D.S. as Chief Missional Strategist - and Breaking the Rules... Revisited

I was going to write something like this today - and realized this old blog from last September still says what I love, believe, and am challenged by the office of district superintendent. Serving a great district certainly helps!

What I would add are these two things:

1. We need to be continually developing spiritual guidance and direction, both among clergy and laity. It's not enough just to be "faithful" - our failure of not being a spiritually-deep people is not only counter to our Wesleyan roots, it is at the core of our failure to make disciples and be less fruitful in such.
2. Control the need to control. Invite, develop, delegate, and deploy. It's not enough to be disciples - we have to be able to make disciples, who can then go and make disciples. Evangelism and discipleship cannot be micromanaged.

I firmly believe helping both laity and clergy develop their giftedness and call is the best thing we can do in this season, as well as embracing a life of piety - personal and corporate - in the best sense of being Christian and Wesleyan. Partnering with laity, and leading together as co-equals in developing generative discipleship, is essential if Methodism is going to reclaim its Method. 

Pax,

Sky+

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Our episcopal area – the Memphis and Tennessee Conferences – has recently embraced a study of Gil Rendle’s Back to Zero: The Search to Rediscover the Methodist Movement, and it has become the main work of our church’s charge conferences this year. As a district superintendent, I have had a love/hate relationship with this book. It states so clearly what we need to do to regain our mission, but challenges so many things we have grown into, become comfortable with, and accustomed to in our lives and churches.

Of all the sentences in Gil’s book, the two most trying and challenging to this me was this one: 

Our denominational life has become more regulatory than missional. We have become a rule-following people. 

And there is no denying this fact. The United Methodist Church mirrors our world governments at their worst. We regulate. We have policies and standard operating guidelines. We create watchdog groups to be sure others are “acting right.” We caucus ourselves to get more people on our “side.” And when we end up at General Conference, each side tries to present their rules to be enacted so that they will be followed. Having presented my own petition to the last General Conference (Petition 20769, and getting it approved and enacted with 889 votes for, 20 votes against), I have been part of the fray. Granted, it was not a controversial measure, but still just a “rule.”

And in the midst of all of this we somehow forgot our primary mission: to make disciples. Not to forward social causes, not to triumph or champion our “side” as the right one – but to make disciples in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Discipleship is what Jesus commissions us to do. Anything else is at best secondary to that, and if we believe we are something else first, then we are no longer a church. 

Unless we want the Book of Discipline to continue to become larger and the UMC to continue to become smaller, we have to break the cycle – not just because we’re dying, not just because pastors won’t have a pension, but because we’re not making disciples for the transformation of the world – our mission! If we rely on the General Conference to make these bold changes, we will fail. We have to become bold ourselves, and transform into individuals who embrace and enable change. 

So this D.S. is willing to break a few rules, not for the sake of going rogue, but for the sake of being faithful to the Kingdom. I don’t want to meet my Maker one day and be asked why I chose to be a Pharisee instead of bold leader and disciple-maker. There has to be a better way.

What are essentials for district superintendents in this season? Permit me to offer these.

1. Hold individual charge conferences. Yes – I used to think CC’s were a waste of time, and the way they were often previously done they usually were. Reports can be filed and read by anyone who’d like to read them. But what if churches were challenged about what programs and ministries they are currently investing in and seeing how effective they are in making disciples? What if conferencing and conversation took place about self-reflection and self-awareness about what needs to change? What if we shared God stories about how lives were being transformed and how we as individuals can change the way we live out our faith so others hear the good news and not only become disciples, but disciple-makers? 

For a D.S. to truly be a chief missional strategist, s/he must be involved at the congregational level. Having cluster or area charge conferences is a poor substitute for making relationships and leading clergy and laity in substantive change. Approve the pastoral and staff salaries, approve the church leadership for the next year, and file the rest.  Spend the bulk of the charge conference in dialogue, assessment, celebration, repentance, and prayer. It might not be 100% kosher with the Discipline, but it gets at the heart of what we should be doing in conferencing as a means of grace. And while D.S.’s certainly can’t and shouldn’t micromanage every church’s mission in context, they can certainly challenge congregations to ask the right questions, challenge themselves, and become less insular and more neighborhood minded.

If someone doesn’t like it, I guess they can file charges on me. I’m willing to break these minor rules for the sake of enabling mission, instead of preventing it.

2. Be Willing to Risk Being a Pastor Instead of a Supervisor. It is a very tough line to walk, to be both a steward of order and church law and to be a shepherd to pastors and congregations under their charge. Unfortunately, we have created a climate where distrust is fostered and pastors are understandably reticent to confide and trust their D.S. It is a messy and uncomfortable place of tension. Having said that, D.S.’s have to know when to be a D.S. and when to be a pastor, and be able to live with and discern when to be which. That’s not quite kosher to the Discipline either. But I remain convinced that our mission far outweighs our need to be just personnel managers. 

Having a sphere of distrust is antithetical to Kingdom work. It’s doesn’t mean we don’t hold accountability for our leaders – we do. But we cannot continue to operate out of fear or distrust in a Kingdom that is build upon agape and grace. Moreover, if we are asking people to make one-on-one relationships with others to foster discipleship and evangelism, we clergy are going to have to model transparency and vulnerability. 

