“The opportunity to serve at General Conference has brought me all over the country and allowed me to meet people from all over the world,” said Naomi Bartle, General Conference Committee on Correlation and Editorial Revision, retired Bishop’s Administrative Assistant for the Dakotas Area.

Naomi Bartle has attended General Conference ten times. Her first conference was 1980 in Indianapolis where she served as a volunteer. In 1984, she was nominated by Bishop Michael Coyner to serve on the Committee on Correlation and Editorial Revision. Bartle has served on the committee for nine General Conferences, including the 2016 General Conference in Portland. Photos: Naomi Bartle listens from the secretary's stage at General Conference in Portland. Photos by David Stucke, Dakotas Conference UMC Communications.

Bartle is currently a resident of Blaine, MN and member of Gethsemane UMC, Lino Lakes, MN. A life-long member of The United Methodist Church, she has seen a lot of change in who attends the General Conference. “I have witnessed the demographics of the church change at each General Conference,” she said. “The politics of around rules of procedure has not changed.”

The General Conference committee’s work is governed by the rules of the conference, which are approved on the opening of each General Conference. The Council of Bishops names four lay and clergy members and two alternates. No one working at the General Conference, elected as a delegate or employed as a staff member of a United Methodist board or agency can be selected for this committee.

Members include Naomi Bartle, Dakotas Annual (regional) Conference; the Rev. Bob Burkhart, assistant to the bishop, Iowa; Anne Haigler, Kentucky; and Rebecca Kohler, Upper New York. Alternates are the Rev. Linda Caldwell, California-Nevada, and the Rev. Carl Schenck, Missouri.

The function of the Committee on Correlation and Editorial Revision is to prepare content for the Book of Discipline and the Book of Resolutions. The work is guided by the United Methodist Publishing House.  A software program, Conference and Legislative Management System, CALMS makes the task easier. This computer program handles all of the legislative administration of the conference. The committee looks at the content and instruction of a petition that, in many cases, can affect additional paragraphs in the Discipline. For instance, a word change, such as “probationary” to “provisional” must be changed everywhere it appears. That is the committee’s correlation work.

“It is just great to have the software,” said Bartle. “We have used computers since the 1996 General Conference and it has made such a difference.”  Prior to the use of technology the task was completed by using paper copies, scissors, glue sticks and three-ring notebooks.

The 2020 General Conference will be held in Minneapolis. Bartle plans to work as a volunteer and assisting in anyway that she can. “At 81, I am hopeful that everything will work out for me to serve at General Conference in Minneapolis,” she said.

Bartle served as the administrative assistant for the bishop of the Dakotas Area from 1980-2008 under Bishops Boulten, Coyner and Kiesey. She was a 59-year member of Fargo First UMC in Fargo, ND. Bartle and her husband recently moved to Blaine, MN to be near family.