Rev. Barrie Tritle offering the motion from the NCJ Committee on Episcopacy. Photo by NCJ communicators.

North Central Jurisdictional (NCJ) Conference delegates on Friday agreed to add $80,000 to the $40,000 currently allocated in the 2025-2029 jurisdictional budget, specifically for the Episcopal Area Transition Fund. The purpose of this fund is to resource bishops and episcopal areas related to the reduction of bishops that was approved at the 2024 General Conference.

In January, NCJ established two new episcopal areas: one comprising the Wisconsin and Northern Illinois annual conferences and another comprising the Western Ohio and Eastern Ohio annual conferences. This reduced the number of bishops serving NCJ’s ten conferences to seven, relieving pressure on the denomination’s stressed Episcopal Fund.

In May, the United Methodist General Conference called the NCJ to eliminate an additional bishop assignment, reducing the jurisdiction’s bishop count to six.

While the NCJ has not yet established a third additional episcopal area nor determined the conferences it would comprise, the Episcopacy Committee anticipates this will entail additional expenses.

Episcopacy Committee member Andy Call (East Ohio), presenting the motion along with Rev. Dr. Barry Tritle (Iowa), speculated that a new episcopal area might require the addition of up to two full-time staff for the episcopal office. Annual conferences likely would assume those costs after a couple of years, Call said. However, annual conferences have already approved their 2025 budgets and are not likely to have planned for sharing a bishop.

Delegates will vote on the jurisdictional budget on July 13.