United Methodism 101

United Methodist Church Organization

This class was the first of a series on the United Methodist Church and met in the first couple of months of 2006. We followed the order of Bishop Jack M Tuell's book "The Organization of the United Methodist Church (2005-2008 Edition). Below are chapter notes prepared by Nick Strobel and links to other materials for the class. These are PDF documents. These are Strobel's "cliff notes" (compressed, non-creative derivative of Bishop Tuell's original, creative work) and Strobel bears all blame for any mistakes in the notes.

Chapter 1: Foundations

Chapter 1 notes
UMC History flowchart
UMC Constitution: The documents in this section were created from the UMC website at www.umc.org under the "About Our Church" section. The UMC website has the constitution divisions divided up into small chunks. They have been put back together in the documents below
- Preamble
- Division 1: General
- Division 2: Organization (about the various types of conferences)
- Division 3: Episcopal Supervision (bishops + district superintendents)
- Division 4: The Judiciary
- Division 5: Amendments
Article of Religion of The Methodist Church
Confession of Faith of The Evangelical United Brethren Church
General Rules of The Methodist Church

Chapter 7: Administrative Order

Chapter 7 notes
Chart of the Administrative Order of the UMC
General Boards and Agencies of the United Methodist Church (this page on the UMC.org website has links to all of the boards and agencies including the Council of Bishops.)
United Methodist Ministries (e.g., campus ministries; ecumenical organizations, publications; foundations; UM-related seminaries, colleges, universities, and precollegiate schools; community service ministries; children, youth, and family services, etc.)
Connectional Table (November 2005 news article about the Connectional Table meeting. If link doesn't work, then go to www.umc.org and search for "Connectional Table" in its search section. This new agency does not have its own website yet.)