In 2016, I was honored to be one of the electors of a new United Methodist bishop (Bishop Karen Oliveto). This time, in 2022, I’ll be one of three bishops’ electors. It’s an amazing process and I’m honored to have the support of my clergy colleagues for this role that I’m taking seriously–-and in the name of transparency, I’m sharing who I’m voting for.
A Consequential Election
The United Methodist Bishops can single-handedly save United Methodism from itself come January 2023. The exiting of the most anti-gay bishops by mandatory or chosen retirement and the election of a wave of new bishops (of which every jurisdiction, in theory, has a center-progressive majority) is an exciting moment to turn the executive branch from cautious towards consequential leadership.
As progressives and inclusive evangelicals lament the delayed General Conference to 2024, delaying the next chance at full inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons to 2024 or later, the reality is that United Methodism in America could have full inclusion in practice starting in January 2023.
Bishops are the gatekeepers of whether charges against LGBTQ+ inclusive actions or persons are levied. By electing a solid majority of inclusive bishops in every jurisdiction, combined with the remaining makeup, bishops who openly support full inclusion would make a majority of the Council of Bishops for the first time in history.
- That means they can continue the Traditionalist-approved 2020 policy to “hold in abeyance” charges against LGBTQ+ inclusion, or…
- Outright say they will not be levying charges against LGBTQ+ inclusive actions in their regions, refusing to follow an unjust law in our polity.
So, you can see how electing a bold, inclusive cohort of new bishops is so utterly needed: it’s the chance to move the church forward and live into the new reality for almost 16-20 months before the chance to remove the restrictive polity sometime in 2024. Imagine what effect that will have on the denomination! And it would support further work outside the USA in contexts where LGBTQ+ persons are criminalized in both the church and society.
Who are you supporting?
But there’s far more to consider than an inclusive litmus test. Let’s find out.
This year in my jurisdiction (Western Jurisdiction), there are 32 expressed candidates for 3 open bishop positions. That’s an incredible list for discernment. Other jurisdictions are electing 2-3 with numerous candidates as well. How can we possibly discern who to support?
Many people have asked who I’m supporting for bishop. Before I’m in the room, I won’t be endorsing a candidate or set in stone who I’m voting for. My understanding of a delegate is we have been delegated authority we carry with us to the room. We listen to the Spirit, and we vote.
But I have my biases and I know (at the moment) I’m supporting the following three people. And maybe you should too?
Here’s who I’m supporting!
- An episcopal candidate from my region. There are multiple candidates from my region, but the rationale why they deserve my vote is because they have been shaped by the same ministry regional context as I have, I have a common language with them, and I’ve seen that bishops that come from our region can translate this experience elsewhere. Jeremiah 29 says for the people to go live in the land and pray for its welfare–I want someone who has lived in the land I have too. So for this vote, I will start with the group of candidates from my region, and then go from there on which quality I am drawn to or convicted by, ultimately choosing one.
- An episcopal candidate whose ideas I agree with. There are many smart and experienced people who have great ideas. My friend Kathy at the end of this post has a list of questions that I think hit at the ideas I’d love answers to as well. That’s the purpose of the endless interviews and Q&A forms and delegate forums is to get at their ideas. While we know bishops cannot implement ideas by themselves and we need leadership to make those ideas happen (ala Exodus 18 with Moses and Jethro), anyone who I disagree with or see consistently has blind spots isn’t going to help those ideas become realities. So with this vote, I’ll choose one who has the best ideas, in my personal opinion and prayerful discernment and support them.
- An episcopal candidate whose candidacy I want to see continue. There are candidates I agree with and know, but then there are those who I really want to see continue because there’s something about their identity that excites me. As United Methodism grapples with active and past racism, supporting BIPOC candidates is an incredibly high priority. Beyond that, it could be the way they have lived out their convictions, it could be a demographic that I think needs to be at the table (I personally think younger GenX/Millennial bishops are sorely needed), it could be a track record of creating change, or it could simply be leaving space for the movement of the Spirit, like Elijah listening for the “still, small voice” of God.
We are called to bring our full selves to this discernment. I think by relying on my heart (shaped by a context), my mind (appreciating ideas), and my spirit (the indescribable tug of support), I can get close to listening well to the movement of the Spirit leading up to the conference while leaving space for that same Spirit to guide me once I’m there.
