teacher. Do you have an item in your history that indicates you have a vision for General or jurisdictional leadership? I mentioned attendance at a UM Men’s convocation and my participa­tion as a leader of a scouting workshop for a jurisdictional training event. I mentioned my being a certified lay speaker and my participation in a renewal group.

Don’t overlook the mundane! Boy Scouting and the sim­ple process of being a certified lay speaker seem mundane to some. Another candidate, a professor, had done some con­sulting work for the General Board of Global Ministries but little in the local church. Another had received recognition as a special education teacher in a public school system but had done little in annual conference leadership. We were all elected.

Don’t waste your space saying you are born again or Spirit-filled, quoting a Bible verse or identifying yourself as evangelical. The voters will assume that all candidates are serious Christians, and you will run the risk of being con­sidered a Pharisee if you indicate a superior piety or reflect a judgment on the piety of other candidates.

Get a good, readable printing of your letter. Use a pic­ture. Don’t send anything of low quality. If it doesn’t look good, throw it away and start over. Avoid anything extravagant.

Use endorsements. List all United Methodists you know who may let you use their names in your literature. I called an inclusive list of people and told them what I wanted them to say about me. (Of course they had their own ideas as well.) My objective was to put together a piece that allowed a voter to identify with an activity in my background or the person who was endorsing me. I also used a list of names with the person’s church, town, and position. No endorse­ment was longer than three sentences, and the variety of subjects covered gave the voter an image of a responsible leader who would represent their feelings on critical issues.

Joe W. Kilpatrick is a certified public accountant living in Atlanta, Georgia, and has been a delegate to several General Conferences.



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