Moments after PlanUMC passed on the floor of General Conference 2012, Rev. Wm. Scott Campbell was recognized and called for a declaratory decision by the Judicial Council on its constitutionality.  The motion passed easily. A few days later, the Judicial Council issued Decision 1210 which voided the PlanUMC as unconstitutional. Boom!

As expected, after General Conference, lots of accusations of judicial activism and overreach of the ecclesial courts’ voiding of the restructure plan were bounced around. The main essay I’ve seen was the previous post by Lonnie Brooks, one of the architects of PlanB and PlanUMC.

The following is a counterpoint to the essay by Brooks, written by the same Rev. Wm. Scott Campbell (New England Elder, Pastor of Harvard-Epworth UMC in Cambridge, MA). He wrote it in response to HackingChristianity’s request, and we have Rev. Campbell’s permission to repost it below.

Though this exchange may be mostly interesting only to United Methodist polity nerds (you know who you are), it provides insight into the fundamental differences over the governance models that reflect Methodist doctrine…and the ones that do not.

Read and enjoy!

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A Response to
POLITY PERSPECTIVE…by Lonnie D. Brooks

by Rev. Wm. Scott Campbell

I appreciate the careful and thoughtful response to JC 1210 by Lonnie Brooks.  As one of the architects of both Plan B and Plan UMC, I know that he had a great deal of personal investment in each of these plans, and the fact that his response is so measured is a testimony to his love for the United Methodist Church and its polity.  I do, however, differ with his take on the decision at several key junctures.

The Process

Before I discuss the specifics of the decision, though, I would like to offer a few general observations about the process of creating the restructuring proposals that were put before the church.  Because the initial IOT (Call to Action) plan was developed the way it was, the entire church was put under enormous strain.  The legislation for the IOT plan was sprung on the church with less than a month to go before the General Conference deadline for submitting legislation.  This came after the plan was, according to some, railroaded through the Connectional Table in a July meeting.  MFSA attempted to hastily assemble a legislative response and, later, the Plan B folks offered an alternative of their own.  The last minute nature of the IOT plan, however, precluded what is absolutely necessary for any restructuring plan to be successful in the current environment—a broad-based collaboration and buy-in from many diverse constituencies.  All of the plans, including the MFSA plan, were developed by relatively small groups of people working under incredible time pressures.  Nowhere was this more apparent than in the shaping of Plan UMC.  The fact that none of the plans was ever submitted to the Judicial Council for constitutional review illustrates my point.

Second, the insistence of the developers of all of the plans (with the exception of the MFSA plan) on proportional representation in the composition of the governing structures creates trust issues.  It shifts the issue from what is best for the church to who will call the shots.  It is further interesting to me that proportional representation is always discussed in terms of membership and never in terms of per capita giving to the general church—where the Southeastern Jurisdiction ranks last in the US, trailing the Western Jurisdiction by some 33%.  This focus reinforces that idea that the primary issue is control rather than coordination.

Finally, Lonnie is technically correct when he asserts that Plan UMC incorporated MFSA’s concern that the General Commission on Religion and Race (GCORR) and The General Commission on the Status and Role of Women (COSROW) report directly to the General Conference.  What he does not say is that MFSA wanted these bodies to continue to have their independent status.  While MFSA would not have opposed the combining of their functions into a common commission, MFSA believed it was critical for both bodies to maintain their autonomy.  Their incorporation within the General Council for Strategy and Oversight (GCSO) was never a part of MFSA’s vision.

The Decision

It seems to me that Lonnie is unclear about two fundamental problems with Plan UMC.  Let me address them one at a time.

First, he has not accurately stated the nature of the oversight that Plan UMC intended for the GCSO.  When he states that the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) has already been delegated the power to withhold funds from boards and agencies, he neglects to tell us under what conditions such withholding can occur.  His statement that … this is simply a restatement of authority already in place with the General Council on Finance and Administration is misleading at best.  GCFA can only withhold funding when an agency violates policies clearly articulated by the General Conference relating to discriminatory practices, financial impropriety, or specific policies and procedures adopted by the General Conference (e.g. expending funds that could be construed to be promoting the acceptance of homosexuality.)  The only other circumstance in which GCFA can withhold funding is if it determines that a particular initiative duplicates something already being done by another body in the church.

Yes, the General Conference does delegate the authority to GCFA to monitor compliance of the Boards and Agencies with particular policies and procedures clearly articulated by the General Conference.  It does not give GCFA the authority to make subjective judgments about the effectiveness of the agencies and to withhold funding on the basis of such opinions.  That is precisely the power that the GCSO would have under plan UMC.  This is a whole new level of authority that no body in the church has ever had before, save the General Conference.  It is this kind of control that the Judicial Council removed from the General Council on Ministries in Decision 364 in 1973.  Their ruling in the current situation is consistent with precedent.

Second, Lonnie’s insistence that “facilitate and coordinate” is synonymous with “oversight” strains credulity.  In fact, if either the Plan UMC designers or the Plan B authors had been willing to understand the role of the GCSO in terms of facilitating and coordinating, there would not have been a problem.  Instead, under Plan UMC, this body would have the right to hire and fire General Secretaries of agencies; it would be authorized to evaluate the work of the boards and agencies and to withhold funding based upon the results of their evaluation; and it would have the authority to assign duties to other bodies, in particular the General Secretaries Committee (see line 582).  This latter function is in direct contradiction to Lonnie’s insistence that No such authority was provided in Plan UMC to the GCSO.  The issue for the Judicial Council was not that the GCSO would facilitate and coordinate the work of the agencies.  It is already clear that the Connectional Table (CT) is authorized to do that, and there has been no constitutional issue with the CT.  The problem identified by the Judicial Council, correctly in my opinion, was that oversight in Plan UMC was a far more invasive concept than the plain use of the words “facilitate and coordinate” would convey.

A Final Thought

There are many lessons to be learned by what has transpired over the last eight months in relation to restructuring the church.  Perhaps none is more important than the need for any plan to be carefully developed by a broad constituency of diverse voices over a reasonable period of time.  Further, for any plan to be successful, it is going to have to be crystal clear to the church at large that the issue is coordination of ministry and not the consolidation of power.  One way to do that is to begin the conversation by asking what voices we need at the table, not by insisting on the right of certain constituencies to be over-represented.  We have four years to do this right.  Let’s learn from our mistakes and move forward together.

Scott Campbell
May 16, 2012

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Thoughts?

Thanks to Scott Campbell for allowing us to post this article!

Short background: PlanUMC passed on the floor of General Conference 2012. It was immediatly referred to the Judicial Council (the court for the UMC). A few days later, the Judicial Council issued Decision 1210 which voided the PlanUMC as unconstitutional. Boom!

Ever since then, there’s been some accusations that the Judicial Council was wrong in their decision. August among the responses is an essay by Lonnie Brooks, one of the architects of PlanUMC (and PlanB as well). I saw this essay posted on Rev. Andy Langford’s blog in response to commenters questioning Langford’s criticism of the Judicial Council decision.

