History is being made in St. Louis. Not only will the special called session of General Conference, Feb. 23-26, be the first special session since the one in 1970 that dealt with the organization of The United Methodist Church, but the Day of Prayer on Saturday will be historic, too.

It will represent the first time that a general session has been launched with such an extended period of communal prayer: Six-and-a-half hours, beginning at 9 a.m. Central Standard Time and ending at 3:30 p.m. CST.

Read more about the day of prayer and how Western leaders will be part of the day.

View a schedule for the day.

Each of the four plans under serious consideration at #UMCGC embody four values United Methodists hold as they consider a way forward. Will delegates be able to recognize how much they actually share in common and build off of that?

For example, all four plans place some value on unity, but each arrives at it in a different way, with delegates bringing both unique understandings of what unity is, and varying degrees of interest in it.

Read more about the values of the plans on the Western Jurisdiction website.

From St. Louis Post-Dispatch website

One aspect of the Special Called Session is that the secular press and world will be watching.

Given the emotionally charged topic of the special session of General Conference, more reporters from secular news agencies are attending, watching, and writing about what we do in St. Louis

Here's an article from St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In the build-up to this 2019 session of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church in St. Louis there are lots of meetings. The Judicial Council meets. The Bishops meet. Most of the General Boards and Agencies meet in some form or another. And the various caucuses and interest groups usually meet as well. There are a lot of meetings.

After all, this is a big deal. When you try to get a denomination of about 12.5 million members together to make decisions, you try to get as much face-to-face time in as possible.

But again, this is not the first special session and it will not be the last.

Read all of Jim's thoughts on the Western Jurisdiction website.

Beginning on Saturday, Feb. 23, General Conference will be streamed live by United Methodist Communications. You can see the live feed at umc.org/live.

St. Louis is in the Central Time Zone. Please keep this in mind as you review the following times. The rules of General Conference call for a 6:30 adjournment.