Coker in South Africa at the Global Methodist Church 2026 Annual Conference: What Just Happened, and What It Means for Us

It started with a delayed flight

Coker’s Bella Duke, a recent high school graduate, now in her first year of college, is one of Coker’s lay delegates at the Global Methodist Church’s Annual Conference, hosted in South Africa. Her dad, Chris, made the trip with her. After travel delays that required alot of patience, they arrived and were immediately surrounded by something worth the wait: worship in many languages, from many nations, all at once.

When we say we are committed to the next generation of Jesus Christ followers, we mean it. Our first-year college student from Coker, sitting in a room where the global church is doing its work. Work that included praying, worship, discerning, and yes, voting. Business meetings are not always fun. But this is what the room actually looked like: before, during, and after the business, there is worship, prayer, understanding of one another. Over every church. Over every pastor. Over every person. Over you.

Some decisions came out of that room this week, some that impact MidTexas (which is the conference area Coker is in). Because we are not all familiar with all the Global Methodist terminology, we are going to share what happened, in plain language, and why any of this matters….

First, three titles to unpack…

Most of us didn’t grow up parsing church org charts, and the Global Methodist Church is new enough that some of these roles work differently than they do in other traditions. Three titles matter for this story.

Bishop (General Superintendent): In the GMC, a bishop is *not* assigned as the residential supervisor of one annual conference. Bishops serve the entire global church. They work together as an assembly to guard the doctrine, discipline, and unity of the worldwide church. They’re elected to six-year terms, renewable only once — a deliberate break from the lifetime tenures common in older Methodist traditions.

Conference Superintendent: This is the spiritual and temporal leader of a specific annual conference — the day-to-day, on-the-ground role. The *Book of Doctrine and Discipline* describes the work as helping establish the vision and missional strategy of the conference, encouraging clergy and laity to embrace that mission, strengthening and multiplying local churches, overseeing the work of the conference, supervising the cabinet, and working with Presiding Elders in the appointment process.

Presiding Elder: Presiding Elders oversee a district within the annual conference — roughly the historical equivalent of a district superintendent. They build relationships, support and mentor local pastors and congregations, supervise clergy in their district, and form the core of the appointment-making process, serving as the direct link between local churches (through the Staff-Parish Relations Committee) and the cabinet.

Then we have our local pastors, etc. 

Rev. Jose Mercado, pastor of Coker Español and our bilingual congregation, serves as Presiding Elder of the Hispanic District. Rev. Bequi Flores, pastor in Karnes City, is Coker’s current Presiding Elder, many of you know her (and know she’s in Rev David Blanco’s family) and was at the conference this week with her daughter too!

What happened this week…

Coker is in the conference area named, MidTexas, and MidTexas is now part of Episcopal Area 2. General Conference elected bishops to serve newly formed episcopal areas. MidTexas sits in Area 2 alongside the Bulgaria, Mexico, Afrika Makarishi, Korean American, and Northeast Conferences. (Global isn’t just in the name, these are intentional connections and relationships).

Bishop Kenneth Levingston continues serving as bishop of MidTexas through October 31, 2026. We cannot thank him enough. As Ryan Barnett, COO of the MidTexas Conference, put it, his humble spirit, personal holiness, and powerful preaching have left a mark on all of us. He was our inaugural bishop in the GMC, and we will always be grateful.

Rev. Jonathan Lee was elected to serve Area 2 and begins his service on November 1, 2026. Please join us in welcoming our new episcopal officer, Bishop-Elect Lee.

Bishop Leah Hidde Gregory will conclude her active episcopal service on October 31 and return full time to her role as Conference Superintendent of the MidTexas Annual Conference, beginning a new six-year term on November 1.

Many of us heard Bishop Gregory preach at Coker recently, our students have talked with her at Revive or at Truett Seminary, and many met her during the Annual Awakening hosted at Coker. She is near and dear to Coker! So, we join others in saying….

“Welcome home, Bishop Gregory”

Bishop Gregory holds a unique place in GMC history. She was elected a bishop on the first ballot at the convening General Conference — one of three people who became the first elected bishops in the history of our denomination. In the two years since, she has helped develop international partnerships across a genuinely global church and helped establish a culture marked by mission, relationships, collaboration, and a willingness to build something new rather than recreate what came before.