I cannot find this article in full anywhere online to link to it, so I’m posting it whole-hog below (If this is a problem, contact me and I’ll remove it). 

Immediately following this post will be a post by Scott Campbell that provides a counterpoint to Brooks’ essay.

Though this exchange may be mostly interesting only to United Methodist polity nerds (you know who you are), it provides insight into the fundamental differences over the governance models that reflect Methodist doctrine…and the ones that do not.

Enjoy the discussion!

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POLITY PERSPECTIVE ON
JUDICIAL COUNCIL DECISION 1210

By Lonnie D. Brooks

I don’t need to recount for you in detail the torturous process by which at General Conference 2012 we arrived at its closing hours struggling to understand the impact of Judicial Council Decision 1210 which struck down the plan for the restructuring of the general agencies of The United Methodist Church. By now that has resounded throughout the Church, at least among those who care about the Church as it exists connectionally.

But briefly to summarize, after the General Administration Legislative Committee had failed to decide on any plan for restructure, advocates of two competing plans—the plan proposed by the Connectional Table upon the recommendation of the Interim Operations Team and the alternative plan called Plan B—worked together for two days to craft a compromise plan using elements from each of the plans, also including elements from the plan put forward by the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Two important elements of the MFSA plan that were included based upon conversations earlier conducted between representatives of MFSA and Plan B were inclusion of representatives of the five recognized racial and ethnic caucuses in membership on the Council for Strategy and Oversight and independent reporting to General Conference for the monitoring function of the Committee on Inclusiveness.

That compromise plan became known as Plan UMC, it was presented to General Conference, and, with one amendment increasing significantly Central Conference representation on the remaining general agencies, on Wednesday morning, 02May12, it was adopted by General Conference by an overwhelming vote of 567 to 384, a 60% majority, which in the United States Senate would be strong enough support to break a filibuster. (Daily Christian Advocate, page 2639, last line on page.)

On Friday, 04May12, the Judicial Council announced its decision that “Plan UMC is unconstitutional,” further saying that it is “constitutionally unsalvageable.” (JCD 1210) By that latter finding, the Judicial Council meant that it could not declare parts of the legislation unconstitutional and other parts in compliance with the Constitution, but simply was striking down the entire package. That was an astounding act of the Judicial Council, without precedent for so wide ranging a piece of legislation. One must go all the way back to October, 1972, to find anything similar when in JCD 364 the Judicial Council struck down a portion of the legislation creating the General Council on Ministries. An important difference between the two cases is that in 1972, the act creating the GCOM was left to stand, and only the portion of its powers decided by the Judicial Council to be legislative in nature was struck down. And in that case, there was a strong dissenting opinion by two of the members who claimed the delegated powers were not legislative since all actions of the GCOM had to be consistent with decisions and decrees of the General Conference. Moreover, the Judicial Council had refused to decide the case in the heat of the action of General Conference, but postponed its decision until the fall session so it could study the issues involved, listening to the arguments on all sides of the matter.

There were two constitutional principles that the Judicial Council says were violated by Plan UMC, and they each deserve scrutiny. First, JCD 1210 says that General Conference “legislative functions may not be delegated” The functions at issue are, “the creation and establishment of general Church boards and agencies, the fixing of their structure, the determination of their functions, duties and responsibilities, and the establishing of Church priorities” which “are legislative functions reserved to the General Conference alone.”

The second constitutional principle that the Judicial Council says was violated by Plan UMC was that “the Constitution authorizes the Council of Bishops to bear the responsibility for general oversight.” It went further to say the following:

The constitutional authority of the Council of Bishops cannot be compromised or modified by legislative enactments. As ¶ 47 (Article III) of the Constitution provides: The council shall meet at least once a year and plan for the general oversight and promotion of the temporal and spiritual interests of the entire Church and for carrying into effect the rules, regulations, and responsibilities prescribed and enjoined by the General Conference…

By far, the more important principle, in my judgment, is the latter one concerning the oversight authority of the bishops, as seen against the back drop of Methodist history and our own Constitution and current polity. So, I’ll save my analysis of that until later in this essay.

Delegation of Legislative Authority

That is not to say that the first principle of the delegation of legislative authority is unimportant. It is simply that the Judicial Council has misunderstood in total what Plan UMC does and does not do. I find it hard to believe, in fact, that the Council was even reading its own writing, because Plan UMC did not give to the General Council for Strategy and Oversight (GCSO) any of the authority that the Council says was in violation of the Constitution.

Look at the first example from the legislation that the Council has cited:

The General Council for Strategy and Oversight oversight responsibility shall include the authority for consolidation of administrative services to the extent practicable for all general church activities into the appropriate agency on a fee for service basis as it affects agencies receiving general church funds. (Amendment of ¶ 901.4, DCA p. 2552)

That provision is on Lines 446 to 449 of the DCA citation. This calls for the consolidation of administrative services, not of program responsibilities. And in the digest of the decision, the Council has acknowledged that General Conference does have authority to delegate its administrative power, where it says:

The Constitution limits the General Conference in the authority it may delegate to the boards and agencies it creates. This authority is limited to the work of promotion and administration.

The second instance the Council cites to support its claim that General Conference has attempted to delegate its legislative authority is equally mysterious, and its conclusion simply does not follow from the citation. Here is what the Council said:

…the General Council on Strategy and Oversight:… may direct the General Council on Finance and Administration to withhold funding for any programs and activities until the GCSO determines that the responsible general agency has achieved, or identified means satisfactorily to achieve, the established outcomes. [This is a quotation from Lines 507 to 510 of Plan UMC as it was printed in the DCA of Tuesday, May 1, 2012.]

This provision unconstitutionally delegates the authority of the General Conference for “distributing funds necessary to carry on the work of the Church” to the General Council on Strategy and Oversight, contrary to ¶ 16.9.

First and foremost, there is no delegation of authority to the GCSO to distribute or redistribute funds budgeted by General Conference. There is a delegation of authority to withhold funds until a recalcitrant agency has complied with requirements established by General Conference and policies set by the agency’s own board of directors in compliance with the mandates established for it by General Conference. Moreover, this is simply a restatement of authority already in place with the General Council on Finance and Administration. In multiple places in the Book of Discipline GCFA is already provided with authority to withhold funds when an agency does not comply with policy: ¶¶806.12.c)(2), 807.13.b), 811.1, 811.2 are four examples where this authority has already been delegated by General Conference. Authority to withhold funds is not authority to redirect funds. Withheld funds will revert to the general fund if the agency never comes into compliance, and such funds would be available for budgeting by a future General Conference, but not by the GCSO or by GCFA.

And finally, on the topic of delegation of legislative authority, the Council said that General Conference may not delegate its authority over boards and agencies for, “the fixing of their structure, the determination of their functions, duties and responsibilities, and the establishing of Church priorities.” Yet the Council has not provided one single example of where such a delegation has occurred. The very good reason for that is that there is none. No such authority was provided in Plan UMC to the GCSO. All the mandates for all the surviving agencies in Plan UMC are left in place in the Book of Discipline. All the priorities are established by General Conference, and each agency’s board of directors works within those priorities to direct the work of each agency.

