BOWMAN -- The 2007 Eastern Conference of the Southern Methodist Church will begin Sunday, July 15, at Bowman Southern Methodist Church in Bowman.

Delegates from 55 churches will convene to consider ministerial assignments for the 2007-2008 conference year. All but two of the churches in attendance will be from South Carolina. Other states represented will include Virginia and Maryland.

The Rev. Dr. John T. Hucks Jr., Southern Methodist Church General Conference president, will preside over the event, which will run through Tuesday, July 17. Representatives from the Woman's Missionary Societies, the Men's Cartwright Association and the Epworth League youth group will also gather during the three-day annual conference.

Church officials said the conference will focus on routine church business.

The Southern Methodist Church was established in 1939. The first annual session of the South Carolina Conference -- now the Eastern Conference -- was held in Turbeville in June 1940.

Administrative offices for the denomination are located at Southern Methodist College in Orangeburg. Formed in Columbia on Jan. 14, 1939, as the continuing body of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the Southern Methodist Church established Southern Methodist College as an institution of the church on Jan. 26, 1956, in Greenville. The school moved to Aiken in 1958 and to Orangeburg in 1961.

The church holds four conferences each year: the Eastern Conference serving South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland; the Alabama-Florida-Georgia Conference; the Mid-South Conference serving Tennessee and Mississippi; and the South-Western Conference serving Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas.

For more information on the upcoming 2007 Eastern Conference, call Dr. Irene H. Myers at 803-829-2463.