My vision for church reform

Okay, so this is a pretty long post. But if you were interested in what I wrote last week, you might be interested in this too.

My last blog post looked at the viability of the United Methodist Church's future as a denomination. That future is by no means certain. With declining numbers in the American church, an anemic sense of evangelism and mission, a lack of commitment to Wesleyan doctrine, and a movement afoot to split the church into regions based on national and regional boundaries, the church is at a crossroads. In addition to that, the stiflingly bureaucratic forms of church government we have adopted are seriously inhibiting our attempts to carry out our primary mission, which is to proclaim and practice the gospel so that we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

There were several questions directed to me in the comments section of that last blog post, so let me address them first:

1. One respondent asked why we would spend time and energy trying to repair a broken institution when we could be spending that time making disciples one-on-one. That is a great question, and it points to the driving issue I was trying to get at in my recent article in Faith & Leadership. Jesus has called us into his church. That means that the church is, first and foremost, the community of Jesus' disciples. But over time, the community gains an inescapably "institution aspect" to it. And that ain't a bad thing. Because we believe that the church witnesses to the gospel throughout history, we believe there is a continuity to the Christian community from the time of the apostles to the present. That continuity is evident in the church's historic doctrine, the church's ministry (including the ministry of both clergy and laity), and the church's mission. If you don't accept the church-as-institution, you very quickly begin to suffer from a form of historical amnesia that ungrounds you from the Christian tradition. That's bad for basic Christian theology and can lead to a shallow biblicism. It is also a peculiar temptation for Americans, who tend to see everything in "newer is better" terms and want to discard anything that appears not to work well.

2. Another respondent asked how viable I think the UMC is over the long term, and to what degree I am committed to stay in it. The first part of this question is, in a sense, THE question for Methodists. Clearly, the growth of the church in Africa and the Philippines (and in parts of Europe) shows that the Holy Spirit is working through our church. But the church in the U.S. is a different issue, where we seem to be tearing ourselves apart over differences in moral doctrine and seem to have lost the will to evangelize in a robust way. I can't answer the viability question with any certainty, although I'll make some suggestions later in this post. As far as the issue of my own commitment is concerned, I was baptized, confirmed, and ordained in the UMC. I took vows that commit me to a ministry of Word, Sacrament, Order, and Service in its midst. I believe our church has the resources within its tradition to be a powerful witness for Jesus Christ in the world. So I ain't going anywhere.

3. Yet another respondent asked about my views on the proposed constitutional amendments that would initiate a process of structural reform in the UMC as a whole. If you aren't aware of these proposed amendments, you need to read up on them. As a starter, see this post from Wesley Report. This is a complicated issue, and I am working on an essay that addresses it right now. I'll let you know when I'm finished. Until then, I would only say that I think the restructuring is a very bad idea. The issue most often raised to support it is that the General Conference is too "Americentric" (meaning too focused on the concerns of the U.S. church). But all that is needed to remedy that is discipline and patience. The discipline would come in the form of limiting the number of General Conference petitions submitted that focus on peculiarly American concerns and structuring the agenda more equitably. And the patience would come in simply waiting a few years as the size of the church outside the U.S. grows. Since delegations to the General Conference are proportionally-based, the dominance of the U.S. delegation will eventually even out. And that will happen sooner than you think. Restructuring of the church is overkill. And it would open the door to the separation of the church into national or regional constituencies, thus reinforcing the nationalism that has led to innumerable problems over the past few hundred years.

4. Finally, a question was asked about how to go about extricating ourselves from a bureaucratic approach to ministry and recommitting ourselves to the missional task of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That's what I want to take up in the remainder of this post, so consider what follows my humble attempt at addressing this most crucial issue.

First, there are quick changes we could make to the way we go about some our vital tasks that would make a huge difference. I'll mention two. One is to reshape the agenda of our annual conference sessions so that they are almost entirely centered on worship and equipping. Have all your awards and recognitions done at the bishop's office in the weeks leading up to conference. Film them and put them on a DVD, which you then distribute to the conference delegates. Also make the commitment not to spend time debating and voting on resolutions, which are among the most counterproductive activities that an annual conference does (with an exception made for the year before General Conference, of course, when the annual conferences have the ability to submit petitions). Then take all the new time you've got to worship (perhaps getting a 2 or 3 sermon series from your bishop casting a vision for the conference's ministry) and equip clergy and laity for ministry (through substantive workshops on doctrine, mission, evangelism, etc.). This may sound simplistic, but don't underestimate the potential that annual conference culture change represents. Remember that there was actually a time when Methodists looked forward to annual conference as a time when the Holy Spirit renewed the church.