Oversight Responsibility of the Council of Bishops

The far more important principle that the Judicial Council says is violated by Plan UMC is the principle of oversight. The Council said, “In ¶ 47, the Constitution authorizes the Council of Bishops to bear the responsibility for general oversight.” It quoted from ¶47, which says, “The council shall meet at least once a year and plan for the general oversight and promotion of the temporal and spiritual interests of the entire Church and for carrying into effect the rules, regulations, and responsibilities prescribed and enjoined by the General Conference…”

That does not address the question of whether or not authority for “general oversight,” which is given to the Council of Bishops, excludes the possibility that General Conference may give authority to another body of the Church for specific instances of oversight over particular ministries. It certainly does not preclude the possibility that oversight in particular instances is a shared responsibility. Nor does it preclude the agency boards from administrative oversight of the mandates of General Conference assigned to each agency.

It is extremely important to take note of the fact that the authority for oversight that is given to the Council of Bishops is not unmodified, which means it is not unlimited. The authority is for general oversight. This is parallel to the power given to the federal government in the United States Constitution to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Authority to provide for the general welfare of the United States has never been interpreted to mean that state and local governments are prohibited from establishing structures intended to deliver services for the welfare of their people. Thus the State of Alaska has its Department of Environmental Conservation, its Department of Natural Resources, its Department of Health and Social Services, and so on through a whole gamut of departments, each intended to provide for specific instances of the welfare of the people of Alaska, none of which powers encroach on the authority of the Congress of the United States to provide for the general welfare.

There is such overlap explicitly within the United Methodist Constitution itself. ¶47, already cited, says, “The council shall meet at least once a year and plan for the general oversight and promotion of the temporal and spiritual interests of the entire Church…” where I have added emphasis to the word “promotion.” Please also look at ¶16.8, which gives authority to General Conference to establish boards and agencies: “To initiate and to direct all connectional enterprises of the Church and to provide boards for their promotion and administration.” The same word, “promotion,” is used in that provision for the power of the agencies as was provided to the bishops. The promotion of the interests of the Church is now, and always has been, a shared responsibility that is not exclusive to the Council of Bishops.

In fact, the connectional structure of the Church is replete with examples of where General Conference has done precisely that and established structures for sharing that responsibility. The General Board of Church and Society has been empowered with overseeing the work of other agencies in pursuing their legislative agenda. ¶1004 says, “The Board shall facilitate and coordinate the legislative advocacy activities in the United States Congress of other general agencies of The United Methodist Church that receive General Church funds.” Please note that the phrase “facilitate and coordinate” is synonymous with “oversight” in this instance. In defining the work of the General Board of Discipleship ¶1109.1 says the following:

¶ 1109. Christian Education—1. The board shall have general oversight of the educational interests of the Church as directed by the General Conference. The board shall be responsible for the development of a clear statement of the biblical and theological foundations of Christian education, consistent with the doctrines of The United Methodist Church and the mission of the board. The board shall devote itself to strengthening and extending the teaching ministry of the Church through research; testing new approaches, methods, and resources; evaluation; and consultation. [Emphasis Added]

In ¶1204, the Division on Ministries with Young People has authority “to determine and interpret program directions that support its mandate.”

In ¶1303.3 the General Board of Global Ministries is given the following authority:

The board shall facilitate and coordinate the program relationships of other program agencies of The United Methodist Church with churches and agencies in nations other than the United States.

In ¶1405.10 the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry is given the following authority:

To recruit, endorse, and provide general oversight of United Methodist ordained ministers, including persons who speak languages in addition to English, who desire to serve as chaplains in specialized institutional ministry settings in both private and governmental sectors. [Emphasis Added]

This list is not exhaustive, but representative of the shared nature of oversight authority in our Church. It was not intended that the general oversight authority provided in the Constitution to the bishops be considered to be exclusive of any oversight responsibility that might be assigned by General Conference to other bodies of the Church for particular ministries or the administration of General Conference.

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Thoughts? See the counterpoint by Scott Campbell and respond either here or there.

I finally got around to watching the Season Two finale of The Walking Dead, a post-apocalyptic series on AMC that deals with a world where Zombies have taken over and humans run, hide, and fortify to survive. It’s bloody and violent but has really interesting ethical twists…kinda like a much grosser LOST for me.

Anyway, given it has been two months, I figure anyone that would see it has seen it, but just in case, this is a spoiler alert. Okay? Okay. Let’s go.

continue reading..

One of the new initiatives that I’m involved with is DreamUMC, a social media-fueled conversation among young and young-ish adults about the future of the United Methodist Church. It’s a response to the exclusion of young adult voices from the Call To Action process during the past two years and a commitment to include Young People from the get-go on a grassroots initiative not ran by anyone on any committee or board.

There’s a tweet-up on May 14th with young and youngish people to share their reflections and revelations after General Conference. We hope to share many stories via twitter tag #dreamumc and the conversations will be super-easy to follow.

Here’s how to join and follow the conversation. Two suggested methods: Basic and Pro

Basic – Tweetchat

• If you haven’t already, create a twitter account at www.twitter.com. Pick a username (may take a few tries to get a unique one) and enter your email address and you are done.
• Go to www.tweetchat.com and click “Sign In.” It will ask you to “authorize” Tweetchat to access your account, click Authorize (it can’t see your password and is an approved service).
• Enter in #dreamumc into the “hashtag to follow” field at the top of the screen and hit GO
• You are IN! Now you will see streaming in all the updates with the hashtag on them. Also, whenever you post something in the box, the hashtag will automatically be added. Play around with it but you will be able to follow the conversation.
• Now, just login to tweetchat at 9pm EST on May 14th to join the conversation!

Pro – Tweetdeck

• If you haven’t already, Create a twitter account at www.twitter.com. Pick a username (may take a few tries to get a unique one) and enter your email address and you are done.
• Go to www.tweetdeck.com and install the desktop client (Mac or PC) or the Chrome app (I’m using the Chrome app and it is boss)
• Register with tweetdeck.com, then launch the program. It will ask you to “authorize” Tweetdeck to access your account, click Authorize (it can see your password but it is an official Twitter service…they have your password anyway).
• You should see the three columns. Sweet, right? Click “Add Column” at the top. Click on “Search” and enter in #dreamumc into the search field at the top of the screen and hit enter.
• You are IN! Now you will see streaming in all the updates with the hashtag on them. Unlike Tweetchat, whenever you post something using the blue feather button, the hashtag will not automatically be added…you will have to add it yourself. Play around with it but you will be able to follow the conversation.
• Now, just start up Tweetdeck at 9pm EST on May 14th to join the conversation!

If you have any questions, feel free to follow me on Twitter or follow the official DreamUMC account and I’ll try to help you out.

See you then!

A recap for those of us just tuning in: The General Conference of the United Methodist Church is in session and considering a major restructure plan. No, not that one. And no, not that one. Another one.