3. Trust Your Bishop (and Bishops, Be Trustworthy). You cannot ask pastors and congregations to trust you as their leader if you don’t trust your leader. Resist the temptation to tell a congregation, “The bishop is saying this – I’m just the messenger,” or “Our bishop believes this is the faithful way to go. He’s my boss so we’re doing it.” Those are dishonest ways of voicing to others that you disagree but are just doing your job. A D.S. is an extension of the bishop’s office – you are his/her voice. If you have disagreements with your bishop, tell him/her yourself. If we disagree, some conversation in is order so we can discern the work of the Spirit correctly. In the cabinet I serve in, we have found that transparency with each other leads us to leave the room with shared vision and focus. 

4. Be Willing to Get in Your Car and Drive. I bought a used ‘03 Toyota Avalon in 2011. It was used but well-maintained, large enough to be comfortable for long drives and driving other passengers but economical enough to be a good steward. It’s also designed for high mileage (I’m currently at 230k miles). There is no substitute for being physically present with congregations and committees to engender trust and sincerity, and no other way to lead clergy and laity into shared mission and ministry. It does wear on the soul… but I take some comfort in reading Bishop Asbury’s journals – it sure beats horseback! When the weather is nice I ride my motorcycle or open the windows. It is a wonderful way to enjoy God’s creation.

5. Know your Strengths and be Self-Aware. Bishop McAlilly had all of us cabinet members take the Gallup/Tom Rath StrengthsFinder assessment. I also had taken the Myers-Briggs personality assessment several years previous when in spiritual direction. While no one is solely “their assessment”, these are good tools to know about one’s self in how you follow, lead, and where your gifts and challenges lie.  My strengths lie in Achieving, Relating, Strategy,  Learning, and Arranging. My Myers-Briggs type is INFJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging). That means I’m good at being intuitive and have a “feel” for things, and like to work independently and with details. But it also means I have to guard against expecting perfection in others, that I keep in mind the whole picture, and that I seek to be collaborative rather than a lone ranger in my work ethic. If I don’t keep these things in mind, I won’t lead as effectively.

Being a D.S. has never been easy. But in this season, as the UMC lives into a changed reality, it is more crucial than ever that we take thou authority to make sure we are equipping clergy, laity, and local churches to make disciples. That is our mission – and nothing else is sacred but the mission; that is, everything must be on the table for change, revision, renewal, and transformation, so that we might make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Pax,

Sky+

A Pastor By Any Other Name - Revisited

I wrote a blog with the same title a couple of years ago - and after hearing from both the "Excellence in Ministry" event in Colorado and hearing Elaine Heath preach yesterday on the dearth of spirituality in the seminary/academy, I was both encouraged and provoked to reflect more on the subject.

I have often said that the United Methodist Church has no theology of ordination - and I am ready to modify that a little bit to say that the UMC is not PRACTICING a consistent or historical theology of ordination. Methodism no doubt has one of the most interesting histories of ordination, but the one developed versus what it has morphed into are at variance with each other. What we had when Methodism was birthed was an understanding of how the Holy Spirit gifted, enabled, and set apart some servants to preach and provide for the sacraments to be celebrated. What we have now is a tangled mess of clericalism and the antithesis of what Wesley feared (with thanks to Randy Maddox's reminder):

0. What is the end of all ecclesiastical order? Is it not to bring souls from the power of Satan to God, and to build them up in his fear and love? Order, then, is so far valuable as it answers these ends: and if it answers them not, it is nothing worth. - John Wesley, Letter to John Smith, June 25, 1746. 
   

We currently have over twenty classifications for clergy in the United Methodist Church. What I have found is that such is nearly impossible to explain to most laity (and some clergy), as well as to explain to those of other communions and fellowships. And, when examined, is it unsupportable in a Wesleyan ethos to function so.

To complicate the matter more - and to further be at odds with Wesley's intentions - is how we have handled clergy education. One of Wesley's warnings was that in our quest to educate clergy that we exercise prudence in not "professionalizing" them as was often the case with law and medicine, thus "elevating" them from the class of those whom they would be seek to serve. (So it might behoove us to be a little careful about the doctor/medical school, pastor/divinity school comparisons!) It is also important to note that historically, a Divinity degree was not required of Methodist clergy until 1956 (and then, it was a Bachelor of Divinity, not a Master of Divinity). Before then, a course of study was the usual route Methodist pastors took, and college and seminary were alternatives.

The reason I write of this is because of several cruxes we have reached in the UMC (and, I suspect, we are not the only denomination so affected):

• Student debt. Student debt is mounting - at steep rates. That, mixed with tuition that has gone up disproportionately with the cost of living, creates a perfect storm for both the UMC and for UM seminaries: ministerial candidates have debt that is nearly impossible to eradicate, seminaries are stuck between deferring admission to a student because of the undergraduate debt and the need to have enough enrollment to make ends meet, and Boards of Ministry have to wrestle with deferring a candidate who has too much student debt, yet accrued it getting the minimum standard of education required. Of course, some debt counseling would go a long way with students. But with scholarships and fellowships declining, students are forced to go to school part-time to stay out of debt - which delays one's entry into ministry. The unintended consequence of requiring the M.Div is the reality that, now and in the near future, only upper-middle class and upper class folks will be able to afford the education necessary to fulfill the standards of the UMC... a denomination founded on ministering to the least, the last, and the lost in society, with practical divinity at the heart of ministry. (A good resource is the Auburn Theological Seminary report on seminary student debt, found here.)
• Flaws and holes in seminary education. To be honest, our UM seminaries (and many others) are more like schools of theology, not seminaries in the truest definition of the word. While some would argue semantics between academics and praxis, it is fair to say that until recently, our seminaries did very little, if anything, with spirituality and ministerial practice; indeed, spirituality was often a dirty word in the theological academy, not seen as a "credible" discipline worthy of time and study (thankfully, this is changing). When I asked this question once at an alumni advisory committee meeting, I was told by several, "You get that after seminary. There's too much theology, history, and biblical study to cover - you can't expect seminary to do that too. That's not our/their job." My story is not unique.
• Discontinuity of History, Theology, and Practice of Pastoral Ministry. Contrary to popular belief, we ordained local pastors (referred to as local elders) until very recently (1968), which is at variance with our sister AME, AMEZ, and CME denominations, who still ordain their local (i.e., non-itinerating) pastors. One third of our pastors in the UMC are local pastors, who we used to ordain, but not "license" to celebrate the sacraments - with no theological defense of such a practice. I pray that we soon regain the delineation between ordination and conference membership. Ordination/ordo does not "belong" to the individual - it belongs to the Church to use in the course of mission and ministry. To quote Gordon Lathrop: 

