Meeting Minutes List

Describe the item or answer the question so that site visitors who are interested get more information. You can emphasiCommission on Discipleship, Doctrine, and Just Ministry
August 26, 2025 Agenda
Recurring Zoom Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82980114529?pwd=9rQaiCAsKFBUvTkla2AsGgNuPe0b71.1
Opening Prayer
We began David Watson leading us in prayer for Roland Buck, who was in a serious accident the morning of our meeting.
Roll Call: David Watson, Bishop Scott Jones, Gabi Kopas, Kenneth Collins, Tesia Mallory, Lou Staggs, Anna Vargas, Jason Vickers, Angel Santiago-Vendrell, Bulus Audu Daniel. GMC Rep: Teresa Marcus
Approval of June Minutes: Motion by Ken Collins, Second by Jason Vickers. All approved. Working Group Updates
• Doctrine, convened by Luther Oconer
o No updates
• Discipleship, convened by Kathy Rohrs
o Working on edits and sharing with practitioners for feedback
o Ready for next steps with document completion
• Just Ministry, convened by Walter Warriner
o Working on definition of justice, David Watson will draft
Doctrinal Standards Creation
• Feedback from Commission
o Suzanne Nicholson shared written notes in advance of the meeting.
o Kenneth Collins: Questions about Article IV and Article V – connection between prevenient grace and the “innate moral capacity” in article V needs to be lifted; Suggestion to change VII to include “all who profess faith in Jesus Christ” instead of “all true believers”
o There was a beneficial discussion around article VIII on Holy Scripture and its implications for the church.
Bishop Jones recommended that any suggestions from our Commission and the Feedback Team will go back to the writing team in early November, then come back to the Commission for review. In January-February, we will share the penultimate work with the broader church, on the GMC website and perhaps in a Connectional Conversation. We can submit tweaks in February-March before the submission deadline. Bishop Jones will gladly compile the comments as “secretary” and share them with the Writing Team.
Theology of the role and function of deacon
• Assembly of Bishops held a conversation with several representatives from the church to discuss the role and function of the deacon.
• Recommendation from the Assembly: We are recommending that Jason Vickers, Suzanne Nicholson and Kathy Rohrs from your Commission guide and facilitate the task force that would have 2 individuals from the other groups (BOM Cohort, Higher Ed and the Assembly)
Ken Collins and Jason Vickers both volunteered to offer feedback for this work. Because of Tesia’s work with the Book of Worship, she volunteered to serve on the task force along with Suzanne. The commission discussed the idea of crafting a white paper to guide our conversation.
Bishop Jones moved that Kathy become project manager for a working team to address this question, we would seek Scott Kisker’s work for a white paper on the theology of ordination, and we name Tesia and Suzanne as our representatives to this task force. Jason seconded this motion. All approved.
Recommended Resources for Online Library
• Requested from Kingdom Advancement Commission; work led by Amber Tolbert. o This would be an outside website managed by non-GMC team.
• Suzanne pointed us to Firebrand’s wealth of articles that could be helpful • Teresa Marcus shared that our Commission will have a page on the GMC website and she will be reaching out to David to get feedback for content sometime in September.
Campus Ministry Approval
• The Connectional Council would like our commission to create a template for annual conferences to utilize as they develop their processes for approving campus ministries. o The template would outline a basic application, vetting, and approval process that might guide annual conferences as they set up their process.
• There is a network of people who are doing campus ministry in the GMC; Bishop Jones will reach out to them to see if they have anything for us. He will report back in November
Meeting was closed in prayer by Bulus Audu Daniel.
Date for November Meeting will be sent via Doodle poll
Minutes submitted by Kathy Rohrs, secretaryze this text with bullets, italics or bold, and add links.