Illinois Great Rivers Conference 2025 Journal-Yearbook
Conference Boards, Commissions, and Committees Commission on Archives and History The Book of Discipline (2020/2024) mandates that each annual conference shall have a conference commission on archives and history with the duty to “collect, preserve and make accessible the historically significant records of the annual conference and its agencies, including data relating to the origin and history of the conference and its antecedents” (¶641.1). In our endeavor to meet that mission, we operate the IGRC Archives, which is now located at at the Conference Center in Springfield. Our part-time archivist, Kenyon Reed, does exceptional work in assisting various stakeholders with historical research, family and church histories. During 2024, we completed the move to the Conference Center – the first time it has been located there since the former Central Illinois Conference housed its Archives in the Bloomington office more than 30 years ago. We thank the congregation at Mt. Vernon Wesley UMC for its hospitality and partnership with the Archives for the four years we were there. In embarking on the move to Springfield, we began a new concept of archival storage and retrieval by contracting with Iron Mountain, which provides a temperature- controlled storage environment for much of the IGRC Collection which now includes nearly 16 tons of material. While the original documents are in storage, Iron Mountain can deliver those materials when needed to the Conference Center and return them when their use is no longer needed. And at the same time, the temperature-controlled environment does much to preserve those documents than previous repositories have been able to provide. Kenyon has continued to receive records from churches disaffiliating in 2023 and those churches completing their mission. We thank the Conference Board of Trustees for including historical records as part of its agreement with disaffiliating churches and closing process. These records provide a narrative of the church’s ministry while a part of The United Methodist Church and its predecessor denominations. And because our records and services are available to anyone, it is also in the church’s best interest for there to be a depository for these records. We continue to digitize items as we envision a day when those digitized items will take the place of aging items that deteriorate over time despite our best preservation efforts. Our long-term goal is to have these items online where persons can view them from their computers. We have launched a new website, www.igrcarchives.org that provides some basic information about churches, pastors and will include digitized records later this year. The Commission was involved with the 200th anniversary celebration of the formation of the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church on Oct. 26, 2024, at Belleville Signal Hill UMC. As part of the 200th anniversary, the Commission has submitted legislation to re-affirm Conference historic sites that were recognized by the former Central and Southern Illinois conferences but were not included as part of the merger agreement in 1996. Since Methodist Heritage Sites must first be Conference Historic Sites, the legislation enables those sites that were part of Illinois Methodism to be considered for Heritage Site status. The Commission also is looking at establishing a Methodist Historic Trail in our Conference as a way of celebrating
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