How We Got Here

On Saturday night, the Committee tasked with this Restructure voted down the measure that had been debated and agreed upon after 3 days of work (due mainly to sabotage by the IOT/PlanB folks who wanted to take their balls and go home). They then voted down the pure unedited forms of PlanB, MFSA, and the IOT plans. Everything. Nothing left the committee as a recommended path.

So on Sunday, members of the IOT and the PlanB people got together in a marathon meeting starting at 4pm and still without a compromise measure by 9pm. The groups’ participants included Don Underwood (who supported the CT plan) and Christine Dodson (who supported the PlanB plan) and Central Conference delegates and…oh yeah, no one from MFSA even though they could have easily been invited. Sam Hodges’ article at UMReporter says “while no MFSA representative participated, there were negotiators who had backed the MFSA plan.” In other words, they wrote the ‘compromise’ measure including 3/4 of the active groups (only one of which wrote actual legislation in the ADCA) and they excluded the young adults who were the majority of MFSA representatives. So calling it a compromise is a bit loose.

On Monday, apparently a plan had been brokered and was given to the General Conference for printing in the daily publication of legislation. Then no copies were distributed. No delegates or press or bishops or anyone was able to have an additional 12 hours to read. This conference is full of back-room deals and exclusion of the young adults and central conferences from the adults table. It is just ridiculous.

But let’s stop grousing about the past (though we will return to this) and look at the plan ahead of us.

The Plan

Above the text is the plan for the governing body of the UMC (mobile users click here), called the General Council for Strategy and Oversight.

Some thoughts on the Executive Board:

• It is a 45 member executive board with a focus on vital congregations (meaning that their primary mission would be to ensure that all activities benefit the local church). That is the expressed acrostic for how the local churches are doing. I wonder how UMCOR would fare under that consideration, given their disaster-response focus…
• There will be seven seats for the Central Conferences, far less (numerically and proportionally) than the MFSA plan or the amended PlanB plan which was hashed out in committee.
• There is only one bishop but the potential for eight bishops (as the Central Conference reps could all be bishops, under this plan…and the Council of Bishops could also appoint a CC bishop).
• The “influence” of MFSA is seen in the inclusion of the five ethnic caucuses all having a seat and vote at the table. Yea team!
• Six votes for the SEJ is an inbalance of power and proportionality unseen yet in the United Methodist Church. I know the SEJ is always annoyed that they have to “give up a delegate or two” to the lowly mission fields, but seriously. This reflects Whittemore’s statement in the General Administration subcommittee that “competence should be represented” but negates the need for the mission fields of United Methodism to have any voice of consequence at the tale.

Process or Product?

There’s a lot I like above. It reduces board size while keeping us from too much centralization. It merges GCORR and COSROW (which I’m told is what GCORR wants to happen EDIT: bad info sorry, that is not true). It raises Central Conference voice (in everything but fiscal matters) in many ways. It includes the ethnic caucuses with voice and vote.

The thing is, even if I 100% liked the product, I am appalled at the process it went through. The original Call To Action process was flawed, with questionable voting and discussion of voting from the start. At General Conference, the IOT members checked out of the perfecting of the church proposal so they could swoop in and try to get their original amended proposal done. The PlanB folks checked out when they were being outvoted by MFSA and Central Conference delegates. And when this whole shebang was put together, the young adults were completely excluded from the conversation. As I’ve said before, this process shows that we want to be in ministry TO young people, not WITH. Finally, the utter lack of Central Conference voices or participation in analysis of the issue is deafening and disheartening

I refuse to give consent to a product that had a flawed process. Like any local church, the process of determining decisions is just as important as the product. The Global church should be the same way. The “ends justify the means” mentality has never worked for me, and indeed I criticize my own issue-advocacy friends for that tendency as well.

I hate to say it (because I supported a plan that was rejected and now I risk sounding petulant), but I’m now firmly on the side of “no reform this year.” The process was too flawed, the people too pigheaded, and the politics too whitewashing for this plan to be acceptable to the conduct and polity of the United Methodist Church. We have scared the General Agencies who are inefficient that they have a ticking clock to clean house or get taken out. We have an emerging young adult voice who have gotten involved and will not be disenfranchised. We have a renewed energy for the church to be better, and the tools to do it right next tme. And even Lovett Weems says we can wait for years before we are really in trouble…is it worth risking the 2 cents of every dollar that goes in the church offering plates to do the process right?

I’ve always been a champion of an equitable plan to reorganize the UMC. I believed in that plan and I believed that the structure needed to be changed. But not like this. Not in this way. And even if my plan had won out to be considered in its entirety, if done in this process…I would be voting against it. And you can ask my friends and congregation if they believe I would be consistent like that. I am just not in that place after seeing the Sausage Factory in its rawest form (and this is my third GC), and I doubt I’ll ever be the same.

Process > Product is a renewed mantra of this Elder in the United Methodist Church.

Final Recommendations

Who may choose to support PlanUMC:

• people in favor of random change. I’m serious, it may be okay to have a different model of governance and representation just to see what happens.
• people who appreciate processes that exclude young adults from the bargaining table and hold back information so that debate and analysis would be minimal.
• people who are honestly concerned about the fiscal state of the UMC and will do anything to lower the costs.
• and, honestly, people who so buy into the Call To Action’s insistence that the church will fall apart unless these things pass.
• And many others who honestly believe restructure is necessary and that this, though imperfect, is a good start. I have met many young adults who fall into this category, and I do not critique their decisions, though I find them myopic of the process.

Who may choose not to support PlanUMC

• people who are fearful of an executive board who can hire and fire program agency heads rather than their own evaluative boards.
• people who appreciate the independent boards without a central authority who controls the purse strings.
• people who appreciate the truly independent monitoring functions of GCORR/COSROW (though that is not all they do).
• Mostly, people who appreciate that the United Methodist Church is about the method not just the results, the process not just the product. Any process that excludes voices, ramrods reforms, and limits information and debate to actual General Conference delegates, no matter how great it is, is not a good product. And it should be voted down to send a message to the leadership: this is not the United Methodist way.

Your Action Items

• If you are a delegate, now is the time to get the 20 signatures to remove the specific board reorganizations that you were hoping for. Women’s Division, GBGM, everyone that wrote their own reorganizational plan…get it into discussion because change may not be likely this year..
• If you are not a delegate, get this blog post and tomorrow’s Neighbor News (the GC publication by the Common Witness Coalition) into the hands of delegates. It’s important work and regardless of their leanings, helpful reading. So far as I can tell, it’s the only chart available as well.

This is not the United Methodist Way, even if the product is agreeable to you. I hope Delegates will join me in expressing their UMC values of equity and fairness in process as well as product by voting down the PlanUMC.

Thoughts?

In the 2009 Movie “Pelham 123,” good guy Denzel Washington asks bad guy John Travolta how he is going to get away with hijacking a subway train. Here’s their edited-for-language exchange:

Denzel: You gotta understand that the circumstances they’re different now for you. You gotta rethink this, you… you gotta adapt.
John: No, I gave you instructions and you know the consequences.
Denzel: I mean don’t you have a plan B?
John: No, plan B is enforcing plan A… and the minute you stop believing me ****, that’s it!

