The following blogs participated in the synchblog on ‘Lord I Love the Church and We Need Help’ by Virginia Bassford:

• Jim writes about Saying Too Little on Epistle of Jim.
• Kirk writes about the distraction of stories on Signs Unseen.
• Jeremy writes about Trust, Relationship and Non-Engagement on Hacking Christianity.

Any more? Add them to the comments below!

‘The Jesus Insurgency’ Synchblog, coming up next!

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?

I was all set to write about this photograph that displays the “Denominational Goal” in five words: (1) Stop the Decline (2) Encourage Growth.

It’s such a perfect summation of the divide between those who are convicted by the Call To Action to grow the church through fear, metrics, and output…and those who are convicted by the Call To Action to grow the church through mutuality, re-dedication, and input of prayer and spirit. Are there those that are in both camps? Sure. But the problem of the Call To Action, which cost the church $250,000, is shown in this one photograph by Heather Hahn, UMNS.

But then I saw that Becca Clark had written a much better response. So, instead of spending any more time here, go there and read it. Here’s a key segment where she talks about this focus on satisfying others’ numerical requirements :

It reminds me of a story entitled “Panic” in the fantastic book Friedman’s Fables. To paraphrase, a ring of dominoes finds itself in a pickle, as one by one, the dominoes fall. Each domino tries to hold its neighbor up, to stem the tide of crashing dominoes, but to no avail. Finally, one domino manages it; the crashing stops and the dominoes right themselves. The others ask how in the world that one domino was able to stay up, and it replies, “while you were all busy trying to keep others from falling, I just focused on keeping myself from going down.” This one domino held fast to its own strength, it’s own principle, rather than reacting to the instability around it.

The mission of the United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. What if we really tried to figure that out and commit to that? What’s a disciple? How do you “make” one? How do you know you’ve got one?

Instead, we are focused on stopping the crashing around us, on preserving our institution. Has survival of the institution become our denominational goal?

Boom. Go check it out.

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?

For those who followed and read the Exploration 2011 blog posts I ran back in…2011, there’s a tweet-up on April 11th with the participants to find out how their lives have changed after this great event. We hope to share many stories via twitter tag #explo11 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

• 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 #explo11 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 8pm CST on April 11th to join the conversation!

Pro – Tweetdeck

• 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 #explo11 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 8pm CST on April 11th to join the conversation!

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

Check out the Facebook page to find out more.

SUPER LATE. Sorry. Big announcement tomorrow so that will clarify why I’ve been off the blog radar.

The following blogs participated in the synchblog on ‘Back to Zero’ by Gil Rendle

• Kirk writes about ideology v. theology on Signs Unseen.
• Brandon writes about carts, horses, and vital congregations on his website.
• Jeremy writes about Rendle’s ‘Two Natures’ Controversy 2.0 on Hacking Christianity.

Any more? Add them to the comments below!

Next Up: ‘Lord, I love the Chuch and we need HELP’ Synchblog on March 23rd.  Join us for the Lenten Study!

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?

The best term to describe the Call To Action right now is, in a word, blowback. There’s tons of organized opposition to some of the plan’s particulars right up to the entire thing itself. Pretty epic. The church hasn’t seen anything like this before. Heck, I’m closing in on 20 blog posts on the Call To Action myself, so this is pretty bad.

1. The Methodist Federation for Social Action has a plan. This is the most substantial one and the only one submitted as actual legislation. And I’m biased because I was on the team that wrote it.
2. The Western Jurisdiction Bishops and constituencies have a plan. Theirs is not just criticism but is a major tweak of the CTA plan.
3. The Plan B website has a plan. There’s no spokesperson, but a WHOIS search indicates it is owned by Joe Whittmore, former North Georgia Lay Leader. He also opposed the Constitutional Amendments in 2008 and the marriage-covenant signers in 2011. Doesn’t get my hopes up about the beliefs behind the project even as I agree with some of their conclusions and recommendations.
4. The Wisconsin Delegation has refuted the Call To Action and called for more vague changes. More criticism than alternative proposals.
5. Heck, even the Connectional Table had to revise a proposal and then it failed in their own committee. Amazing.

But all the blowback and opposition caused me to wonder about what alternative past we might have had.

