International Constitution

The proposed International Constitution consists of four parts. The links below take you to those parts as published in the US National Conference Discipline.

• Confession of Faith
• Core Values
• Constitution
• By-Laws

You can also view an annotated version of the Constitution and By-Laws, with explanatory notes inserted throughout the text to help explain the various provisions.

You can read an article from the January-February CONNECT newsletter which discussed the proposals. There's also a simple summary of what will change.

The Confession of Faith is the same set of doctrinal truths we adopted in 1815. Word for word. This is the most important of our governing documents, our line in the sand which must not be crossed. It would be extremely difficult to change the Confession of Faith, and would take several General Conferences to do it. We don't want to make it easy.

The Core Values focus on principles, and are meant to apply in all of the countries in which we minister (rather than reflecting just North American culture).

The Constitution is simple and streamlined, not containing things which might need to change from year to year. Constitutional changes require a majority vote of General Conference, followed by ratification by two-thirds of the National Conferences.

The By-Laws contain the things that might need to be changed. All it takes is a majority vote of General Conference.