session of General Conference. The most recent General Conferences were held in Portland, Oregon in 2016, and St. Louis, Missouri, in 2019. The event is currently rotated between the US jurisdictions of the church. Bishops, councils, committees, boards, elders, etc., are not permitted to speak on behalf of the United Methodist Church as this authority is reserved solely for the General Conference in accordance with the Book of Discipline. The plenary session is presided over by an active bishop who has been selected by a committee of delegates to the conference. It is not uncommon for different bishops to preside on different days. The presiding officer is usually accompanied by parliamentarians. The church had planned for a conference outside of the United States for the first time in history in 2024. These plans were established in 2015 for the first meeting. However, these plans were cancelled because organizers were unable to find a convention space that would be available for two weeks to host the global gathering. Sara Hotchkiss, business manager for the Commission on General Conference stated:"No one has done anything wrong, or there’s no reason not to go. It’s just simply when we did a bid process, the facilities needed for the length of our conference were not available," Jurisdictional and central conferences Subordinate to the General Conference are the jurisdictional and central conferences which also meet every four years. The United States is divided into five jurisdictions: Northeastern, Southeastern, North Central, South Central and Western. Outside the United States the church is divided into seven central conferences: Africa, Congo, West Africa, Central & Southern Europe, Germany, Northern Europe and Eurasia, and the Philippines. The main purpose of the jurisdictional and central conferences is to elect and appoint bishops, the chief administrators of the church. Additionally, central conferences may limitedly adapt the church law to the needs of their areas. Bishops thus elected serve episcopal areas, which consist of one or more annual conferences. In the US, decisions in-between the four-year meetings are made by the Mission Council (usually consisting of church bishops). One of the most high-profile decisions in recent years by one of the councils was a decision by the Mission Council of the South Central Jurisdiction which in March 2007 approved a 99-year lease of at Southern Methodist University for the George W. Bush Presidential Library. The decision generated controversy in light of Bush's support