The leadership of the liturgy is part of the liturgy. Ordination is intended to include persons in the schedule and pattern whereby the Christian assembly enacts the meaning of the Christian faith. Indeed, the order to which one is ordained is, finally, simply a list of persons who take their place and turn in the leadership of the structure of the ordo. - Gordon Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology, Fortress Press, 1993, p. 190. 

While I was not there, I am encouraged to hear the missional concerns that Prof. Randy Maddox and others raised last week at the Mid-Quadrennial training event in Colorado for Boards of Ministry regarding our present state of affairs in the UMC. I hope our own denomination's Study on Ministry takes note and heeds our own history and theology of our founding and genius of Methodism. As a district superintendent, I can attest that at present:

• a master of divinity degree is no indicator (or insurer) of pastoral effectiveness, nor do I think it should be the "minimum" standard for ordination (and note that I do NOT equate ordination and conference membership/itineration)
• combining churches/charges together are no longer the solution they once were to creating salary packages large enough to pay a full-time salary
• clericalism often inhibits shared lay/clergy leadership
• we need more, not less, flexibility in educational requirements for those seeking ordination that considers situation and context
• seminaries need (and I believe would be willing) to work with us on these frustrations and help us find solutions for local churches and the denomination without "dumbing down" ministerial education. We must be willing to shift our thinking and be willing to ditch outmoded pedagogy

What gives me hope are things like our own Paducah and Paris District's Generative Leadership Academy, and other leadership and missional initiatives across our Connection. I've been blessed to watch leadership skills and spiritual gifts identified and discerned. I've gotten to see the "aha" moments when someone "gets it" in regarding discipleship and mission. And I believe that Methodism's best days are still before us - we just have to be willing to shift our ways to cultivate ordained and lay leadership. 

New wineskins for new wine.

Pax,
Sky+

Rerun: "Nurture and Cultivate Spiritual Disciplines and Patterns of Holiness"

Originally posted on Wednesday, July 21, 2010


"Nurture and cultivate spiritual disciplines and patterns of holiness..." That's not from The Rule of St. Benedict. Nor is it from an objective of a spiritual growth retreat. It is ¶304.1 (b) of the Book of Discipline, the United Methodist's canon law, under the heading "Qualifications for Ordination."

In midst of the numerical decline of much of Protestantism, it seems that we are putting a great deal of emphasis on hospitality, worship, church programming, and communications - and we should be, because those are certainly areas that need shoring up. But when you talk to pastors about spirituality, spiritual direction, spiritual disciplines, etc., you often get a stare in return. I've even heard some say, "That's just too personal." I even heard this one once: "It's all about Jesus, preaching the Word, and getting into the Bible. That spirituality stuff is too Catholic." The smart ass in me considered quoting Scripture to this learned colleague about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, but I resisted. So I simply asked him, "If it's all about Jesus (and it is!), but we can't teach people to pray and be Christologically grouded and formed, who will?" His response was classic: "Well, people should get that at home."

The problem is, I heard that EXACT same thing said when I served on an advisory committee at the seminary I graduated from - by a colleague who should have known better. I had voiced my concern that while we were giving a good theological and historical education, we were doing very little, if any, spiritual formation. To which I was told, "That's not the job of the seminary. Pastors get that on their own." I was much younger at the time and so I kept my young mouth shut. Now I wish I had opened it a little.

But do seminaries engage their students in a conversation about the gravity of choices that they will face or prepare them to make those choices? Does the larger shape of theological education draw their attention to the formative character of the questions asked and answered by its professors? Does the shape of their preparation help them to grasp the difference between a vocation that demands a certain kind of performance from them and the vocation into which they have been called, which requires them to be the kind of people who are possessed by that "basic sense" of what is being asked of them? Are their professors prepared to shape souls as well as intellects? When they graduate, do students have the sense that they have already embarked on that vocation?

As a product of, and participant in, theological education for over three decades, I am inclined to think that the answer to these and other questions is, more often than not, "no." - Frederick W. Schmidt, "What Is Being Asked of You? Canonical Theism and Theological Education", from Canonical Theism, 2008, pp. 273-4.

Schmidt goes on to say that the blame can be place into three areas:

• The quest for credibility from the larger academic community - which preferred historical discussions over faith and spiritual experience.
• The adoption of the university model for graduate education - which drove professors to be more specialized in a few disciplines and led to religious vocational amnesia
• The issues of praxis which diverted the theological task away from spiritual formation towards the importance of leadership, administrative prowness, psychological therapist, and social prophecy

In short, we're teaching pastors a lot about church administration, biblical form criticism, systematic theology (the Barth & Tillich show), social psychology (the Freud and Jung show), and philosophy of religion (the Schleiermacher and Schopenhauer show). I learned these things - and they are certainly important things.