Questions for discernment
All that said, I do think candidates need some direct questions. My friend Kathy Neary in the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference has shared a list of questions she hopes would get to the vision and goals aspects of leadership. Here they are, feel free to use them in your own delegate interviews!
1. What is your critical analysis of the current reality facing The UMC in our jurisdiction?
2. How will we transition away from the traditional mode of Methodist spiritual expression (building/pastor/congregation) to new forms of spiritual expression that are understandable, relevant, and transformational to new generations?
3. How will we care for the mostly elderly people currently in our United Methodist Churches while we transition to new forms of ministry?
4. What economic model is best suited for these new forms of ministry?
5. How will you lead change in The UMC given that the organization is designed to conserve all forms of operation and structure?
6. Given your answers to the previous questions, succinctly describe your vision of the future UMC in our jurisdiction. How will we know we are aligned with God’s will if we embrace your vision?
Your Turn
Thoughts?
Thanks for reading, commenting, subscribing, and sharing on social media.
How do we, the laity, know who’s in the running for bishop in our jurisdiction?
https://westernjurisdictionumc.org/episcopal-candidates/
Another great list of questions was developed via a group process sponsored by Western Methodist Justice Movement. You can see those at” https://wmjm.org/episcopal-discernment
Good points. Though I find the on-going Progressive/Conservative obsession really a moot point by now. Churches are failing at an alarming rate in the PNWUMC, COVID has quickened that for some, and the new expressions in the PNWUMC that are so rabidly LGBT++ and are driving away the people that wanted to be here in the first place.
And, I’ll admit it. I have a lot of anger from being encouraged to try to keep my church afloat, invent new offerings, attract people, all while the conference knows these numbers, knows what was tried before and failed. And the new expressions that are so rabidly LGBT+ (instead of “just” reconciling and pleasantly welcoming) I find truly offensive in its obsequiousness and pandering, and I’m gay as the day is long.
The utter lack of systemic thinking displayed by many UMC people I have worked along side and planned and striven to create new expressions of what church is, is stunning. I think it may be due to most in leadership being trained ministers and not having worked in the business world – where results matter – or that business fails. In church, we are free to spend people’s donations willy nilly, throwing money against the wall to see what sticks, not tracking what was tried before and failed, and making each congregation re-invent the wheel over and over.
The current course has the PNWUMC spending down its current resources until failure. We are (maybe) ten years from having lots of empty buildings in the PNWUMC – with a small cohort of the new expressions of UMC (LGBT+ obsessed) which I find so off-balance and unusually strange in how much air in the room this is still sucking up. (Long-time “gay” here. I want to come to church to learn and practice a spirituality (maybe *gasp* even a theology), but come finding no such thing. The theology professed now is now such a pale sick thing compared to what used to be taught, perhaps it further explains why everyone is “leaving the building.” People come to church to get help, support, and meaning and belonging, maybe even find God in the old traditional sense, and the new expressions of UMC the last 10 years, are severely lacking in providing this, and only those attending or coming are those who learned their theology in a more fundamental time – no matter how progressive they are now. What ever we are doing now isn’t working. So here is some data for most of the questions that a candidate needs to be aware of and address with real fleshed-out answers and not “we will do this and maybe the Spirit will use it to bless people”:
1. What is your critical analysis of the current reality facing The UMC in our jurisdiction?
Dire and on life-support, burning through the resources left us by our elders without a real plan (building sales, annuity savings, apportionment money doled out by the conference). , with an alarmingly secular viewpoint being espoused in most congregations.
I went through the last 7 yearly conference materials: 33 church closures in 7 years. (All listed at the end). One new church (V&M). Is it our obsession with being Welcoming? without teaching anything? Is it our new trend (last 20 years) of being basically Unitarians with a splash of Jesus here and there, relegating Jesus to being just a wiseman?
2. How will we transition away from the traditional mode of Methodist spiritual expression (building/pastor/congregation) to new forms of spiritual expression that are understandable, relevant, and transformational to new generations?
