What does is mean to conference together?
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Ever been to annual conference?
I talked about annual conference with a prominent professor at Duke earlier this week. He said that, after attending his first annual conference, he felt lucky to come out a Christian.
It was a funny comment, and it was said half-jokingly. But the frustration that so many people feel about annual conference is not funny at all. This is supposed to be the central gathering of Methodists each year, where we recommit and renew ourselves for ministry. What does it mean when annual conference is dreaded by those who must attend? Or simply not understood by most laity in the connection?
I think this is an extremely important issue for Gen X'ers and Millennials. For one, I think the interest our generations have in the upcoming General Conference in 2008 shows that we have not given up on the idea of conference. For another, annual conference is simply not going to go away. The United Methodist Church is not, and should not be, a congregational system. And neither should annual conference devolve into simply a business session that must be endured.
I know annual conferences vary widely in how they are perceived and how they are conducted. I have actually been very encouraged in recent years by changes that the Arkansas Conference has made to put worship and ministry resourcing front and center. On the other hand, changes could still be made to improve it. For instance, I understand why we have petitions. But they are often distracting and create more polarization that consensus. Would it be so bad if we simply decided not to debate and pass resolutions??
I write about reclaiming the Wesleyan sense of conferencing in my current column in the United Methodist Reporter. You can read it here.
posted by Andrew C. Thompson at 3:48 PM
7 Comments:
Andrew, as the Agenda Secretary for my Annual Conference the last few years...all I can say is, there is a perfectly good reason why I quit that job. I worked VERY hard to help my Bishop move to a model of "holy conferencing," only to find out that people in my conference prefer to argue with each other over the kinds of things we can do to re-claim and translate our tradition. So Annual Conference becomes a place to hang out with clergy friends because there is a real sense that you can't make a difference there (especially if you are under 40!) I keep trying! Thanks for writing about what many feel...
Andrew, having participated in some of those conversations with you, I can only agree with the essential points here-- but here's a question for our ongoing discussion: is the problem essentially one of "distance"? Erica and I are from the same conference (hey Erica!) which is an amazingly diverse context; thinking of the differences in geography, language, culture, race, class, generations, etc. I wonder if it is even possible to have a meeting at a "conference" level that can capably address the complexity of local church ministry across such differentiations. As a result, a significant part of being "conference" is learning just to listen and to speak to one another across differences. I suppose you might argue that learning to do that well might be just the kind of witness the church needs to give to the world now, but I'm not certain it's close enough to congregational contexts to do justice to the difficult questions of what it means to do that work in one given place versus another. In short, can we resist an extreme congregationalism while retaining connectionalism and conferencing that stays close to context-- that actually supports the outreach of the local church?
I agree with you that many of the petitions can be very divisive. Here in SC, one of the resolutions on the agenda is whether to petition the South Carolina government to remove the confederate flag from a confederate memorial in a park. No matter what you think of the confederate flag, the church helped push to have the flag removed from the capitol building 7 years ago. The flag was placed where it is now as a compromise. I doubt many even see the flag where it flies.
Sometimes I think some groups are just trying to hard to find things to be upset about, while we have youngsters on our streets all across South Carolina growing up without two parents in their family, killing one another over gang turf, and ignoring educational opportunities. And we're going to become embroiled over a flag in a park somewhere?
Jeff, I think you make some very good points. My own annual conference is more ethnically or culturally homogenous than yours, I am sure. But there are still significant differences. It's a long way from Little Rock to Smackover, you might say.
One wonders how annual conference might be different if conferences were the size of districts (and consequently, if bishops only had as many churches to shepherd as district superintendents now do). My own original annual conference (North Arkansas) united with the Little Rock Conference a few years ago so that the annual conference's borders are now identical with the state's borders. I understand that there were financial and programmatic reasons for the unification. But I am still not convinced that 'larger' is the direction that conference size should be moving. It seems, in many ways, to increase the bureaucratic and impersonal feel that people find so distasteful in large institutions. We could still be connectional - perhaps even more so - without buying into the 'bigger is better' market mentality.
Another issue that I think is related to some of what you mention is the way that we seem to want to imitate secular, governmental legislative bodies. That is far from Wesley's original intent for the annual conference. But the UMC has always seemed to have an irresistible urge to mimic the institutions of the surrounding culture. I cannot understand why this is the case, except for something that our friend Yoder reminded me of the other day:
"All ... efforts to defend the cause of the church before the bar of secular analysis have in common the same basic axiom. This is then what is really important; the true meaning of history, the true locus of salvation, is in the cosmos and not in the church" (Original Revolution, p.146).
Maybe annual conference is not the right venue for social action, but to say that the Social Gospel is outdated, I think goes a little too far. When you say that public officials do not listen to the Methodist Church, then we need to talk more passionately than other churches that they seem to be able to hear.
In fact, roadtripray says above that SC did listen to annual conference and move the confederate flag. What might happen if we petitioned for more things to bring us closer to the Kingdom.
Whether the church consciously or unconsciously played into Constantine's hands when we made such a center piece of personal salvation, I doubt we will ever know. However, if we do away with the Social Gospel, we eliminate at least half of what Jesus preached.
John makes a good point, so let me clarify. When I use the term "Social Gospel," I mean specifically that movement in American Protestantism that arose in the latter half of the 19th century and was centered on advocating for governmental regulation of society in various ways - child labor, length of the work week, prohibition, etc. I think the church scored some major victories in that movement. But there was a downside as well, which was the blurring of boundaries between church and world. I simply don't think it is possible to legislate the kingdom into existence, despite the importance of laws that safeguard children, the poor, the environment, etc.
So while I would not say that the ideas that the Social Gospel embodied are outdated, I do think annual conferences pronouncing on this or that issue and thinking that it is going to do much good nationally is useless. It is like a hollow shell of something we once did. If we want to influence our society's laws, I don't think annual conference resolutions are the way to go.
Passing resolutions on the internal governance of the church might be (and I stress "might be") a different matter. Depending on how they are written, discussed, and voted upon, they could have some use. But of course, they can also be done in a completely unhelpful fashion as well.
For instance, a pastor friend (from a different annual conference than my own) told me the other day that one year at his annual conference a great deal of time was spent debating a resolution over whether pastors should be allowed to keep guns in their parsonages. The notion of actually spending time debating such a resolution on the floor of the annual conference just strikes me as absurd. It seems like Christians ought to be able to discuss issues in something other than quasi-legislative fashion, where real conversation is impossible.
where we recommit and renew ourselves for ministry.
erm ... does this happen I wonder? so much is just bureaucratic it seems - and more and more and more committees elected to do what precisely?
It's time to get back to the Gospels I think - and place the Bible above the BoD ... sorry!
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