Dear Members and Churches of the Illinois Conference,

The Conference Council is pleased to present to you the final version of the proposed Constitution and Bylaws for the Illinois Conference.  

The Illinois Conference Annual Celebration will be held November 1-2, 2024 in Western Springs, IL. The delegates at that annual meeting will be asked to vote “Yes” or “No” on the following motion:

The Conference Council moves that the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ adopt the proposed revised Constitution and Bylaws in their entirety. The revised Constitution and Bylaws will become effective at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Illinois Conference.

PLEASE NOTE: This is the FINAL version of the proposed Constitution and Bylaws. Additional changes to these proposed Constitution and Bylaws cannot be made and adopted at the 2024 annual meeting. The proposed Constitution and Bylaws must either be adopted or rejected in their entirety (as presented) at the 2024 Annual Celebration. HOWEVER, if adopted at the 2024 Annual Meeting, the revised Constitution and Bylaws can be amended at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Illinois Conference by following the procedures for making such amendments.

The Conference Council is also asking the delegates to vote upon one additional amendment to the CURRENT Illinois Conference Bylaws at the 2024 Annual Meeting. (This one amendment comes solely from the Conference Council and not the Governance Task Force). If this motion passes at the 2024 annual meeting, this one amendment would go into effect immediately. This amendment would also no longer apply after November 2025 (IF the new Constitution and Bylaws are adopted at the 2024 Annual Meeting):

The Conference Council moves that the current Bylaws of the Illinois Conference (UCC) be amended as follows: The final sentence of Article V. #3 be removed and replaced with the following sentence: “A quorum for the Conference Council shall be at least 35% of the voting members of the Conference Council who are in office at the time of the meeting.”

The reason for this one amendment is that the CURRENT quorum of the Conference Council is “one more than half of the voting members”. In recent years, it has been very difficult to achieve this quorum – because the Conference Council is very large (roughly 40 members) and many Council positions are filled by persons who do not attend the Council meetings. There is no mechanism to remove them or replace them. Therefore, a 35% quorum makes more sense given the current realities. Without a quorum, the Conference Council cannot conduct business—and the Council really needs to be able to conduct business in this important year of many transitions. Hence, the proposed amendment.

There are two items included with this notice:

1. The proposed revised Constitution and Bylaws. 
2. A letter from the Conference’s Governance Task Force. (This letter was submitted to the Conference Council by Governance Task Force when the task force submitted their final draft of the Constitution and Bylaws to the Conference Council. The Council made some slight revisions to that draft and adopted the version that you are receiving with this notice).

The Conference Council invites you to read the attached documents and to VOTE “YES” on the two motions contained in this notice.

Rev. Jon Prain

Conference President

Rev. Nancy Fraley

Conference Secretary

Greetings,

We are pleased to forward to you our final version of the proposed Constitution and By-Laws for the IL Conference. Our charge was to research governance structures to “reimagine and revise ILUCC Constitution and By-Laws”. This was an outgrowth of the Conference Council Goal Setting Task Force. Some of the initial concerns presented to us were the sizes of the various Boards, Committees, and Conference Council itself; the need for greater efficiency in the work of the Conference; and the need to better engage with the diversity which the IL Conference encompasses.

Our first meeting was August 31, 2022. Since then, we have reviewed “Rethinking Board Leadership and Shifting Conference Culture and Building Relationships” by Dan Hotchkiss, “Flexible, Missional Constitution/Bylaws” by Alan Klaas and Cheryl Klaas, and governance documents from UCC Conferences across the country. We have presented to every Association (multiple times) and at the 2023 Annual Celebration (both in a workshop and at a Plenary session). In addition, we have identified and engaged with an Advisory Committee and have held multiple series of listening sessions with them as well as a series of listening sessions to which the entire Conference was invited. You, the Conference Council, were invited to our final series of listening sessions. Every listening session was recorded and each of us listened to any session we did not attend. As a Task Force, we held two retreats for intensive writing. We also met regularly on Zoom throughout our time together.

It became clear to us early on that it would be best to separate the business of the Conference from the work of the Conference. Thus, the model we are presenting has a Board of Directors which takes on the fiduciary responsibilities and includes the Conference officers, representatives from each Association, and chairs of Finance, Human Resources, and Nominating Committee, and the Conference Minister. The Ministry Council is the organizing body for the Ministry Teams—Community and Vitality, Justice and Witness, Church Connections, and Wider Engagement. Fuller details are in the Constitution and By-Laws.

There are several new elements within these documents. Drawing your attention to a few items:

• Nominating Committee is to work closely with the association nominating committees to assure the best possible diversity across all elected individuals,
• No individual will be serving the Conference in more than one elected position,
• It is intentional that some of the work of Ministry Teams will be long term (such as Annual Celebration Planning Committee) and some will be ephemeral (such as a response to an issue).

In submitting this proposed Constitution and By-Laws, our writing is complete. We remain available to present to Associations and at the Annual Celebration. At your Retreat, you requested that we provide you with some Infographics to accompany the Constitution and By-Laws as they are sent out to the churches with the formal notification. We made an attempt to do so and realized that we do not have those skills.  

There is more work for the next phase. If these documents are approved, we recommend a year of planning for implementation across the Conference so the new structure will be initiated at the 2025 Annual Celebration. It is quite possible that some amendments will be identified during that planning process. They can be presented in 2025. We did not write procedures for any board, team or committee, this will need to be done. One of the first actions will likely be to develop a diversity statement to guide the work of the Nominating Committee.

Thank you for trusting us with this important work, we are sending it to you for the next steps in this process.

Rev. Benna Bell

Rev. Gloria Cox

Rev. Hank Fairman (our second convenor until his Sabbatical)

Kathy Hummel (our Secretary)

Rev. Barbara Lohrbach (our first convenor until she had to step away)

Mary Newcomb (our current convenor)

Representing Conference Council

Juanita Bradley

Rev. Jon Prain

Rev. Molly Carlson