Great question – as I am unaware of any recent PNWUMC church plants (last ten years) that have survived more than a few years – and fail after their originator moves on (Valley and Mountain is the exception). Tacoma:
All Tacoma church planting (3 efforts) failed before COVID: CreateCommons latinx group connexionTacoma and the contemplative group
Valley and Mountain is the outlier: Trumpeted as the one big success (they did raise 100k
per year from their congregation this last year, but that doesn’t cover half of their
expenses) but they are selling Ravenna UMC Property and will consume
those resources as well. The head guy who started it – a really
promising younger pastor – left in June. Another excellent V&M minister has left ministry and headed back east in a non-ministerial position.
Two more pastors – one being the actual head of church planting and then the Innovation and Vitality team, the other on that committee -slipped away quietly, and both have “de-churched” their offerings for corporations. This was THE guy in charge of church planting for years! They saw the writing on the wall.
3. How will we care for the mostly elderly people currently in our United Methodist Churches while we transition to new forms of ministry?
We are not. They are being told their way of worship is old fashioned and the reason we can’t attract younger crowds. Which is wrong and the conferences have known for years now that no matter what is tried the numbers fall – so then why not support the people that want to be there? I’m still waiting for all the younger crowds to show up with all the new “churches” – all of which are maybe pulling in a dozen people, for a few years? We are ignoring the people who actually want to be there, waiting for new people to trickle in. All new efforts will never amount to more than a “dinner church” (20 persons at the most). Again the outlier is V&M, but their socially adept originator just left, let’s check back in two years.
4. What economic model is best suited for these new forms of ministry?
We will never have self-sustaining congregations that can pay for a minister ever again. All the current ones are spending down their endowments, or living off the sale of their previous building, or combining and living of the sale of a building, or living off apportionment money from the conference level.
5. How will you lead change in The UMC given that the organization is designed to conserve all forms of operation and structure?
Best of luck! The UMC seems more obsessed with keeping a bureaucracy in place that was created for a far different time (the 1950s & 60s, merged in 68?). That it is the last of the mainline denoms to deal with the ‘gay” issue is surprising and sad.
6. Given your answers to the previous questions, succinctly describe your vision of the future UMC in our jurisdiction. How will we know we are aligned with God’s will if we embrace your vision?
We will continue to beat the LGBT+ drum with wild abandon, even though there are plenty of other denominations that have already done the work/split and have LGBT affirming polity. As a “gay” I sit and marvel at how everyone is bending over backwards for the new cultural trend, ignoring the spiritual needs of longtime attendees and contributors to their local congregation.
Its time to quit repeatedly throwing money after pet projects that fail and invest in projects that we know will benefit those who need it – like low-income housing and affordable housing in our neighborhoods, because, though it saddens me terribly – it seems very apparent the spirit of God has moved on from the current expression called UMC.
PNWUMC church closures:
2015
Kahlotus United Methodist Church
Avon United Methodist Church
Nooksack Valley United Methodist Church
Sultan Community United Methodist Church
2016
Whitney Memorial United Methodist Church
Rainier Beach United Methodist Church
Skyway United Methodist Church
Grace United Methodist Church (near Tacoma?)
2017 Rocklyn Zion United Methodist Church, Davenport WA
Spirit of Grace, formerly First United Methodist Church, Everett, WA
Korean United Methodist Church, Olympia, WA
Central United Methodist Church, Spokane, WA
Fern Hill United Methodist Church, Tacoma, WA
Grace United Methodist Church, Walla Walla, WA
White Bird Community United Methodist Church, White Bird, Idaho
2018
WILD ROSE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, DEER PARK
WESTPARK UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, YAKIMA
GARFIELD UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, GARFIELD
2019 MCCLEARY UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, MCCLEARY, WA
SUNNYSIDE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
CROWN HILL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
2020 NORTH MASON UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
ROSALIA UNITED METHODIST CHURCH SOUTH BEND UNITED METHODIST CHURCH WALLACE-BURKE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 2021
CLARK FORK UNITED METHODIST CHURCH KENDRICK UNITED METHODIST CHURCH MALOTT UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
MILTON UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
SKAMOKAWA UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
TOPPENISH UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
Ravenna UMC V&M plant year unclear: Ravenna UMC this year’s 2022 report = 1 Total: 33
While I wouldn’t have been as harsh as “Moved on from the UMC” (and that’s where anonymity makes being blunt easy) I will say I have returned to this comment several times and have shared it with others. I think “Moved On” has some things to say that are worth discussing.
