Observing a Wesleyan spiritual practice rather rallying around a slogan, members of the 2024 session of the Northern Illinois Conference met from June 16 to 18 in Schaumburg to yield to God as they recognized ministry milestones, worshiped, and voted on policies and resolutions. 

Bishop Dan Schwerin of the Chicago Episcopal Area, who presided at session, explained why he chose “Yield” as this year’s theme. “I couldn’t stomach a slogan,” he said. “I wanted something that would help us steer into the Spirit and listen.” 

Pondering Wesley’s Covenant Prayer, he was struck by this line: “I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.” 

“I knew the Spirit was asking us to yield the trappings and form of religion as we had known it for something new, Wind-whispered, less programmatic, more relational, and yet to be fully clear,” the bishop said. 

Sow seeds of God’s grace 

Bishop Schwerin invited Bishop Sally Dyck, who had recently served Northern Illinois Conference until her retirement, to preach at the ordination service. She elaborated on the theme of “yield” in her sermon on Jesus’s parable of the sower (Luke 8:5ff): “A sower went out to sow.” 

She compared the uncertainty in the idea of yielding to what God might have in store, even if that is yet unknown, to farming. Much of a harvest’s yield is dependent on conditions that the farmer cannot control, like weather, pests, and other factors. Yet every year, the farmer goes out to sow.  

“Ministry is the same,” Bishop Dyck said. “You have to get up every morning like farmers. But ministry is not all about you. Sometimes you don’t know what is making a difference in people’s lives or remember that you did it.”  

Nevertheless, she urged, “Be a sower who goes out to sow.” 

Time for experimentation 

Yielding to God’s leading may carrying God’s people into a new time, Bishop Schwerin noted in his state of the church address. 

One may think of this between-time as a “hinge time,” he said, that has come just after a pandemic, the disaffiliation of many UM congregations, and General Conference's declaration of openness and welcome to all people. 

“For me the hinge is connected to a door, a threshold, and as Rev. 3:20 tells us, Christ is the stranger knocking at the door,” the bishop said. On inviting Christ in, “we will become something more, as we become community with Christ and share table.” 

Now is the time to answer that knock at the door, he urged. It is a time for churches to take risks and experiment in reaching out to neighbors. 

“We don’t have 330 churches; we have 330 experiments,” he said of the conference’s constituent congregations. “Experiment, serve, give, teach and serve together. We are missional incubators.”  

It won’t be one experiment that will defines a new missional prototype; rather, there will a thousand of them coming from many new ministries around the conference, he said. 

Be an illuminator 

The significant turn in the life of the UMC in recent years—with its loss of many congregations and decision to include fully LGBTQ people in all aspects of the church’s life—is an opportunity, said Connie Augsburger, the conference co-lay leader, in her address to the conference. 

Drawing on an idea by columnist David Brooks, she told conference that “we are called to be illuminators, not diminishers.”  

 In his book How to Know a Person (Random House, 2023), Brooks proposes that there are diminishers—those who see other people as objects to be used and treat others as if they were small or insignificant.  

Illuminators, on the other hand, help people to feel seen, he says. They take time and effort to get to know others.

If we strive to see another, we will better understand each other and be more considerate, Ms. Augsburger explained.  

“Today is a new day,” she proclaimed. “Some of us left, and we miss our brothers and sisters. But we emerge as illuminators. 

“The new days of the United Methodist Church were long in coming, but we are now free to continue on our path and move toward perfection.” This means we can make “a lived reality” of the denominational slogan, “Open Hearts Open Minds. Open Doors,” she said. 

Apology for abuse 

Following a General Conference mandate, Northern Illinois apologized to those who suffered sexual abuse in churches and/or at the hands of lay and clergy leaders. 

“The United Methodist Church apologizes for the times we allowed our desire to protect the Church to outweigh our desire to care for victims and survivors of sexual misconduct,” the statement reads in part. “We have allowed polity and protection of the institutional Church to prevent us from holding persons accountable, thus perpetuating harm within our local churches and other ministry settings, and damaging the whole United Methodist connection. 

“We apologize for the times we have not listened to you, doubted your stories, ignored your wounds, and have not tended to your pain.” 

The apology includes actions the UMC will take to prevent abuse in the future. 

Conference decisions 

Without debate, this year’s NIC session members passed a 2025 budget of $4,630,098. It represents an increase of $243,254 over the 2024 budget.

A significant action by the conference was its passage of an increased minimum salary schedule for clergy. After conference members expressed much concern last year about inadequate minimum salary for ordained clergy, an equitable compensation task force successfully proposed a small increase in the conference’s minimum, to $43,616. This is an incremental raise from the 2023 ($37,450) and 2024 ($40,763) minimums. The task force’s survey of other conferences’ minimum clergy salaries showed that among the 18 responding conferences, the NIC is currently second to last in minimum salary (by a small margin of $165).  

With sadness, conference members approved the closure of nine congregations: Grace UMC in Blue Island; New Gresham, Freedom, Faith, and Mandell UMCs in Chicago; St. Andrew in Homewood; Little White Church in Melrose Park; Korean UMC in Naperville; and Thornton UMC. 

Members passed the following resolutions:  

• to be active peacemakers as articulated by Jesus, Isaiah, and Micah to urge United Methodists to call on Congress and the president to support steps for establishing a peace based on justice for all peoples in Israel and Palestine 
• to condemn the harm caused by the Israeli national government’s political and military occupation and the resulting apartheid conditions imposed on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories  
• to encourage every NIC church to name at least one Creation Care Advocate who will strengthen the church’s existing green actions  
• to address gun violence by advocating for the passage of red-flag laws, study a relevant curriculum recommended in the proposed resolution, and advocate for laws that prevent or reduce gun violence  
• to urge all United Methodists and U.S. citizens to use personal courtesy in political conversations  

Dr. AHyun Lee, associate professor of pastoral theology, care, and psychotherapy at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, led members in a thought-provoking Bible study on Jonah.  

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