While “Plan B” is usually referred to as the humorous or less-than-stellar backup to plan A, Travolta says that Plan B is merely to reinforce Plan A. And that’s just the way it is going to be.

This is relevant because a Plan B has entered the conversation with the United Methodist Church: a group of discontent Methodists, most of whom are on the highest executive committee in the UMC (the Connectional Table), have published an alternative to the Call To Action that we love so fondly here at HackingChristianity.net. And in many ways, like the movie, Plan B is only a more palatable version of Plan A’s goal: greater executive authority in the UMC.

Comparing Plan B with the MFSA Plan

Let’s compare the two plans before us that are alternatives to the Call To Action (most specifically the IOT legislation).

The Plan B and the MFSA plan (of which I’m a co-signatory of) have two different proposals of what should constitute the highest executive committee in the UMC. Please click on the chart below to make it more readable and then we have some analysis. Update: the thumbnail below didn’t update when I updated the chart. So you have to click it to get the accurate numbers. Silly thumbnails…

When you compare the two plans, there are many similarities but many points of contention.

1. Plan B has fewer members than the MFSA plan and, indeed, the current executive committee. It looks the same, but with 11 non-voting members, there’s much fewer votes at the table.
2. Plan B seeks to limit the “non-voting” membership to voice on only topics where they have direct affiliation. MFSA’s plan allows for non-voting representatives from each General Agency and from 10 of the ethnic and advocacy caucus groups (UMRF, Good News, Confessing, MFSA, and RMN) to have voice but no vote.
3. Plan B seems to obfuscate that there would actually be six bishops on the executive committee, as the Agency Heads would all be Bishops.
4. The MFSA plan calls for a rather-high number of 40% of the Jurisdictional reps to the Executive Committee to be racial ethnic. While this is higher than the actual percentages of the UMC, a commitment to this percentage is an avenue of growth within the USA as racial/ethnic communities are growing while Caucasian communities are shrinking–and the church needs to reflect this reality to remain relevant.

It is without irony that the Plan B people state that one of their guiding principles is to create a coordinating body “without a concentration of general church power.” Ha! When compared to the MFSA plan, those six bishops and smaller number of people certainly concentrates power in fewer people with greater power. In addition, with the lower mandates (of racial ethnic members, young adults, and gender), there would be fewer representatives of those classifications than the general population.

Numbers are great, but what are their purposes?

More than the numbers and the statistics, MFSA has a completely different understanding of what this executive body’s responsibilities and purposes should look like.

• MFSA envisions the CT as a coordinating body and thus renames it the Coordinating Council.
• MFSA seeks to give this body a clearer purpose than the current CT, “to serve as a forum for coordination of the mission, ministries and resources of The United Methodist Church.”
• The responsibilities of the CC flow from this purpose and include providing a forum for understanding and implementing the vision, ministries and mission of the global church; providing a forum for inter-agency conversation; enabling flow of information; reviewing and evaluating missional effectiveness of agencies, in collaboration with their governance boards; making proposals to General Conference; leading general church planning and research; and collaborating in the preparation and review of the general church budget.
• In short, the Coordinating Council is a forum for conversation and visioning, rather than a micro-managerial group of the entire church and the church budget.
• Plan B envisions the CT as a strong executive body (like the Call To Action proposal)
• Plan B gives the CT oversight responsibility for all program agencies.  MFSA reserves this kind of responsibility for the respective governance boards.
• Plan B gives the CT responsibility for evaluating program and operational audits of the agencies, with the power to withhold approval of programs or activities and the power to direct GCFA to withhold funding in relation to unnecessary duplication or failure to achieve established outcomes. MFSA reserves this kind of responsibility for the respective governance boards. 
• Plan B gives the CT authority for the annual evaluation of the strategic planning, goals, objectives and quantitative commitments made by general church agencies.  With this, the CT would be given the power to withhold funding if the CT determines that an agency has not achieved established outcomes. MFSA seems to assign the CC to have a role in creating the proposed quadrennial budget, and they would receive and approve agency budget reviews. But that does not translate to authority to withhold funding, reserving this for the respective governance boards.
• Plan B gives the CT a pot of funds, called the “Connectional Table Adaptive Challenge Fund,” to be distributed to the agencies in accord with the evaluation and review of their measurable outcomes and facilitation of initiatives to increase vital congregations. MFSA calls for utilization of both quantitative and qualitative standards of measurement rather than just ‘measurable outcomes’ which are, for the most part, quantitative: butts in the pews, dollars in the plates.

1. Both the MFSA plan and Plan B call for a “right-sizing” of the denomination. Currently, there are 641 members of the General Agency boards.
• The Call To Action reduces that number down to roughly 153 (60 members of the two executive boards, plus the anticipated board memberships of UMM and UMW, and the Publishing House)
• Plan B reduces that number to 280 (40 member Connectional Table plus proposed 25-30 member boards at all other agencies)
• The MFSA plan lowers it only to 397 (includes the 67 members of the Coordinating Council, plus 33-member boards at each of ten different agency/centers)
• In every case, there is a significant reduction of the number of board members, but both MFSA and Plan B have larger boards than the CTA. I think it is appropriate to shoot for the middle ground somewhere between MFSA and Plan B rather than turning over the power of 641 people to barely 25% of that number. Again, it seems like too much executive power to me. I’m reasonably confident that between the backers of the MFSA and the Plan B plans, it will shake out to be somewhere close to these two.
2. One of the biggest differences between the MFSA plan and Plan B (and the IOT legislation) is what to do with the General Commission on Religion and Race (GCORR) and the Commission on the Status and the Role of Women (COSROW).
• Both Plan B and IOT place these monitoring agencies under a General Agency, whereas MFSA keeps them separate. Their rationale is that in order to maintain the independence of their monitoring functions, they must report to an independent board rather than reporting to an agency of which they are also monitoring.We often choose impartial people to monitor the government and  the monitoring and accountability-encouraging functions in the UMC are no different.

When you wade through all the particulars, Plan B’s proposed setup:

• concentrates power
• subjects the process to politicization
• overwhelms a staff that does not have the capacity or internal insight for this level of evaluation
• exclusively prejudices quantitative measurements over qualitative, with no account for ministries that produce great value yet are challenging to quantify with numbers or require a long-term commitment in order to yield results.

In short, everything that HackingChristianity criticizes about the Call To Action (executive authority and quantitative evaluations, to name two) is also found pretty easily in Plan B. Boom!

Where do we go from here?

I think the only way to end this post is to repost the end of my most recent piece for Ministry Matters:

Given all this, the question remains: which executive body both looks most like the United Methodist Church that we recognize, and which body is closest to what we need right now?

The key thing for me is to decide if the “Methodist” way of doing things has value. Every faith organization has this identity and structure. For example, when our Catholic friends have crisis in their communities, they turn to the monks. When Cardinal Law presided over the Boston Child Abuse scandal and stepped aside, the RCC went to the Capuchin (a monastic order) Cardinal O’Malley. O’Malley sold the opulent mansion and cleaned house, as far as I can tell.  My worship professor at the time said that has been their process through the ages: when the priestly order falls short (I forget the proper term for Law’s vocational lineage), they turn to the monks whose order is more bottom-up than top-down.