Hey there, Cesie!
Years ago, I was less blunt, and got no traction. Now, I’m blunt, but I doubt it will still get any traction 🙂
As for leaving the UMC, it kind of left me with its recent switch to being rabidly LGBT++ at the expense of just about everything else (and I’m gay as the day is long) SO tone deaf. So pandering after a group of people who already have had plenty of choices (UCC, UU, ELCA, Episcopal, etc) . There are not corrals of LGBTers just waiting to come running in after we fall all over ourselves and push long-time attenders (most quite elderly) and believers aside in our rush to become somehow more relevant to a younger generation.
I spent a couple days roaming through the conference reports when we were first locked down to get firmer numbers on closures. I am vaguely anonymous here though anyone in my church men’s group will recognize my writing style and the points I rail on about. Its much too late to stop the failure – even the Evangelical churches in the PNW are on steep decline – they just have 10 more years than the mainlines as they have more Gen Xers (my generation)..
I have been watching as young fresh ministers are tossed to the wolves – tasked with keeping a system running that has long ago failed and is coasting to a stop. I have seen it affect their mental health. In fact, I think it must be affecting all new minsters that are entering (at least the younger ones) The people over 50 having been watching this run down for decades shouldn’t be surprised.
Seattle long ago should have appointed one of the local churches to continue the old-school type worship. As those other churches failed and bldgs sold, some of that money could have been used to fund that “oldster” church for another ten years.
Though, I understand the conference is pretty powerless the way the UMC is structured, and I have heard talk of the conference back in the 90s or 00s trying to be a bit more directive to congregations about what they should choose to do as they decline – and congregations freaked out on them. And there were earlier efforts to make a common church building multiple congregations could use and it failed for the reason below.
In the end, as a friend said recently, “we like OUR church, and don’t want to move to another”. So I suppose I can’t blame the conference – but it sure would help encouraging choosing specific paths if they had a conference map with the churches and attendance numbers (real ones not the grossly inflated ones returned each year in that report), monetary health, etc. So the entire system and its fragility could be grasped by cities and encourage groups of churches to combine. But I may be expecting accountability with the resources that will never happen. It may just continue to be frittered away into obsolescence.
But, in the end – the fault I suppose just belongs to each congregation. Its just watching the wheel get re-invented in bad ways over and over and over is stunning and makes me crazy, watching all the effort, the wide eyes of the elders as they see what was so important to them fade away into unsustainablilty, these elders tasking any fresh meat that walks in the door with keeping that system running a few more years.
The lack of directness and openness on the stunning numbers that show how what we are trying is not working needs to be shared openly on a level local churches hear. The straw that broke the camels back as they say, for me was I was on a committee and suddenly had to help figure out what we were to do with a fairly large – well, not small – monetary bequest. I realized then, looking at what kind of a return we could give (spiritual, physical, anything) and I realized as I lay awake in conflict pondering this for multiple nights, that we were a terrible investment. We don’t track what has been tried before and failed. Every church just keeps trying the same old thing. A waste of money and time. We aren’t reaching people. It should be put to honest good use (low-income housing, etc). That money was given for a time and type of church that no longer exists.
We have gotten so bad at creating a return on an investment (we certainly don’t “save souls” anymore, that would at least be measurable), we count some vague “touches” – counting how many people had one brief experience with a congregation or an event.
Anyway – blah blah blah. I try to move on, but I get hooked trying to fix something that is important to my elders. That is the psychological itch I can’t let go of in watching this thing melt. And, I had a stupendous youth group experience! Spirit-filed, edifying, so great. Was really helpful and healing. Like it was SO amazing. I tried to keep some of that Spirit going for new generations – but no luck.
Appreciate your perspective. I’m lucky enough to be in a UMC church that is holding steady (which is not much of a marker) but is also growing. So I’m hanging in there – for the community, worship, and loyalty I feel. But I’m also wide-eyed and not naive. I’ve been around long enough and in leadership that I can see the problems. I fear that we are moving back from a brief time when we were more like a “motor boat” (nimble) to being a “cruise ship” (hard to turn around). But I’m an optimist at heart- excited to see where the future takes us.