Under her leadership, MidTexas became the first annual conference to form in the United States in the Global Methodist Church.

This week, she fell seven votes short of the qualifying ballot for bishop. She wrote about it openly and generously, and her words are the best summary anyone could offer:

“I have learned that the heart can hold heartbreak and joy at the same time.”

She described sitting through Sunday worship with tears streaming down her face, watching people from nations around the world sing and pray together, and leaning over to Bishop Carolyn Moore to say she simply wanted to be part of this movement of God however God could use her. By that evening, she knew the result.

Several people called her a pioneer this week, and she took the word seriously:

“Pioneers go first. They cross rivers before there are bridges and follow trails before there are roads… But pioneers are never the whole story. Eventually, settlers come. They build on the ground others cleared and create what will endure for generations.”

And then:

“You don’t blaze a trail so everyone behind you has to keep carrying a machete. You blaze it so someone can eventually build a road.”

She asked us to bless, encourage, pray for, and make room for the new bishops — noting they will do some things differently, and that they should. She closed with a line MidTexas will be repeating for a while: “MidTexas, I’m coming home. Let’s storm the gates!” (P.S. Storm the Gates is also the name of the official MidTexas podcast)

Bishops serve fixed six-year terms by design. Bishop Emeritus Gregory is returning to a role she already held — the one she was doing while also carrying episcopal responsibilities for the whole global church — and she now gets to give it her full attention for six years.

Or, as Ryan Barnett put it more simply: and now, we get her back full time.

So, watch out MidTexas, we believe God is moving in big ways in our area and he’s allowing us to have Bishop Gregory’s full time attention while He moves! Let’s storm the gates!

What this means for Coker, why should we care about denominational organization and such?

Practically speaking, day-to-day life at Coker doesn’t change on November 1. We worship on Sundays. We still need volunteers. We are a place to belong.

What changes is who is praying over us and planning with us. Our Conference Superintendent — the leader most directly invested in strengthening congregations like ours, raising up leaders, and planting new churches — will be fully present to MidTexas for the next six years. Our new bishop will be connecting MidTexas to Bulgaria, Mexico, Korea, and the Afrika Makarishi Conference. Coker’s own clergy, including Rev. Adam Knight, Rev. Clay Smallwood, and Rev. Damon Relder, have been in ministry alongside many of the Global Methodist leaders (the ones mentioned and others) for years. We are not on the outside of this, we are very much in this.

The MidTexas Conference stretches from the Red River to the Rio Grande, drawing congregations from the North Texas, Central Texas, and Rio Texas areas. Coker is one of them.

It would be easy to read all of the above as an org chart — governing boards, rule-making, titles. Boring meetings in other countries. That isn’t the point.

The point is intentional connection and accountability. John Wesley modeled it and early Methodism adopted it: worship, societies, classes, and band groups, where people share their souls, their burdens, and what God is doing among them. Every layer above: presiding elder, superintendent, bishop…. exists so that the layer where people meets Jesus stays healthy and safe.

Inside Coker, we recently voted to move to a one-board model rather than a bunch of committees, and the logic is the same at our scale: the former position holder mentors the current position holder, and the next position holder trains under the current one. Nobody starts from zero. Nobody carries it alone. It’s how we sustain and build on what Coker has been building since the mid-1800s.

Pioneers break ground. Settlers build on it. Both are necessary — in South Africa, in MidTexas, and at Coker.

Will you join us in prayer? 

Please pray for Bella and Chris Duke and the others making the long trip home from South Africa. Pray for Bishop Kenneth Levingston as he finishes his service, for Bishop-Elect Jonathan Lee as he prepares to begin, and for Bishop Emeritus Leah Hidde Gregory as she comes home to MidTexas. Pray for the Global Methodist Church as it moves forward in the way God has called us.

And if you’re in a hard season yourself, know this: while all of that business was being conducted half a world away, Yahweh was being praised, the name of Jesus was being claimed, and you were being prayed over.

God is writing stories in MidTexas. We’re excited to tell them.

Photo credit: Christopher Duke, Bishop Leah Gregory, MidTexas, and the Global Methodist Church.