But what about lectio divina? Patristics (the Early Church Fathers)? Prayer offices? Spiritual disciplines? Spiritual discernment? Incarnational theology? Pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit)? Sacramental theology? Discipleship and disciple-ing? Sanctification? I was very blessed by Don Saliers and Ted Hackett, mentors of mine, to develop an interest and passion for these things. But it was self-directed - it was not a mandatory part of the seminary curriculum for United Methodists (or any other Protestants), and to my knowledge it still is not. That leads me to believe we need to quit calling them "seminaries" and start calling them "schools of theology." Good information, but no anchor or undergirding of where these things fit in a life lived with Christ.

If we clergy cannot locate ourselves in our Christian quest and pilgrimage, we certainly cannot lead our churches to see where they are located in the Kingdom of God. We cannot lead with any sense of spiritual or theological authority (only that which is granted by the Book of Discipline!). We cannot tell the Christian story from a standpoint of faith - just from the standpoint as recorded by history.

Schmidt says, most importantly, those who teach present and future clergy must "remember that it is not enough to learn what it is that clergy do. They need to be in touch with what it is that clergy are meant to become. Their own relationship with God, their growth in faith, and the practice of spiritual disciplines are keys to that becoming and to the knowing that accompanies it. In turn, those same experiences are indispensable to the seminarians' own ability to make disciples of others." (p. 285)

If we pastors are mandated to "nurture and cultivate spiritual disciplines and patters of holiness" for our congregations (and we are), then we had better learn them ourselves. According to the Book of Discipline, it's not just "Catholic" - it's Methodist, too. I'm convinced it's Christian to the core.

Sounds like we better get on this. Soon.

Pax,
Sky+

Being a D.S. Doesn't Mean You've Arrived

I've written blogs here and here about being a "new" district superintendent. I don't think I can consider myself new after a year (and two months, twenty-six days, eight hours, and fifty minutes). I'm certainly not an old hand either, but I am convinced of this: being a D.S. doesn't mean you've "arrived." If anything, it tells me how ministry is a quest - and unlike a pilgrimage, one may never "arrive" in the journey of a quest, because it's destination is unknown. We have no idea where following Christ will take us.

While we Methodists don't use the term, being a D.S. is akin to being a suffragan or auxiliary bishop in the Catholic or Anglican traditions; you don't ordain or make rulings of canon/church law, but, because an episcopal area is so large it is impossible for one sole person to perform all the tasks of oversight, you perform the administrative and managerial work of the Church, and assist the bishop in the appointing and overseeing of pastors and churches.

At one time, D.S.'s were chosen based on seniority, who was "due", or where you were located on the infamous "salary sheet" that some clergy had obtained (but don't tell anyone where you got it!) that had been photocopied so many times as to be almost illegible. In a day where United Methodism is in so need of change, however, I think we are seeing a shift towards adaptive leadership, and bishops are giving new thought to who should be on a cabinet. While Bishop Will Willimon has often provoked ire among many, I think his new book Bishop is helping the UMC clarify the role of bishop and superintendent: Bishops need to be primarily leaders, D.S.'s need to be primarily managers. There is of course overlap; leadership and management are companions, and in these days in the Church, both need to be adaptive. How we used to do things has GOT to change, if we want different results. And that means the way D.S.'s are selected, necessarily, has changed. To quote Willimon:

Persons to be considered for the role of DS need not have been in their clergy careers the greatest preachers, the most learned teachers, or the most caring pastors. They must be leaders who have taken opportunities in their churches for risk-taking in order to produce change and managers who are willing to shoulder the responsibilities of supervision.

Later in the book, he raises the difficulty that few clergy have the experience of making tough decisions and making critical judgments about other people. However, in the UMC, if bishops and D.S.'s don't do this, no one else will. I suspect the best candidates for D.S. might be second-career folks who were previously in management where they evaluated others job-performance, hired and fired employees, and made decisions directly bearing on the life or death of a business. One of my colleagues on the cabinet is a former nurse who supervised other nurses and made life-or-death decisions every day. While I have been in ordained ministry longer than she has, I envy her supervisory and managerial experience. I suspect 20+ years as a college and high-school basketball and baseball official, learning good listening and game-management skills, has been as helpful as anything in dealing with pastors and congregations.

Several things keep me humble:

• The UMC, at least in the U.S., is dying.
• While I've been in ministry 25 years, most of the people I supervise and deal with are older than me (the median age of our denomination is between 55-59).
• I am the shepherd of 8900 laypeople and 60-some clergy. Not as large as some districts, or even as a few UMC churches, but large enough to make my insides quake.
• Assisting in making pastoral appointments is hard, given that the local church is (and should be) the priority, that pastors are less willing to fully itinerate, and that over the years we clergy (myself included) have not obtained the skill-sets we need for the 21st century Church.
• I used to be one who looked at D.S.'s with disdain, being anti-authority as most younger adults usually are. Now I'm the bureaucrat who probably can't preach his way out of a wet paper bag.
• The UMC, at least in the U.S., is dying.

The biggest humbler? Jesus Christ is Lord. And as the apostle Paul told us in 1 Timothy, the job of bishops/overseers is to take care and manage God's church. If it's dying, then I am failing.