And as another easy change we can reclaim the ordination process as a personal experience rather than a bureaucratic nightmare. This can start immediately by a new attitude from clergy mentors, who often see themselves as cogs in the wheel rather than real contributors to spiritual formation. If mentors will commit to get involved in the lives of their candidates and stay involved, it can have an immediate humanizing effect on the process. (I'm not blowing hot air here. I have done that with a candidate of my own, and I think it made a difference.) Beyond that, annual conferences can do whatever possible (given the Book of Discipline regulations) to further humanize the ordination process by de-emphasizing the bureaucratic elements of it and accenting the human contact. Getting the candidates and the probationary clergy together with the Board of Ordained Ministry registrar (apart from the annual retreat) to go over processes and troubleshoot questions in a supportive setting would be a start. All of these things take time commitments from the clergy involved, but all of them are do-able without official action by a governing body. Again, it may sound simplistic, but don't underestimate the difference young clergy can make when they are optimistic rather than cynical about the church and their place in it.

Second, we need to think carefully about what we want our annual conference ministry staffs and our general boards and agencies to do for us. And I want to be careful here, because I think the folks who make up these staffs are committed disciples who pour out their hearts for the church. But in general, I think the more we can reduce the size of the church bureaucracy, the better off we'l be. Take the issue of top-down programming, for instance. Because these staffs are expected to generate programming, and local church pastors and laity are expected to attend, it gives us the erroneous notion that "connectionalism" consists primarily of us all doing our duty by attending programmatic events that are often ineffective or inapplicable to our settings in ministry. Moreoever, the programming I have been most impressed with has never come from 'on high,' but has rather been the vision of a pastor or a church who have shared it with the rest of us. If the time and energy spent on conference and general church-level staffs doing programming was handed over to congregations, then it just might happen that congregations in geographical proximity to one another would reach out and join together in true connectionalism for common ministry and mission. But so long as your attention is focused on the next mandatory thing coming down the pike from your district superintendent or bishop, or from the conference ministry staff, then you will never think to look laterally for how you can cooperate with sister congregations near you.

I also believe we need to seriously re-think the role of general boards and agencies in setting the agenda at General Conference. I don't know this for a fact (and I would appreciate someone who does enlightening me), but my understanding is that the proportion of General Conference legislation that originates with general board and agency staffs is quite large [UPDATE: In the comments section of this post, Steve Manskar from the General Board of Discipleship offers some corrective comments on this point. I thank him, and welcome anyone else shedding further light on the extent to which general church structures 'set the agenda' at the General Conference]. I don't mean this harshly, but that amounts to the entire church's agenda being driven by bureaucrats who may not even be in touch with what is going on in the church 'on the ground.' And the result is that the church becomes committed through the legislation that passes to certain courses of action, which require lots of money and which are (not surprisingly) often carried out by the same general boards and agencies that originated the legislation in the first place. It is also no wonder that church bureaucrats would tend toward the belief that the church's problems could be legislated away. That's the mindset of someone who works in a bureaucracy, whereas I would argue that the church's problems are best solved through the Holy Spirit's work in local congregations. Like annual conference sessions, the General Conference could actually be something that people look forward to with something other than fear and dread. But change has to start somewhere.

Third, I believe reform has to entail a re-commitment to Wesleyan doctrine. Look, if we do not believe that our Wesleyan heritage offers something unique to the church catholic, then it becomes very difficult to make an argument that we should exist as a separate church at all. I wrote my current UM Reporter column about the importance of grounding ourselves in our doctrine. The trouble in the church now is two-fold. First, those who do invoke Wesley or Wesleyan teaching often betray a lack of serious reading in Wesley (and you can see this particularly in the way terms like 'catholic spirit' and 'social holiness' and 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' are misused). And second, many don't even bother with our particular doctrine and instead work from a combination of shallow pop theology and the therapeutic junk - which is easier but does nothing to form mature discipleship. Our congregations are starving for solid doctrinal content that could open up their lives to the reality of God's revolutionary work in the world, and we make them settle for hearing about how to be a nice person. It doesn't have to be this way. But it's going to require us to read seriously out of the tradition and stop trying to turn Wesleyan discipleship into a lukewarm mushy bowl of 'open hearts, open minds, open doors' oatmeal.

So that's it. A few practical changes. And a few changes in the way we approach ministry. It's not the total solution. But it would make a difference.