Hendrix College and the UMC

I am a 1998 graduate of Hendrix College, in Conway, AR. Hendrix is a small liberal-arts college that has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church (or its predecessors) since its founding. It offers a top-notch academic education, and I am grateful for my experience there as an undergraduate.

If you are a Methodist who attended a Methodist-related college or university, you know how strange college-church relations can be at most of "our" schools. Methodists frankly don't know how to do church-related higher education anymore (there are some specific historical and cultural reasons for this, which I will not go into right now). The resulting confusion can often lead to strained relationships between the church and its colleges.

My own alma mater of Hendrix is a great example of just such a strained relationship. There are some aspects of its church-relatedness that are laudable. The second of the missions to Peru this month that I've been writing about was - that's right - a group of Hendrix students who were wanting to learn more about the church in Peru and wanting to help out with earthquake rebuilding efforts. The college thought enough of the mission to ask a clergy alumnus (me) to lead it. That kind of stuff is great.

But then, there's other stuff. For instance, the president of Hendrix, Dr. Tim Cloyd, has pushed through a proposed change to the Hendrix Charter that would reduce the number of Arkansas United Methodist clergy on the Board of Trustees by half. Currently, ten clergy in full connection serve on a 42-person Board (along with the bishop and director of conference ministries, who serve in an ex-officio capacity). The change would reduce that number to five clergy. The newly freed up five Board members would be United Methodist, either clergy or laity, from anywhere in the U.S.

The key question here is why. Here's a school that has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years in every measurable category - from enrollment, to endowment, to academic programs, to buildings. The church doesn't seem to have stood in its way in any of that growth. So why take what can only be seen as a punitive action against the church in Arkansas by reducing its presence on the Board of Trustees?

Talk to clergy and laity in Arkansas, and you'll hear dozens of possible reasons. Some say this is the inevitable next step in a relationship that has been declining for decades. Some suggest that this is a punitive move by the administration, in response to the Annual Conference's decision last year to equalize funding with historically black, UM-related Philander Smith College in Little Rock. Some current Hendrix students and alumni both, who are particularly unhappy with the president, suggest that it is just one more example of his insistence on remaking the college in his own image.

From talking to people related to the college, I get the sense that the administration will argue that this will actually strengthen the church-college relationship by allowing the college to stock the Trustees with nationally prominent clergy and laity from other states. A memo by President Cloyd to the Hendrix faculty and staff, dated February 19th of this year, classified the proposed changes as one of a number of "important actions" that would move Hendrix closer to being a "national leader" in "engaged liberal arts and sciences education." But there are at least four problems with the administration's line:

1) The stated purpose of the college (see Hendrix Charter, Article 1, Section 3) is to "carry out the plans, past and future, of the Conferences of the United Methodist Church in Arkansas for the development of Christian education through [the college]." The statement of purpose in the Charter doesn't say anything about the UMC in other states or annual conferences, and thus it is somewhat confusing for the college to argue that the Arkansas Conference should acquiesce in its own diminishment on the Board of Trustees. And besides, the administration simply isn't offering anything (yet) about how this will strengthen the relationship between the college and the church in Arkansas. It will be curious to see if that changes.

2) The college's reasoning will most likely rely on a very optimistic view about how the five freed-up Trustees positions will be filled in the coming years. That is, it will assume that the college will continue to seek Trustees with strong United Methodist connections who care a lot about the church-college relationship. Anyone familiar with how and why people get chosen to serve on such boards knows this is unlikely when competing against other needs (deep pockets, influence, political connections, etc.). This is not to say that it's wrong to ask wealthy and powerful people to serve on the Board. And it's not to say that such people can't have strong UM connections. But it is to say that preachers fall pretty far down the list of attractive candidates for such a Board. And it is also to say that church commitments tend to lose out to other priorities by those whose first commitment is not to the church. The clergy who are selected are selected because they, as people who are by definition committed to the church, have been constitutionally included in the makeup of the Board in the college's charter. Laity who happen to be UM and are selected may or may not put the interests of the church first, but the fact of their church membership will never be the sole reason they are chosen for Board membership.

3) There has been the suggestion by some people that at least some of the five freed-up positions will be filled by nationally prominent clergy. Now, I grant that one or two megachurch or big steeple pastors may be asked to serve in the early years. But the likelihood that the College is still going to voluntarily seek out preachers for its Board of Trustees 10 or 20 years down the road - after the debate around the charter changes has been forgotten - is (in my opinion) slim.

4) A key administration argument is that the proposed changes will allow the college to reach out to committed Methodists (clergy or lay) in other parts of the country. This ignores one huge question: If the college cares that much about including prominent Methodists on its board, why doesn't it just ask some of them to serve? There is no change to the charter needed for this. With a 42-member Board, it can ask all the Methodist clergy and laity from around the country that it wants! And herein lies the key to seeing through the flawed reasoning around Hendrix's proposal. Ask yourself this question: If the Hendrix administration truly wants to strengthen its ties to the church, why does it feel like it has to make permanent changes to the college charter that actually diminish the number of clergy on the Board of Trustees? I continued to miss the logic in that line of reasoning.

Ironically enough, I learned about the proposed change by accident through a chance conversation in April. This is the type of thing that the administration would probably like to have flown under the radar, so it could be presented at Annual Conference and approved without a lot of debate. But as an alumnus of the college, Hendrix is my alma mater - my nurturing mother. And like all alumni, I have a responsibility to look out for her well-being. So I've penned an op-ed piece in the Arkansas United Methodist newspaper that highlights the proposed changes. Here it is, in three PDF files because it was spread out over three different sections of the paper:

Hendrix College and the UMC, page 1

Hendrix College and the UMC, page 2

Hendrix College and the UMC, page 3

The catch is that the Annual Conference has to approve any changes to the Hendrix Charter. If the Conference says no, the charter stays as it is. I actually want to improve the relationship between Hendrix and the Arkansas Conference, so my article offers some suggestions. I welcome any conversation here on this blog.