My name is Rev. Michael Mann, and I’m honored to be the next chair of the Conference Council on Finance and Administration (CFA). As a pastor and a parent, I love hearing stories that connect my church and my kids to a bigger world. I want them to see that we are never alone, but that we are part of something greater.

Whether we share stories of missionaries far away or how our district superintendent is hosting a seminar for us to address our church culture, our life together is vibrant. As United Methodists, we have as one of our values is a shared communal life together, and one of the ways we express that is through our apportionment support.

I wouldn’t be here without apportionments. After graduate school, I was searching for a spiritual expression that valued connecting with God and how we live in the world. Believe it or not, how I became United Methodist is because of the Book of Discipline. I read the Social Principles, which had been included as the first part of that document. It gave voice to my concern for the world and offered a way for how I could live in it.

Students at United Methodist Hanwa Mission School in Zimbabwe learn academic subjects and hands-on environmental stewardship. United Methodists around the world make this possible through apportionment sharing. Photo by Kudzai Chingwe, UM News.

That document came about because apportionments paid for a General Conference, supported the General Board of Church and Society, and printed the Social Principles and other decisions of the conference. Apportionments supported a Global Ministries program for young adults that welcomed me and sent me to India and, later, Chicago. Apportionments placed a pastor, Rev. Wendy Hardin Hermann, who helped to guide me towards ordination. Your apportionment support was vital to me.   

One of the truths I’ve seen is that even the smallest United Methodist congregation does more than any megachurch could. There’s a megachurch down the street from mine that boasts 3,000 people attending on a Sunday. They have pictures of a few water wells they’ve built abroad. Yet even the smallest United Methodist church has been a part of reducing malaria in Liberia, educating thousands of children in Bolivia, and responding to disasters in Illinois. You have made a difference. 

I have also seen how funds have not been used in the best ways. I remember sitting in a plush seat at a gathering at the Opryland Hotel just about 10 years ago, and I nearly cried. I watched as scores of national and international guests had been flown into Nashville, rooms and meals paid, and hours if not weeks of staff time were devoted to a conference to showcase “new products in communication.” None of those products were things we could use. There were no stories for us to take back.

Meanwhile, churches here were cutting back on staff, delaying needed church maintenance, and pastors were cutting their own compensation in order to pay the apportionments that supported that conference. When I asked how much that gathering cost, the answer was “we don’t know.”

As your chair of CFA, my pledge to you is that we will never hide the cost of our administration, programs, and communal life together. You need that information so that you can set our budget and priorities for what we do as a conference. Our focus is supporting you and your congregation as you help write our communal story together. Personally, I will also never shy from celebrating the good that we do. I am here because you and many others like you gave towards apportionments. Thank you.

I also want to thank Kim Emery, past CFA chair, for the legacy that she leaves. It was because of Kim that we updated our conference apportionment formula to be much clearer. My hope is that the clarity of that formula and our financial reporting allows you to see how connected you are to Church here and throughout the world. Thank you for supporting this connection.