At January's Connectional Conversations webinar event, the Global Episcopacy Committee announced the Global Methodist Church will elect eight bishops at General Conference in September.
"Our committee is tasked by the Book of Doctrines and Discipline with setting the number of bishops to be elected," said Reverend Chris Ritter, chair of the Global Episcopacy Committee. "We wanted our episcopacy to be the best that it could be and wanted it to be reformed."
In an effort to refine processes and better serve the church's global community, bishops are elected at General Conference instead of regionally, reflecting Methodist practices from the early 1900s.
True to the GMC's roots, the approach for electing bishops is methodical and purposeful. "We wanted it be a spiritual process. We wanted it to be a collaborative process. We wanted it to be a grassroots process instead of top down," Ritter said.
The new episcopacy election process was voted on at the 2024 convening General Conference in Costa Rica and is currently being implemented. "Because it's a brand new process, we're trying to do a lot of communication about it," Ritter added.
To learn more about the episcopacy election process, visit the Beauty of Holiness 2026 website or watch the recording from the latest Connectional Conversations webinar.