A reader made a comment on the previous post about the Western Bishops’ response to the Call To Action that really struck my imagination. Here’s part of Anne’s comment:

I’m wondering why the Call to Action (when finished) was not shared with the bishops who could then do this type of session to discuss the pluses and minuses and offer revisions before the CtA ever came out to the UM public. The findings from the meetings of every jurisdiction could then be passed on to the CtA team who could then make some revisions and then release the CtA in a more constructive manner. I honestly think we would be in a better position of knowing what might be best for the church if these things had happened.

Anne’s comment caused me to start thinking about how the Call To Action could have been done as a more grassroots initiative much like an open-source software project.

In the computer world, there’s a conflict between closed-source and open-source software.  While there are many differences, closed source and open source have different processes of creation that are helpful to this conversation:

• Closed source (Microsoft Windows, Adobe Photoshop) means that you hire a professional team to make the code, they beta-test it, they write it, they release the product the code makes, then they fix the bugs and problems for the company.
• Open source (Linux, the Gimp, OpenOffice) means that a loosely-affiliated amateur or off-the-clock professional team invests time, money, and energy into writing code, they keep every stage open, and they release the “source code” alongside the final product.

Clearly the Call To Action was approached in a closed-source fashion. Instead of Anne’s suggestion above, the consultants did their research, reported it to the Call To Action committee, who then made the presentation and report to the Connectional Table and Bishops. It was then distributed as “The Plan” with the expectation that we would make smaller changes and “perfections” at General Conference. Privately-hired consultants did the research, reported it, and a small team presented it and the legislation to the people. There would be bugs to fix, clearly, but the bulk of the recommendations were expected to be done. While General Conference would ratify it, the expectation was that it would be passed more or less intact.

Compare this process with Boston University, my alma mater, whose visioning process had each department come up with a vision and all those were incorporated into the master document. President Henry explains:

In the winter of 2005, about three months into my term as BU’s president, I set in motion a strategic planning process, aimed at establishing our institutional priorities and enabling us to make wise resource-allocation choices in the months and years to come. That process started with the deans of our 17 schools and colleges asking their respective departments and centers to come up with 15-page descriptions of their places in the world today, and their aspirations for tomorrow. (To avoid boring my readers, I’ll simplify the overall process here.) The deans, in turn, used these collections of mini-strategic plans to create 15-page school-wide strategic plans—a major feat of distillation, for which I commend them and remain grateful.

These plans were presented at a University leadership retreat held in April 2006. Several weeks later, after Commencement, I asked a group of faculty members and administrators to serve as a formal strategic planning task force. They were charged, specifically, with thinking about the needs of the University as a whole. They sat down with the deans’ reports—as well as volumes of additional material, and also the fruits of numerous briefing sessions—and set to work. Their report, entitled “One BU,” was submitted to me on December 1, 2006, and was posted on the BU website for feedback.

In short, the various departments gave a vision and goals, the schools distilled the goals down, and then the entire university from the ground-up made a strategic plan with goals. Perfect? No. Process-perfect? Maybe!

The point is that open-source takes information from a variety of sources, even those opposed to the goals of the project, and constantly incorporates them until they release a version of their work (called ‘compiling’ in most projects). While the CTA will say they did plenty of talking, research OF individuals and congregations is different than conversation WITH organized groups.  And that’s where they fell short in their approach.

Imagine an alternative past: What if they had released their research and recommendations to the public and invited feedback before submitting legislation or re-forming the general agencies. They could have gotten the open-source alternative plans (called “forks” in the computer world) from MFSA, the dissenting Bishops, North Georgia, and others together and heard their counter-proposals. Then the Connectional Table could have taken months to craft a middle way forward or one that addressed most of the concerns and counter-proposals. With the rest of the loudmouths on board, the plan would only require tweaking, beta-testing and bug killing before being compiled again at General Conference. Just like an open-source project.

Instead, we are stuck with a closed source approach: the small group dictated the decision, the counter-proposals are flying everywhere…and the General Conference committee of 40 people (and only one young adult) will have to make all the decisions in a week. Instead of a leisurely study, they have one week to weigh all the alternative plans (only the MFSA plan is actual submitted legislation, however), and decide.  Instead of having a structure that was battle-tested and the little bits to iron out, we have a vague goal that is approved across the board (building vital congregations) and huge swaths of the church to iron out in a week’s time.

It’s not too late, though. There is always the option for a closed-source project to release itself to become open-source.

