Hearing from the whole body: Good news from the 2026 Annual Conference Monitoring Report

By Charles Syms and Georgia Whitney, Regional Coordinators, Dismantling Racism: from Imagination to Action | Email

"There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus." — Galatians 3:28

"...though many, [we] form one body, and each member belongs to all the others." — Romans 12:5

Paul's vision wasn't only that old divisions stop separating us — it's that each of us, different as we are, belongs fully to the whole. A body only works when every member is heard from. With that vision in mind, The United Methodist Church charges the Commission on Religion and Race (CCORR) and the Commission on the Status and Role of Women (COSROW) with tracking the demographics of people speaking at Annual Conference. This is because historically, the voices of some of our siblings, especially women and People of Color, were excluded from these discussions.

To help ensure that we are honoring that commitment, a team from CCORR and COSROW tracks participation at Annual Conference in two ways: who registers to attend, and who speaks at this gathering. Registration data captures several demographic categories. Then, a team collects speaker data by observation during conference sessions — monitors note who is called upon, who presents, and who addresses the body, then records speaker’s gender and race/ethnicity. That's how we gauge whether our environment is welcoming and our conversations inclusive.

Who Was in the Room?

A total of 740 people registered for this year’s Annual Conference. The chart below shows how the registrants broke down by race/ethnicity.

This chart shows that 86.4% of the registrants were White, 3.9% were Black/African American, 3.6%, were Asian, 1.7% were Hispanic/Latino, and 0.3% were American Indian. 0.6% marked themselves as “Other” and 3.5% didn’t answer the question.

As far as gender, women comprised 59.5% of the registrants and men made up 36.2%. 0.8% identified as non-binary and 3.5% did not respond.

Who Spoke at the Microphone? There’s Good News!

As you’ll see in the chart below, the news is good. Across both attendance and speaking, almost without exception, people of color participated at rates above their share of conference membership. Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, and American Indian speakers all appear at roughly double (or more) their registrant share. This is worth celebrating. White speakers and Asian speakers sit slightly below their registrant share.

Specifically, 86.2% of the speakers were White; 9.0% were Black/African American. 4.2% of the speakers were Hispanic/Latino, 2.6% were Asian, and 1.6% were American Indian.

The story this year's numbers tell is, on balance, an encouraging one. Women are speaking at rates that match or exceed their share of the room, and people of color are not just present at Annual Conference — they are being heard, at rates that reflect real, intentional effort rather than coincidence. That kind of progress doesn't happen by accident, and it's worth naming and sustaining.

But Annual Conference is one room, one week a year. The great challenge is to ensure that this same intentionality continues at every level of our conference — every district, every local church. A body that hears from only a few of its members isn't yet whole. That's who we claim to be. Let's keep becoming it.

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