We had our first meeting of the Transitional Conference Advisory Team (TCAT) for what will be eventually the Indiana Provisional Annual Conference of the Global Methodist Church. Rev. Scott Pattison is our team leader. There are twenty of us, clergy and lay, charged with getting the whole thing ready for launch. Since inquiring minds want to know, here is roughly where we are. 130-some congregations have disaffiliated from the Indiana AC of The UMC so far. More are expected to be voted out when they complete their process at the June meeting of the AC. There are around 50 or so congregations that are firmly identifying with the Indiana GMC at this point. The GMC Transitional Leadership Council wants 125 congregations before we reach cruising speed. We may well reach that number with just Indiana congregations. But there are other congregations in other UM ACs around us that are slower in the disaffiliation process. At the time of our launch and soon after, there may be congregations from Michigan or Illinois or Wisconsin or Kentucky seeking to join with us, at least for a while. Eventually, of course, a healthy organization grows by increasing outlets, and large, unwieldy Conferences may only be a temporary thing. In any case, there are enough Hoosier Global Methodists (present and to come) to justify Indiana being the core of an Annual Conference, and since we are ahead of the game and have a lot of leadership, we will be going ahead with our plans, with the blessing of the TLC. We're looking at a gathering of some sort for all Indiana Global Methodist folk in the early part of 2023. That won't be a Convening Annual Conference, yet. We'd like to reach that milestone by this summer; maybe we will and maybe we won't, we'll just have to see. But we need for people to start finding each other and making connections. There is a Facebook page that launched today (IndianaGMC), though I can't seem to get it called up. FB keeps giving me truck dealerships. Ah, me. Nobody thought of that when they named us. And there will be a website soon after the first of the new year. Anyway, 2023 will be a big year for us and you can expect a number of things to be rolled out as we go along. A Convening General Conference for the whole GMC is probably not going to happen until spring 2025 or so. The Disaffiliation Process in the current UM BOD expires at the end of 2023. And then there are the folks waiting for the 2024 UM GC to act upon things; whether they wait in vain remains to be seen, but many of our African friends in particular are counting on something coming out of that meeting. So we need to get all the people OUT that we can and get them organized into Conferences and Districts and so on before calling for the first General Conference of the GMC. That will also be a big, complicated meeting with big, complicated contracts to negotiate. All that means that by the time the GMC calls its first GC, we will have a couple of years as an AC under our belts and will be prepared to make the most of what comes out of that big event. The TCAT will disband once the Provisional AC launches. One final thought: it is not a bad thing that just under half of those who have disaffiliated here in Indiana are seeking to become Global Methodist congregations. The GMC is not just a union of all those who had reasons for wishing to leave the UMC; rather, we seek to build a new church culture, and not everybody is up for that. In other words, we're about where we're trying to GO, not what we've left. I would hope that some of those who have gone independent would think seriously about joining with us, but if they'd rather not, then God bless them. We intend to be a coalition of the willing. If your vision is different from ours, then you go where you think God is sending you. But if you see what we're doing and get excited by it, the door is always open.