So have I "arrived?" I can answer that one quickly and succinctly: hell no. At best, being a D.S. is a side-step, not a step up. And in a denomination that is dying, being a manager in it probably isn't the best thing to put on one's resume. 

My prayer is that I am being faithful, am always faithful, and that in making tough decisions and taking risks, I may also be the clay that God can mold and adapt for His will and purpose. 

Pax,

Sky+

Revisiting an Old Blog in Light of Call to Action

I wrote the blog below almost six years ago, partly in retrospect to being a jurisdictional delegate in years past, and I quoted Russ Richey and Tom Frank quite a bit in the years since then in my posts about bishops (click here to read more of them).

This past Sunday I met with two churches in the district I serve about right sizing in light of their pastor moving and some challenges regarding resources. I have their permission to "brag" on them about this - and it's a story worth telling.

It started out as a typical meeting between DS and PPR committees, with questions such as: what are you looking for in a new pastor, what kind of remuneration package can we set, what are your challenges, what preferences do you have - you get the idea. Finally, one member asked, "Look - we need to cut to the chase. Do we need to stay open? Do we need to close? Does the conference have a plan? What is the denomination doing?" He met my questions with much better questions. I (stupidly) said,"Well, we need to work together and find a good solution." That was met with, "Preacher, do you think any church would vote to close itself? If we need to close, you're our leader and you're gonna have to tell us." That provoked a lively discussion: are our leaders leading? These folks were saying, "No." And so I am leading them in finding a solution. These two churches are working wonderfully together; not to keep the churches open, but to actively make disciples in the name of Jesus Christ. They are trusting me to lead them through this, and to make the final call. Part of me shakes to have that much responsibility. The other part reminds me that I am a vessel, a shepherd, a servant doing the will of the Master. I have to get over the false self of fear, and move on to discerning and living the truth. Some won't like it. Some will. Either of those things, however, are irrelevant, as this isn't an election: it's Kingdom work.

This conversation always gets me into trouble! The way we're supposed to "run" the church isn't according to a democracy: we're part of a Kingdom! And in our United Methodist tradition, we have bishops. Sort of (see the below discussion on episkopé and episkopoi).

I'm convinced that we Americans aren't very good at "take thou authority" because we see it as pushy, arrogant, or autocratic - the antithesis of one person/one vote. As a result, we have watered down leadership to the point where it is at best generic: it won't offend anyone, because nothing will be said or done. In trying to do no harm, I suspect we have caused great harm through our neglect of local churches and in the basics of our faith: making disciples.

I've heard every argument in the world for and against regarding the Call to Action for United Methodism. What I find ironic is that after lots of critique (and much of it merited) and complaints about our bishops NOT leading, they (and others) dared to cast a vision in an effort to help us go forward... and some folks are dead-set on sending it down in flames. I am sure some dismiss it BECAUSE it comes from the Council. Some say it is theologically weak, yet many of the arguments I've heard sound more like political rhetoric than honest critique (I guess it's the season we're in!). Some say it wasn't spiritually formed... which suggests that those who helped design it weren't (?). And some say there needs to be more strategy fleshed out, but I find myself wondering if ANY plan, super-documented and full of action plans, would have a prayer for these simple reasons: it's a change. We don't trust others. It's an unknown.

And so I repost an old blog so that we might support our present bishops and support those who might be elected bishops in the months to come. I am certainly prejudiced as a superintendent, being a representative of the office of bishop. But I also love the United Methodist Church, and believe she is of God. In praying for our leaders, let us pray about leadership itself, and how we might embody it!

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Thursday, July 06, 2006

The Future of Episcopacy in the UMC – Part 0.5

I say Part 0.5… because this should have preceded my May 26th blog entry.

It strikes me as problematic that The Book of Discipline talks a lot about the praxis of the episcopacy yet says ZERO about the theological foundations of episcopacy. Worse, there are been virtually NO discussions in any medium regarding the ecclesiology of bishops. All of this became painfully obvious to me when I was a jurisdictional delegate in 2004.

Electing six bishops in the Southeastern Jurisdiction in 2004 was no easy task…as the record number of ballots to elect six certainly testified! My take on it was that we live in a Church and world so desperately crying out for leadership that we want to make the right decision. So, it appeared to me, we elected folks based (1) on “pedigree,” and (2) by racial and gender makeup. While we desperately need good leadership in a denomination living in such interesting times, I think we continue to expect a lot of our bishops without empowering them to the task.

Scholar Raymond E. Brown wrote about the distinction between episkopé and episkopoi. Episkopé has to do with oversight and function in the Church. Episkopoi is the actual office/person of a bishop. We say that our bishops have “general oversight and promotion of the temporal and spiritual interests of the entire Church,” (¶45, Book of Discipline). But in actuality, if you read the Discipline and see how General Agencies and the General Conference works, most of the oversight (and certainly agents of change) occurs there rather than by the bishops. Unlike Catholicism, the General Conference - not the episcopacy - is the magisterium in United Methodism. And if you’ve ever been to General Conference, you realize quickly that caucuses and lobbies often help influence and carry the vote. In short, the UMC is a democratic body… hopefully led by the Spirit, but democratic nonetheless. Our episkopé, it seems, is the General Conference and General Agencies. The episkopoi that we elect are relegated to be administrative heads and executive officers.

