Our Roots, Pt. 21

The person chosen by the 1888 General Conference Session to replace Butler as General Conference President was O. A. Olsen, who was living in Europe at the time. Since it would take him a while to relocate to the US to take up his new position W. C. “Willie” White (James’ and Ellen’s son) was chosen to fill the position in the interim. Willie White made use of the opportunity to initiate some changes that started the decentralization process his mother Ellen had been advocating for some time. These changes were approved of, and enlarged on, by the incoming president, O. A. Olsen.

On November 18, 1888, the General Conference Executive Committee divided the territory of the Church in North America into four districts; South, East, West, and Midwest. One member of the GC Executive Committee was assigned to each district to concentrate their administrative counsel in that area. This shifted some of the administrative emphasis within the General Conference from the president to the executive committee, but there was still centralization in that the power was still concentrated at the General Conference level. These districts had no autonomous decision making ability, no distinct voting constituencies, etc. You could say that they were a device of convenience for the General Conference.

In 1889 the system of districts was expanded. The territory of North America was rearranged into six districts, which were known by their numbers, and everything outside of North America was designated as district seven. They continued the system of assigning one executive committee member to oversee each district. The members of the executive committee responsible for these districts were known as their superintendents. This title was a bit misleading in that the superintendents didn’t have any individual executive authority over their districts. Their function within the districts was to advise and monitor and keep the executive committee as a whole apprised of developing issues or other matters. The executive committee as a whole would then exercise whatever executive authority was applied to a given situation.

While it did only a little toward decentralizing the power accumulated at the General Conference level the system of districts did prove useful in improving the lines of communication between the General Conference and the State Conferences, as each now knew who the go-to person was for sending information between the entities. The districts continued as reconfigured in 1889 until the General Conference Session of 1893.

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