Building Faith and Friendships at JOY Camp
JOY Camp 2026 brought together 61 campers and 27 volunteer counselors for a week of faith, friendship, and outdoor fun at Camp Reynoldswood in Dixon, Ill., June 21-27. Centered on the…
Posted: January 30 2024 at 12:20 PM
Author: Rev. Matthew Smith
The Equitable Compensation Task Force, established by the 2023 Northern Illinois annual conference session, is well along in completing its work.
Conference session members established an Equitable Compensation Task Force to do "a deep dive" into clergy compensation and report back to the 2024 annual conference.
After organizing in September, we on the task force have been working diligently to complete our assigned work:
- complete a deep dive into the compensation of all appointed pastors in the NIC
- craft relevant legislation for next year’s annual conference
- report on our findings
To date, we have surveyed other annual conferences and received responses and data from 20 of them, have analyzed all relevant data from within the NIC, and are currently working on defining an understanding of “equitable” as it pertains to our task. We have assigned a team to begin drafting legislation and another to review the data to make recommendations for the legislation and for the development of the report.
We are excited about the progress we have made so far and look forward to sharing our results with the annual conference in June.
| Name | Clergy/Lay | Church | District |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rev. Brittany Isaac | Clergy | District superintendent | Lake North |
| Rev. Ilhan You | Clergy | Creston UMC/Steward UMC | Prairie South |
| Rev. Matthew Smith | Clergy | Warren UMC/Red Oak UMC | Prairie North |
| Rev. Dennis Langdon | Clergy | Trinity UMC/Morgan Park UMC | Lake South |
| Rev. Noemi Meza | Clergy | El Redentor del Calvario UMC | Lake North |
| Betsy Lovelady-Smith | Lay | Rochelle UMC | Prairie South |
| Judith Gazaway | Lay | Oak Park: First UMC | Lake North |
| Karen Newby | Lay | Princeton UMC |
Prairie South |
| Beth Swanick | Lay | Evanston: First UMC | Lake North |
| Fe Williams | Lay | Naperville: Grace UMC | Prairie Central |
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