Is it fair, then, to expect them to be agents of change when we don’t even give them a vote? Make no mistake, the power to appoint pastors is no small thing, but even when a bishop ordains ministerial candidates, they have absolutely no say about who they ordain: that’s the conference Board of Ministry’s job. The list goes on and on. Should we really be nominating and electing our best leaders and prophets, or elect our best administrators and organizers instead? We’ve elected some really talented folks, but I think the episcopal office as present in the UMC stifles the very gifts that got them nominated and elected in the first place.

It’s really not surprising in United Methodism that we don’t give bishops more authority; the UMC is mostly an American church, and America loves its individualism and democracy. America also likes to have someone “in charge” to blame. Is it possible that we set bishops up just as we do CEO’s of corporations? If we're doing well and succeeding, great: we’ll keep paying you and giving you your status. But if things are going wrong, it’s your fault – and we can point our collective finger at you and blame you; after all, you’re our leader. We may not give you enough authority and power to do anything, but hey, that’s why you get the big bucks.

To quote one excellent source: “Bishops have no program and propose no legislation. They do not appoint heads of administrative agencies and have limited powers of nomination. They have few sanctions at their disposal, and certainly no right to fire the people they work with. [They have no] legislative or judicial authority.” (Richey and Frank, Episcopacy in the Methodist Tradition, p. 96).

Why in the heck would you want this job? Do elected bishops know what’s in front of them before they are consecrated? And do we as a Church have any idea what we’re doing (or not doing) when we lay hands on someone and consecrate them to the office?

It’s possible that we’ve given our bishops an impossible task. We live in a time when the Church is crying out for leadership… but are we giving our bishops the tools to do it?

Sometime, I’ll post another blog with some strategies and proposals.

Pax,
Sky+


We should all be indebted to Russell Richey and Thomas Frank for their book, Episcopacy in the Methodist Tradition – Perspectives and Proposals. I hope the Church appreciates and ponders their gift to us, and hope that Dean Richey and Tom will forgive me if I confused my own thoughts with theirs and didn’t footnote properly (yes, I’m still scared of my former seminary professors).

REVISITED: Things That Have To Be Revisited

I wrote this not quite a year ago... thought it was worth a repost... (Originally posted May 26, 2011)

"After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years (a sunk cost if ever there was one), people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them." — Marshall Goldsmith, from Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, and How to Get It Back If You Lose It

Some lessons learned very quickly as a new district superintendent...

If you want to get United Methodist clergy bent out of shape, mention some of these things:

• salaries/remuneration
• guaranteed appointment
• parsonage/housing allowance

If you want to get United Methodist churches bent out of shape, mention some of these things:

• rising apportionments yet little accountability from general agencies
• being sent ineffective clergy
• being "sold" on the idea that a housing allowance will be cheaper than maintaining a parsonage

This highly unscientific survey is one that many superintendents encounter all over the Connection. And the recent Call to Action reordering to the United Methodist Church has folks from everywhere bent out of shape about change, rules being broken, and the going against principles previously held dear.

Has anyone ever given any thought to the fact that maybe, just maybe, some of those things we have held dear just might be part of the problem?

Guaranteed pastoral appointments sounded like a great idea: women and minorities would be assured of a place in the pulpit instead of prejudices dictating church leadership. The unintended consequence? Exiting someone who is an elder in the church yet ineffective in ministry is a tough row to hoe, and regardless of how well the letter of the law is followed and how much documentation you have, it is an even bet that you'll be sued (or at least threatened with such) as an annual conference.

Most pastors want/expect/require a raise in salary and a larger church whenever they receive a new pastoral appointment. Problem? In a denomination with shrinking resources and membership, this is becoming less and less of a possibility. It is becoming more common in pastoral moves that there is little or any "raise", and sometimes it is even to a smaller church or a church that pays a lower salary. In most cases, it's not punishment, but a simple reality of availability and congregational need.

Apportionments sound like a great idea too - doing more with a dollar in mission nationally and globally than you would ever be able to do as a single church. However, in some cases general agencies morphed from being missional agencies working for the local church into entities to themselves, often with agendas that run tangent to the very congregations that support them (as well as sometimes playing footloose with the Book of Discipline, making it hard on superintendents like me to defend paying some apportionments).

Giving housing allowances in lieu of parsonages also sounded like a great idea: church and conference trustees could get out of the housing maintenance business, pastors could build equity not previously had. But it soon led to making it more difficult for pastors to itinerate. Churches started doing the math and realized it wasn't always cheaper to sell off their parsonages and pay housing allowances after all, and some now face the real possibility of not being able to afford to pay a housing allowance OR buy a parsonage. Some preachers found out that selling their house or recovering their investment wasn't as easy as the realty experts told us.

All of these things were done by committee. All done with good intentions. Problems? Lack of vision. No long-range planning or direction. Unwillingness to adjust and say, "That was a good idea at the time, but no longer works well."

These are just a few of the things we have to revisit as a Church and denomination - not because of what we did before was bad, but simply because it no longer works or is effective.

The good news is that Jesus Christ is still Savior, and still very much alive - and can redeem anything. There are a lot of churches and people who are doing marvelous work and walking by faith!

So what do we need to be willing to change? What no longer works? And how do we muster up the courage to change? I invite your responses.

Pax,
Sky+

Learnings of a New District Superintendent

A few months ago I wrote "Confessions of a New Superintendent." Since then, I have been in cabinet meetings to assist in pastoral projections, met with staff-parish committees, met with pastors, taken a lot of phone calls, visited with many people in my office, held a couple of district clergy meetings, and served as host superintendent at our annual conference (and yes, Jorge Acevedo, I wore a suit four days in a row). It has been a baptism by flame thrower.