That’s the Catholic way of handling crises. Criticize the results how you may want, but it’s the Catholic way. The Methodist way to handle crises is through representative democracy: elected executives, diversity of opinion, big-tent Methodism, social action in varied stratum of society, committees, boards, and mutual accountability. This has been the Methodist way ever since we lost our chief executive in John Wesley and we haven’t replaced him until, perhaps, now. It is through this unwieldy Methodist connectional system that we find both our bane of slow to respond and our strength of holding together diverse groups.

I’m a young clergyperson and my generation has not seen any segment of society become more centralized. For example, music distribution went from the Big Records to Napster to Gnutella to Limewire (becoming more decentralized at each step). I honestly cannot think of any other organization in the world that is movingtoward a “top-down” system rather than away from it . . . other than corporations and 20th century power bases. And yet this move towards centralization and negation of connectionalism is exactly the direction the UMC seems to be heading with the Call to Action movement.

To me, the Spirit is found in the back-and-forth, the struggle for consensus in groups, the diversity of belief and passion that larger more-representative groups bring. They are unwieldy, they are not uniform, they are slow, they are full of sinful humans…but they are Methodist. And it is exactly that quality which I fear is being lost if we choose a proposal that excises difference and consolidates power in the hands of the few. There’s trimming that needs to happen to our family Methodist tree, but I don’t think cutting off the taproot is the best way to go about it.

Thoughts? What kind of church do we need for the 21st century? One with a group of executives at our top (like the Plan B and IOT plans), or one with a forum for conversation and visioning (the MFSA plan). Which is best to guide the church faithfully in our increasingly post-Christian context? And more importantly…will you tell your delegate which you see as best? The power is yours, use it in the next week before it is too late.

Thoughts? Thanks for your comments.

In her book “Lord, I Love the Church and We Need Help” Rev. Virginia Bassford writes story after story to illustrate her points of need in the United Methodist Church. It’s a terrific read with several laugh-out-loud moments (like slapping a lamb) where I really felt a connection, a relationship with Bassford, a digital trust in her quirky wisdom. It is precisely that type of relationship, of a shared mutuality, that Bassford believes will save the church.

Bassford writes from her experience of being both a pastor and a district superintendent in Texas. She has lots of good practical advice for how churches will navigate the Church Metrics phenomenon. For example:

1. Cultivate trust between the church and District Superintendent: Local churches can work together with the DS to create a narrative goal for their specific congregation with a challenging timeframe.
2. And a reminder to DSes and Bishops: “Keeping an eye on  numbers through  a reporting dashboard as a means of accountability makes us nervous” (page 32).

In short, relationships are about trust. Trust, then, is one of the sinking qualities of the church according to the Call To Action report. Trust in the Bishops to send good pastors to the local church, trust in the pastors to shepherd a difficult appointment, trust in the missionaries that they are doing good works abroad or across the street. Heck, trust that the secret you told your Sunday School teacher will stay between you.

Diane Butler Bass writes about four major events that tainted the public perception of religion in general, and they all revolve around trust:

• The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, in which religion fueled violence on many sides;
• The 2002 child abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, in which “the worst scandal of the church in 700 years” showed institutional religion abused the most vulnerable;
• The 2003 election of an openly gay, partnered cleric, the Rev. Gene Robinson, as a bishop in the Episcopal Church, in which religious adherents were shown to be mean-spirited;
• The 2004 presidential election, in which George W. Bush, the candidate with the lowest approval rating of any sitting president, was re-elected by an evangelical Christian bloc of whom 87 percent voted for Bush.

So when you couple cultural despair over religion with the actual cases of distrust in the local congregations, spread wider and wider through an increasingly global and news-hungry world…and there is little wonder that trust is both the biggest challenge in the church and the one that we need the most.

But the thing is that…there are PLENTY of committed people to reviving the church. Whether progressive or conservative, hipster or traditional, old or young, ethnic or stale white, there’s a group committed to revival and discipleship in every stripe of every church. What keeps them from working together?

Trust.

We are suspicious about growth in our “rivals’” backyard. This is evident in the comments on my previous post on the Hegemony of the South. We are not willing to give up some theological points to do joint worship services (though sometimes the differences ARE irreconcilable depending on the goal of the event). When we get to the political nature of the church, we elect delegate so that “our side” has more than the “other side.” We do lists and slates and “suggested votes” and distribute cell phones to African delegates so that we can text them how to vote.

And so we work alone, building up parallel churches alongside each other in the same denomination.

• The South does its own thing, the West does its own thing.
• When the evangelicals got mad at the General Board of Global Ministries over missionaries, they created their own parallel Mission Society.
• When evangelical women got mad at the Women’s Division, they created RENEW for their women.
• When LGBT-affirming Methodists get all uppity and prophetic-feeling, they identify with the Reconciling movement and differentiate their church through membership and rainbows.
• When Oklahoma evangelical UMs got mad at district camps, they started going to Disciple and Dayspring instead.

We do these things because we want to work with those whom we trust. Heck, we are often more willing to work with people outside of our denomination who share similar views because they can’t hurt us on the inside like those who are part of our denomination can. Bassford alludes to this with this quote by education consultant Tony Wagner:

“We know that isolation is the enemy of improvement in education–and in all other professions.” page 79

Isolation and echo chambers have made our denomination where it is today: parallel ways of doing church.

From Bassford, we also get clues as to how to fix these deep-seeded issues and distrust. She articulates a really great “Cup Theology” on pages 52-54. Basically, God’s grace is continually pouring out into our cups, but because of our sin, it leaks out the holes in the bottom and we are never “full” of the spirit. If we fix the holes, then the whole thing overflows from the top and we are pouring out God’s love on each one.

If we make this image communal rather than individual, then we see that the holes in our communities can’t be held up with one hand. They are dams with a patchwork of fixes needed. Each hole filled forces more water out the remaining ones, and even if we take off our shoes, there’s too many crevices to fill.

Perhaps now is the time to share our stories: the ones that are hilarious, the ones that are poignant, the ones that you can’t get through without your voice getting hoarse.

What it will take is for these groups and individuals to stop isolating ourselves and practicing non-engagement with the ‘other’ and actually spend time building up relationships with each other. Perhaps then, we can find the common ways how we can patch the leaking bottoms of our chalices and allow God’s grace to flow out the top. If we can put our animosity and our parallism in abeyance, floating somewhere ephemeral, then we might, just might, figure a way to do Church-ing together.

It’s a pie-in-the-sky vision, but at least through Bassford’s use of narrative, we have a glimpse of how to get it done.

Thoughts?

In Virginia Bassford’s book (which is recommended reading for General Conference) she states:

Hegemony…is the perspective of the dominant culture, race, or group, as if it were the only perspective–everyone else needs to get on board. Hegemony is blind to the notion that we–you and I, perhaps most especially when we are divergent–are in this together. We each have distinctive points of view. Together, we can have a wide-angle outlook [that we need].