• Confession of Reality: The Connectional Table can be honest about the state of unrest both during their process and the state of the UMC right now. They can stop using umccalltoaction.org as a mouthpiece for their proposal and honestly invite conversation. They can not put out whitewashed spin pieces about the CTA. Their proponents can stop referencing other delegations’ endorsements as evidence that their delegations need to respond as well. In short, stop the stonewalling that their proposal is the only way.
• Pre-GC Conversation: Sponsor a Pre-GC meeting of the General Administration committee to just focus on the General Agency and Governance changes. Give that committee time to debate as a group, then they can gather again at GC to get it done and truly join in holy conferencing rather than rabid politicking.
• Open the Church: There’s still a change to make a non-hierarchical and non-executive-focused reform at the top of the General Agencies. There’s still a chance to bring in more diversity. There’s still a chance to fuse metrics with contextual goals so that there’s a holistic way to evaluate churches. And, given Afrca’s dissatisfaction at the Pre-GC briefings, there’s still a chance to truly engage with (rather than report to) Africa to get their help in the restructure.

We may not have done the Call to Action in an open-source way. But the source of the Church, the Holy Spirit, is still at the center. If we are honest about the state of the church, put our money into conversations instead of consultants, and seek open systems at the top of the Church, then we may see that truly the Holy Spirit is not finished with us yet.

Please distribute this to your delegates. Forward them this website address. Print it off and mail it to them. And encourage the Connectional Table to respond to a heartfelt appeal for an open church not just an open process.

Thoughts?

Hello and welcome to our Book Study for Lent. We are reading through the books suggested to General Conference delegates to get an idea of what will be in the delegates’ minds and to help us make sense of the meta-and-local issues facing the United Methodist Church. Read more about this book study here.

Guiding Framework:

1. Try to reference the books by CHAPTER not by page number. Some of us are on Kindles and Nooks and page numbers do not always translate across devices. So try to reference the chapter titles rather than the page numbers ie. ‘In the “New Wesleyan Movement” chapter near the end, Rendle says…’
2. Feel free to comment and reply to other’s comments.
3. This conversation is cross-posted to the UM Clergy Facebook Group where other UM clergy will have conversations. You can read these conversations by clicking the link.

Guiding Discussion:

This our second book study (here’s the first) so we turn now to conversation about ‘Back to Zero’ by Gil Rendle.

This is an open thread, meaning you can post your thoughts, musings, and respond to others’ posts as well.

Here’s some questions that you can respond to or :

1. The adaptive challenge for The United Methodist Church is “To redirect the flow of attention, energy, and resources to an intense concentration on fostering and sustaining an increase in the number of vital congregations effective in making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” How does Rendle best approach this challenge in your view?
2. What comments or recommendations were most shocking to you? What comments or recommendations did you find yourself ‘nodding your head’ or ‘shaking your fist‘ at?
3. Rendle has some great systems theory integrated deeply into his comments. Here’s one comment where he talks about the paradigm shift necessary for the UMC. What do you think of it?

Members, clergy, and congregations [should now be] displaced as the object of attention and recipient of denominational resources to being the expendable resources of the system needed to make the critical difference of changed people who will change the world.

Chapter “It’s Time To Testify” page 41.

Next Step: Synchblog on March 6th

• On Tuesday, March 6th, we invite bloggers to synchblog (that is, everyone blog on the same day about ‘Back to Zero’) together. I’ll blog as well, and if you send your links either as comments or as emails to ‘umjeremy@gmail.com’ we will include a list of all the blogs so we can read each other’s writings (and get good cross-publicity!). We had five bloggers for our last synchblog and hope for more this time too!

Thoughts? Post below!

The following blogs participated in the synchblog on ‘Focus’ by Lovett Weems

• Jim writes about ‘Young Clergy and Farm Teams‘ at Adventures in Revland.
• Kirk writes about the insensitivity of a tsunami metaphor and contextualized outcome based reporting at Signs Unseen.
• Jeremy (that’s me!) writes about Form, Function, and repeating history from the EUB/MEP merger at Hacking Christianity.
• Brandon writes about the unanswered questions Focus doesn’t ‘focus’ on at his website.
• Jim writes about “Death, Dollars, Disciples” and at Epistle of Jim.
• Finally, Tom has some substantial comments on specific sections of the book on the ‘Focus’ Discussion Post.

Any more? Add them to the comments below!

Next Up: ‘Back to Zero’ Discussion on March 1st. See the Schedule here. Join us for the Lenten Study!