What I've learned:

• D.S's drive a lot - my predecessor drove over 200k miles in five years - so I bought a used car built for the high miles and low maintenance.
• D.S.'s get thrown into the midst of conflict, and my sports officiating experience in dealing with coaches all these years has finally paid off: listen more and speak less, show respect in the midst of conflict and disagreement, and admit your mistakes.
• Never wait to put something on your calendar later - do it then.
• Listen to softer music when driving on "D.S. business." Save AC/DC and Rush for fun driving.
• Even if you're in a hurry, eat smart. The "Freshman Ten" applies to new D.S.'s too!

The most sobering thing I've learned is that there is no correlation between education of clergy and clergy effectiveness. I wrote about this in an earlier blog, but I am beginning to see and hear about it first hand as a D.S. We have pastors who have little or no spiritual depth, yet are appointed to churches to serve as spiritual guides and leaders - and laity are noticing. Emmaus Walks, Academies for Spiritual Formation, SoulFeasts, and other such venues of opportunity for spiritual direction and formation are helping folks grow in their spiritual walk and discipleship. But they are also helping folks realize how much many of their pastors are neglecting to teach these basics of the faith AND, more to the point, have no spiritual depth or discernment of their own. It doesn't help that more and more clergy surveyed (anonymously of course) only read the Bible for sermon fodder, and rarely for devotion. In all of the consultations that I did this year, not one church asked me to send them a good pulpit preacher. But I did hear "Send us a praying pastor" more than once.

I am convinced more than ever that seminaries are failing us. And now, the perception is real among those who help fund them. Two conferences recently dealt with resolutions to sever connections with one United Methodist seminary.

I will readily admit that I know some local (licensed) pastors who are far more spiritually adept and mature than many elders that I know. Many of them are second-career pastors.

I am not trying to be anti-seminary. But it pains me greatly to admit that a seminary education may not be the best preparation for one to do ordained ministry, and I am more inclined to believe that it is not an absolute necessity anymore. I come from a family that greatly values education - indeed, I am the only McCracken in my family without a doctoral degree. But given the high price of money and time involved in a seminary education and the fact that we presently have pastors in a dying denomination who cannot speak, live, or teach a spiritual ethic and discipline to the congregations they serve - are we not guilty of horrible stewardship? Lest you think I am being horribly un-Methodist and anti-intellectual, consider this journal entry of John Wesley:

I had a good deal of conversation with Mr. N-----n. His case is very peculiar. Our Church requires that Clergymen should be men of learning, and, to this end, have an University education. But how many have an University education, and yet no learning at all? Yet these men are ordained! Meantime, one of eminent learning, as well as unblamable behavior, cannot be ordained because he was not at the University! What a mere farce is this! Who would believe that any Christian Bishop would stoop to so poor an evasion? - John Wesley, Journal Entry, March 20, 1760

Of course, John Wesley isn't the final authority on anything - but he saw the mistakes of being a complacent Church that put legalism above faithfulness. That is certainly nothing new to the faith! Practical divinity requires practical education and formation.

Homosexuality and political posturing seem to be at the top of the list of agenda items for the next General Conference. I would suggest instead a focus to the essentials of Christianity and Methodism: To go and make disciples, and to teach and practice the works of piety - in other words, to teach and preach the spiritual disciplines:

The chief of these means are prayer, whether in secret or with the great congregation; searching the Scriptures; (which implies reading, hearing, and meditating thereon;) and receiving the Lord's Supper, eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Him: And these we believe to be ordained of God, as the ordinary channels of conveying his grace to the souls of men. - John Wesley

Making disciples DOES matter, and while depth of discipleship is important, numbers are important too! Evangelical isn't a dirty word - if we're Methodists, it's OUR word. Teaching and witnessing isn't bad manners; it's the Great Commission. If our clergy can't and won't do these things, how can we expect our laity to do it?

Pax,
Sky+

The Future of Episcopacy in the UMC – Part 6

Bishops in the UMC have a thankless, lonely, and impossible job. Anyone who disagrees with that doesn't know much about the episcopacy in United Methodism. My own bishop is currently facing the task of appointing pastors to the three largest churches in our conference. That, along with the task of "servant leadership, general oversight and supervision," and "guarding the faith, order, liturgy, doctrine, and discipline of the Church" for 203,961 members (2009 figures) of two annual conferences, is not just a daunting task - it is an impossible task.

I am with Russ Richey and Tom Frank, when they suggested in their book Episcopacy in the Methodist Tradition that in the UMC, our bishops are really archbishops, and our district superintendents are bishops in the truest and most practical sense of the word. I wish we would just go ahead and make that name change now. John Wesley's own bias about bishops was everpresent in his writings and actions - using the word "superintendent" instead of "bishop/overseer" (a more biblical word). In a recent column by Donald Haynes, we are reminded that the layout of our church structure was influenced more by Francis Asbury than John Wesley. Even so, bishops slowly lost their power over the years - and while the power to make pastoral appointments is no small thing, the ever-changing reality of a broken itinerancy waters down that power. The Methodist itinerancy was designed for single young men on horseback in a rural/agrarian society. It was not designed for pastors with families, who possibly have spouses who are professionals, and who instead of living in a parsonage own a house. How itinerant can we really be? And how much "power" do bishops have to lead effectively?

