General Conference fear & trembling
Sunday, February 17, 2008
General Conference will take place in Fort Worth, TX, from April 23rd to May 2nd of this year. Our church's website begins its description of GC by stating, "General Conference is the top policy-making body of the United Methodist Church." The second sentence invokes the makeup of GC according to "church law".
Now, if I were a non-Methodist and I saw a statement like that about our church's largest gathering, it would send me screaming in the other direction. Heck, if I were a typical, relatively uninformed Methodist it would send me running away. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why church bureaucrats think that the rest of the church wants to conceive of, read about, and proclaim the church in bureaucratic terms. If all General Conference is going to be is a "policy-making body," then we ought not to spend the millions of dollars it takes to put it on and give that money for hunger relief.
The church does not "make policy". The church interprets Scripture, and from that interpretation, gives doctrine to the faithful. There has been a lot of talk over the past year about how everyone wants the General Conference to be a more prayerful, worshipful time - a time where the delegates can truly engage in holy conferencing together. The prospects of that happening are not helped when our official website uses such impoverished language to prepare us for what to expect.
If whoever it is that writes and posts information on umc.org wants to find out what Wesleyan conferencing is supposed to be about, that person ought to go to the sources and read a little bit about our tradition. Ignorance of it is a large reason why our church is in a state of slow dissolution. And if Methodists are truly more interested in policy-making than in holy conferencing, Washington D.C. is a much better place to do it than the General Conference.
I started this post with the intention of talking a little bit about my own hopes for General Conference, which I outline in an open letter to the delegates in The United Methodist Reporter. And now I don't think I can do that.
Now, if I were a non-Methodist and I saw a statement like that about our church's largest gathering, it would send me screaming in the other direction. Heck, if I were a typical, relatively uninformed Methodist it would send me running away. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why church bureaucrats think that the rest of the church wants to conceive of, read about, and proclaim the church in bureaucratic terms. If all General Conference is going to be is a "policy-making body," then we ought not to spend the millions of dollars it takes to put it on and give that money for hunger relief.
The church does not "make policy". The church interprets Scripture, and from that interpretation, gives doctrine to the faithful. There has been a lot of talk over the past year about how everyone wants the General Conference to be a more prayerful, worshipful time - a time where the delegates can truly engage in holy conferencing together. The prospects of that happening are not helped when our official website uses such impoverished language to prepare us for what to expect.
If whoever it is that writes and posts information on umc.org wants to find out what Wesleyan conferencing is supposed to be about, that person ought to go to the sources and read a little bit about our tradition. Ignorance of it is a large reason why our church is in a state of slow dissolution. And if Methodists are truly more interested in policy-making than in holy conferencing, Washington D.C. is a much better place to do it than the General Conference.
I started this post with the intention of talking a little bit about my own hopes for General Conference, which I outline in an open letter to the delegates in The United Methodist Reporter. And now I don't think I can do that.
posted by Andrew C. Thompson at 12:52 PM
4 Comments:
Well said...on all levels of the UMC I think we delude ourselves into thinking that business is separate from ministry. Enjoyed the post.
Andrew,
Though it would likely be boring as hell, I feel anyone in a denomination would benefit from reading something about institutions and the way movements gravitate into institutions. There are positives to institutional bodies and negatives. The problem I see with the UMC as an outsider is a criticism we Free Methodists have had of the Methodist-Episcopal Church since the mid 19thc. The UMC as an institution wants to be socially acceptable.
I'd love to have you come to our annual conference for a contrast. I haven't been to our GC so I can't compare/contrast that for you.
I think I'd enjoy the contrast. If you had to list two or three ways that a Free Methodist annual conference session differs from a UM annual conference session, what would they be?
Well, from my limited experience, this is what I see at a Free Methodist annual conference:
1. The feel is more family reunion that politicking business meeting. Sure, we do business meeting stuff but the feel is much different.
2. It's laid back. The size is probably smaller than many UMC AC's so that's a factor.
Those are probably the biggest I can identify. I hear about people making propositions at UM annual and general conference for sheer political motivations and I shake my head. Perhaps the UMC should divide its big conferences into smaller ones for closer community, host more community building events throughout the year, etc.
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