V. Bassford Lord, I love the Church and We Need Help, page 35.

One of the newest developments in the Call To Action conversation is that the pastors of the largest churches sent an open letter to General Conference delegates. It’s nice. It talks about the death tsunami and the coming doom and gloom of the UMC, the inefficiency of the General Boards, and the graying of the clergy. It asserts a need for organizational change so that the church can be focused on nurturing vital congregations. All boilerplate CTA stuff but worded in a way that even my skeptical young clergy friends are signing it.

But as I was reading Bassford’s book, that quote jumped out at me as I read the original signatories to this open letter, purportedly the pastors of the largest churches in the UMC. “Hegemony”  means a dominant group that thinks alike. Now, each of these churches has grown and they meet regularly to learn from each other how to continue growing, so they clearly think of their churches in similar ways (at least on a spectrum, they would be together). And that’s fine, we want our churches to grow and it is great to learn from leaders that have grown their churches effectively. I don’t mind this hegemony group.

But as I read the signatories, I began to wonder if there was a regional hegemony as well in the Call To Action.

When we map the 87 clergy originators of this petition on Google Maps), we get a disturbing trend as far as how many signatories are from one area of the country. (here’s a map of the jurisdictional breakdown [or PDF here]):

• Northeast Jurisdiction signatories: 3
• Western Jurisdiction signatories: 2
• North Central signatories: 10
• South Central and South Eastern signatories combined: 72

So the Southern jurisdictions have nearly 5x the number of crafters to the letter than the other regions combined. That immediately put up a red flag for me. It becomes very difficult to not be disturbed when the recommendations coming from these churches represent the population density but not the vast diversity of the United Methodist Church.

Often people say “well, the smaller numbers are because of smaller populations. Not so. If we do the delegate-to-signatory ratio, the Southern Juridictions still come out on top (delegate totals PDF):

• Northeast Jurisdiction ratio (3:114) = 1 signatory for every 38 votes.
• Western Jurisdiction ratio (2:32) = 1 signatory for every 16 votes.
• North Central ratio (10:112) = 1 signatory for every 11.2 votes.
• South Central and South Eastern ratio (72:400) = 1 signatory for every 5.5 votes.

So the signatories and pastoral leadership of the Open Letter are overwhelmingly (a) large churches (b) Southern churches and (c) disproportionate in voice to their population in the UMC. Like No Child Left Behind, the Call To Action is supported by those churches that will seem to benefit the most by lower apportionments and less “official” resources to compete with the sales of their regional resources (ie. Hamilton’s resources, Mike Slaughter’s resources, etc). We’ve seen in the responses from the African Students and the Ethnic Caucuses that the reorganization plans are not on the line with ministry to these groups, and indeed take some money from these mission fields.

It really doesn’t matter if we map this trend out. Because no matter what we say or do, the Southern jurisdictions will prevail on this issue.

Why? Remember when we talked about the dearth of young adult voices and saw there was only ONE young adult on the General Administration committee (which handles the bulk of the Call To Action legislation)? Yeah…when we map out the U.S.-based members of the General Administration committee, we get this awesome percentage:

• Northeast Jurisdiction (10:77) = 12% of the vote on the Call To Action
• Western Jurisdiction (5:77) = 6% of the vote on the Call To Action
• North Central (7:77) = 9% of the vote on the Call To Action
• South Central and South Eastern (33:77) = 43% of the vote on the Call To Action
• Central Conferences (22:77 ) = 30% of the vote on the Call To Action

The Call to Action is supported by and will be crafted by a Hegemony of large Southern churches. I don’t want to get into regionalism here, as for my entire ordained life I’ve been a part of the South Central Jurisdiction, and I don’t want to get into criticism of successful churches. I’ve been a  part of both.

But isn’t it a symptom of hegemony that a hegemony wants more power? Case in point: Robert Sparkman, drawing on the data from Joe Whittemore (Plan B Originator), decries the “unfair” distribution of delegates at GC2012. He says:

Areas which have grown are again under-represented. Some of the growing conferences have had their delegations reduced. Whenever an area is under-represented it threatens the legitimacy and support of the connection.

In my annual conference of Oklahoma, we lost ONE delegate slot (one clergy, one laity) out of 10. Whooptie. I know that it irritates the Southern Jurisdiction when they lose a handful of delegates and Africa gains a ton of delegates, but the answer isn’t to remove more delegates from the places that are even smaller. I completely disagree with Sparkman when he says:

We needed to represent more fairly and strongly the vision of the growing and vital areas of the church. Each General Conference of the last three has affirmed that we need to hear the voices of Africa and the growing conferences of the United States.

In my opinion, if we are to avoid becoming a sectarian church with a power base in the South, then we need to legitimize the mission field voices. We cannot just reward success with more representation: they already have that. The Southern Jurisdictions can have their way with anything in the UMC with only a modicum of support from the global church. Instead, why aren’t we valuing the voices from the margins, from the extremes, from the areas of the country where slow growth is the norm? The creeping secularism will reach the South one day, and if they do not empower the churches already in this culture to deal with it now, then the South will be under-equipped to deal with it later. As Bassford says, “we each have distinctive points of view. Together, we can have a wide-angle outlook.” We can weather this storm together, but only if the hegemony opens itself to its role of guidance, not dominance, in the global church.

So, in conclusion, my contention is this:

• If we want a Solution that furthers the growth of the UMC so it becomes a regionalized Church like the Southern Baptist Church, then the Call to Action is clearly a step in that direction.
• If we want a Solution that welcomes and listens to the voices of the Church on the mission fields, the bleeding edges of the Church, the Diaspora, the Frontier, then the Call To Action does not honor those voices or grant them voice of any consequence at the table.

I don’t want to see our church go the way of the Southern Baptist Church that became a regionalized center of influence that became more and more insular to the point that their hegemony took over the SBC and removed the women and progressive voices.

I fear that moment may be upon the United Methodist Church as it seeks to be the church that began with “the world is my parish” and ended with “the world is my parish, but only the South and Africa are really important.” May it not be so with our beloved United Methodist Church.

Thoughts?

Hello HackingChristianity community,

Sorry to be so quiet these past two weeks, and for getting off-schedule of our Lenten Book Study. Thanks for your messages and wonderings of “where are you?” during this time.

But I have a good reason…As you know, I am currently serving a church in my home state of Oklahoma. It’s the best church in the conference with the friendliest people and the greatest youth group in the state. And I’m not biased at all!

Here’s my second part of my big news: It was announced this past week that I will be taking a new appointment come July 1st.

I will be appointed to First United Methodist Church in Portland, Oregon.

That’s right, Oregon.

For the Methodist nerds out there, I’m leaving my South Central roots in Oklahoma for the Western Jurisdiction. You know…the part of Methodism where churches are shrinking, where their entire jurisdiction has as many delegates (and thus Methodist population) to General Conference as Virginia or North Georgia, and where heathen theology comes from the likes of Claremont seminary?

Why would I leave the world of suburban prosperity and big megachurches and friendly rural churches and Methodist powerhouses for…this?

