FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 18, 2024
GCAH CELEBRATES LEADERSHIP, HONORS HISTORICAL CONTRIBUTIONS AT ANNUAL BOARD MEETING
Commission holds first in-person meeting since 2019
Bozeman, Mont. – The General Commission on Archives and History (GCAH) of The United Methodist Church met Sept. 9 for its first in-person board meeting since 2019 with a gathering that concurred with the 10th Historical Convocation at Bozeman United Methodist Church.
Meeting highlights included the election of agency leadership, recognizing faithful and innovative historians and receiving staff and committee reports from denominational archivists and historians.
The board re-elected Dr. Ashley Boggan D. and Bishop Cynthia Fiero Harvey to their roles of general secretary and board president, respectively. In addition to electing Boggan and Harvey, who serves as episcopal leader of the Texas Conference and the Rio Texas Conference, the board received a motion from the Executive Committee to elect Ted Campbell to serve as GCAH vice president and Anne Packard to serve as GCAH secretary. Campbell is the archivist for the Texas Annual Conference and is set to retire in 2025 from his position as the Albert Cook Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at Perkins School of Theology; Packard is South Georgia Conference historian and director of the Arthur J. Moore Methodist Museum on St. Simons Island, Ga.
During an awards dinner hosted jointly by GCAH and the Historical Society of The UMC, The Rev. Dr. Edgar Avitia Legarda was presented the 2024 Distinguished Service Award posthumously. Avitia, who died June 27, 2023, was known as the foremost authority on the history of Methodism in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.
Avitia was ordained in the largely Spanish-speaking Rio Grande Conference (now part of the Rio Texas Conference). In addition to serving local churches, he also served as chaplain at Lydia Patterson Institute, the United Methodist school in El Paso.
In 2001, Avitia began his 22-year career with the General Board of Global Ministries. He led the agency’s Global Mission Relationships unit, a role that included being regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.
In announcing the award, Bishop Harvey said, “Edgar spent his life nurturing the faith and ministry of Spanish-speaking United Methodists in the United States and building relationships with Methodists across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Avitia’s wife, Giuseppina, accepted the award on behalf of her husband.
In its inaugural year, GCAH awarded the Contemporary Trailblazer Award to the Rev. Charlie Baber. Baber, an ordained elder in the Oregon-Idaho Conference of The UMC who is currently serving in North Carolina, also is the creator of the Wesley Bros. Comics. He is the author of “Submitting to be More Vile: The Illustrated Adventures of John & Charles Wesley” and “Incompatible: How the Church Cast Out LGBTQ Christians & Where We Go Next,” a graphic novel that delves into the history of The UMC’s incompatibility clause.
Bishop Harvey presided over the board meeting, where board members, as well as other affiliate, jurisdictional and conference Commissions on Archives and History reported.
Highlights included the announcement by the Association for the Hispanic/Latino United Methodist Church History and Legacy, an affiliate group of GCAH, that a donation of $5,000 will be given in memory of Avitia to a newly-formed historical archive on Mexican Methodism in Northern Mexico. The new center is being established, in Avitia’s memory, to bring together archival and historic documents and information related to the Methodist Church of Mexico. Avitia was a native of Chihuahua, Mexico.
The GCAH board member representing Europe, Dr. Michael Wetzel, presented his newly-published book, titled “Historische Stätten des Methodismus in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz,” that details more than 80 historic sites throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Wetzel is a licensed local pastor serving the East Germany Annual Conference.
The board also passed the 2025 budget which allows for new centers and new programming to be established, as well as new staff positions as GCAH realigns its priorities and mission going into the new quadrennium.
To learn more about GCAH, visit ResourceUMC.org/ArchivesandHistory.