There’s some personal reasons for sure–My spouse and I are expecting our first child and want to be closer to her side of the family. But for my blog readers who know how my mind works and where my passion is, there’s another reason that I’m excited about this move.

In her article on the Pacific Northwest, Christian Century contributor Amy Frykholm called the Northwest the “None Zone”:

 25 percent of Northwesterners claimed to have no religious identity—compared to a national figure of 14 percent.

By checking “none” on a survey, however, Northwesterners are not necessarily signaling a lack of interest in religion or religious activities. They are indicating, says Patricia Killen, a historian and dean of Pacific Lutheran University, that they do not think “religious identity is connected to a historic religious institution or faith.” In other words, Northwesterners are in the process of redefining what it means to be religious.

“From 1648 to 1970, we had essentially one idea of what it means to be religious in the Western world,” said Killen. “To be religious was to be engaged with a religious institution. Now, and especially in the Pacific Northwest, people are seeking different, more individualistic and more fluid ways of being religious.”

In short, if you want a glimpse at what the whole church and culture may look like in 20 years, then this part of the world is where to go.  The biggest challenges for this part of the world are (a) relating Jesus to an increasingly secular context and (b) encouraging affiliation with the historic institutions like the United Methodist Church as the denomination addresses issues of peace and justice that are beyond the means of local congregations.

As regular readers of this blog know, both of these challenges are topics I’ve addressed on this blog for years. I feel called to serve this part of the church, as I’m most interested in the edgy initiatives, the upside-down approaches, the theologies that resonate with the next generation of followers of Christ. They are doing some wicked creative stuff out in the Northwest that aren’t showing up on the Church Metrics yet…and I’m excited to go and be a part of it.

To my Oklahoma friends, this is not a criticism of our culture. I love my state and it is heartbreaking to leave it. What it means is that when this “none” culture reaches Oklahoma (probably the last state standing), by the grace of God, my affinity groups and colleagues will have figured out the context a little bit better…and my Okie friends will be better off having journeyed with me through that process on the blog and on the digital world. The Body of Christ is a worldwide body, and when one part gets stronger, the whole Body gets stronger. So I’m still serving the Oklahoma conference but in a different capacity.

As far as the church goes, my new role is to be a Minister of Discipleship, which is an Associate Minister position. From that position, I’ll be focusing on discipleship and outreach activities, and helping to plant a new worship service for the congregation. All exciting stuff. The church already shares a lot of my values of progressive theology and social outreach and is looking to get guided to the next level. It will be excellent to be sharing in that journey

So prayers are appreciated for my endurance to finish the race well in my current church, and prayers are appreciated for our transition in the middle of June as well. Thanks.

LINK: Bishop’s Letter at FUMC Portland

I wonder if there’s an “Two Natures” controversy in the midst of the United Methodist Church today. No, not that one. Another one.

In the 5th century, the Council of Chalcedon was debating whether Jesus was primarily his divine nature (championed by Eutyches) or whether he had two nature: divine and human. Here’s the end result:

The council produced the “Chalcedonian Definition.” The Definition affirms that Christ is “complete in Godhead and complete in humanness, truly God and truly human.” He is “of one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his humanity.”

Jesus Christ is to be “recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” The “distinction of natures” is “in no way annulled by the union.” “The characteristics of each nature” are to be considered as “preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence.” They are not to be “separated into two persons.”

So in short, Jesus was two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation…with neither overtaking the other.

It is with this eye towards tradition that I wonder if our leadership and church consultants are making an Chalcedon decision to frame the United Methodist Church as two natures with one overtaking the other. In the fifth century, the debate was over the nature of Christ, of whether Christ was wholly one nature or a coexistence of two natures. In the 21st century, the debate is over the nature of Christ’s body, the Church, of whether it is a movement, an institution, or some blend of both.

In his book “Back to Zero“, Gil Rendle masterfully maps out the differences between polarities, defined as “two equal and competing truths that must be held together in tension.”  Consumer v. citizen, member v. disciple, and finally movement v. institution. The polarity between movement and institution is the subject of his last two chapters on how a missional movement and instittuional structure can coexist in the Body of Christ. But in doing so, I was struck by one statement that then reframed his entire argument for me. He claims in chapter six about the “truths” of the UMC being both an institution and a movement:

“Each of these truths is equally true but cannot be held together.”

Now to every reader of Rendle’s book, that may seem true. After all, Rendle paints a stark contrast between each side. Movements are nimble, quick, relevant, and missional. Institutions are bureaucratic, slow to change, global scope but a local mess. Over and over again in Rendle’s book, the claim is that movements and institutions are stark contrasts. Even though Rendle is careful to say that they are not “incompatible” he says that we desire to be “more closely tied to Christ than to Christ’s Church” which indicates a movement is closer to Christ than an institution can be…a claim I find to be false.

Rather, the Chalcedon Controversy for the UMC today is that Rendle paints Movements and Institutions as different natures, as similar kinds of ways of “being church” but that one is clearly better than the other. By framing them as polarities, with charts of positives and negatives from each side, I believe he sides with the Eutyches supporters, claiming the UMC is either movement or institution with the Church responding out of one or the other, like Jesus responded out of his human or divine side. But one is clearly wrong to be too heavily on (the institution) and the church needs to swing back to the other side of the natures.

My claim is different. My claim and experience (nowhere close to Rendle’s but that also means I’m not succumbing to self-fulfilling prophecies…boom) leads to me see the church as two natures, as “same substance” whereby the Institution and the Movement share the same Body, share the same goals, share the same values, share the same glue, with neither overtaking the other and neither existing without the other.

Thus, instead of the UMC being both/and movement and institution, which Rendle claims both are necessary…the UMC is rather one church with two divergent paths to be the Church.

In our time of postmodernity, don’t we need an institution that counter-balances the claims of an anti-authoritarian culture that productive practices can emerge from the institution? That we are more than the sum of our parts when we put part of our sums together? And likewise, don’t we need a nimble church that can respond to cultural changes and postmodern criticism? A movement that calls others to the task through the trumpet horns of enthusiasm and exhortation?

To some this can seem likes splitting hairs. But to dismantle the structures of the UMC, to lay blame to those structures for our problems, and assume a more congregational polity without a commonly collaborative goal and objectives that are more contextual…all that is to commit the sin of Eutyches, to call the Church either/or and we must move the polarity from one side to the other without losing the former.

The better way is to see the Church as homoousion, as “same substance” and see both as “who the church is” and to recognize the strong values that both bring. And beyond that, to be fully Chalcedon, we would need to not allow one side to be overwhelmed by the other.

My advice to delegates who are reading Rendle’s book is to be wary of claims to either movement or institutional exclusivity.  I encourage you to rebel against metrics and other institutional practices that would stunt missional movements. To safeguard the instutional structures that accomplish more than the most nimble local church can do on its own. And to not depict the choices as between David and Goliath but to find ways for both sides to mutually coexist in their best forms.

There is a movement-informed structure and a structurally-aware movement in the United Methodist Church that is more than the best parts of either side. And my prayer is that, guided by the Holy Spirit, the Delegates can find them.

Thoughts?