Haynes suggested some new paradigms. I find myself in agreement with some and at variance with others:

• More bishops so they can be less bureaucratic, more pastoral and have more ongoing dialogue with their parish lay leadership and their clergy.
We already have this with what we now call superintendents. Let's call them bishops and allow them to function as such. In every sense of the word, superintendents fill that role in the traditional history and intent of the biblical word episkopé.
• Appointments follow a negotiated, consultative process in which local church laity have a voice in selection with the bishop making recommendations and having the right of "veto."
I don't think this is a bad idea either. Who else knows a congregation better than the leadership of its congregation? Forcing congregations to take a pastor because the cabinet/bishop "needs their church" is not servant leadership - it's serving clergy. The intent is wrong and the math is bad - the needs of the many are at stake in servanthood, not the needs of the servant.
• A cabinet of selected clergy and laity whom the bishop uses for advice in appointment-making (eliminating the expensive position of District Superintendent
Just call the superintendents "bishops." As far as what to do with archbishops? We need to elect our best and brightest mind and spiritual souls to this office - regardless of jurisdiction. Who do we trust to discern the Spirit and the will of God? Who can best select our leadership for our churches and areas? Those are the people whom we should elect. I mean, that's what we say the job is in the Book of Discipline. The main thing we have to ask ourselves is this: do we trust God and the Spirit enough to elect a man or woman to that task? If we really don't, let's quit playing games, get rid of the office, and go to a call system.
• Appointments made at any time during the calendar year, and made for four years, not one.
Amen. Longer tenures make for longer pastorates. I had the privilege of studying under Bishop Joel McDavid in seminary (he had retired and was the churchman-in-residence), and at lunch one day I remembering him saying that if you told a church and a pastor they had to make an appointment work for 3-4 years, it might work well beyond that - and the church might even grow. Of course, folks would counter that by saying that long tenures are bad for the appointive system. That begs the question: is the appointive system serving churches, or pastors?
• Use of more local pastors, part-time and full-time.
Amen again. I'm less convinced then ever that seminary-trained clergy are worth the costs of time and money. I might think differently if the Church was growing. More and more disciplines are getting away from the traditional educational model and moving toward a practical approach of training and educating. Why should ministry be any different?
• The tearful, economically driven demise of the Equitable Salary Fund and guaranteed appointment.
Absolutely. While the intent of both of these things was noble, I think the "experiment" has not yielded the results intended - akin to Prohibition in the 1920's and 30's: a great idea but it had unintended and disastrous consequences! The guaranteed appointment should have released pastors to be bold, creative, and prophetic. Instead, it has (for the most part) created complacency and ineffectiveness - at a horrible cost with loss of membership and economic hardship as the results. The Equitable Salary Fund and setting of minimum salaries was intended for missional purposes, but instead has given way to a welfare mentality and impediment to itinerancy. All elders in good standing MUST be appointed, and MUST be guaranteed a minimum compensation. What happens when an annual conference has more elders than they can appoint? And what happens when more money is needed to supplement minimum salaries than a conference can afford?

We could make the job of bishops a lot easier if we had reasonable expectations of them and trusted them. We instead ask them to do the impossible and when they don't deliver, then distrust and disdain set in. After a period of years, the cycle becomes self-perpetuating. Why don't things get any better? I suspect we have ourselves to blame: expecting growth and radical improvement when nothing has changed is unrealistic - and perhaps a little insane!

Dr. Haynes ended his article by reminding us of the seven last words of the church: "We've never done it that way before." I pray we not give in to temptation by repeating them. To quote the Good Book: "New wineskins for new wine."

Pax,
Sky+

"Nurture and Cultivate Spiritual Disciplines and Patterns of Holiness"

"Nurture and cultivate spiritual disciplines and patterns of holiness..." That's not from The Rule of St. Benedict. Nor is it from an objective of a spiritual growth retreat. It is ¶304.1 (b) of the Book of Discipline, the United Methodist's canon law, under the heading "Qualifications for Ordination."

In midst of the numerical decline of much of Protestantism, it seems that we are putting a great deal of emphasis on hospitality, worship, church programming, and communications - and we should be, because those are certainly areas that need shoring up. But when you talk to pastors about spirituality, spiritual direction, spiritual disciplines, etc., you often get a stare in return. I've even heard some say, "That's just too personal." I even heard this one once: "It's all about Jesus, preaching the Word, and getting into the Bible. That spirituality stuff is too Catholic." The smart ass in me considered quoting Scripture to this learned colleague about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, but I resisted. So I simply asked him, "If it's all about Jesus (and it is!), but we can't teach people to pray and be Christologically grouded and formed, who will?" His response was classic: "Well, people should get that at home."

The problem is, I heard that EXACT same thing said when I served on an advisory committee at the seminary I graduated from - by a colleague who should have known better. I had voiced my concern that while we were giving a good theological and historical education, we were doing very little, if any, spiritual formation. To which I was told, "That's not the job of the seminary. Pastors get that on their own." I was much younger at the time and so I kept my young mouth shut. Now I wish I had opened it a little.

But do seminaries engage their students in a conversation about the gravity of choices that they will face or prepare them to make those choices? Does the larger shape of theological education draw their attention to the formative character of the questions asked and answered by its professors? Does the shape of their preparation help them to grasp the difference between a vocation that demands a certain kind of performance from them and the vocation into which they have been called, which requires them to be the kind of people who are possessed by that "basic sense" of what is being asked of them? Are their professors prepared to shape souls as well as intellects? When they graduate, do students have the sense that they have already embarked on that vocation?

As a product of, and participant in, theological education for over three decades, I am inclined to think that the answer to these and other questions is, more often than not, "no." - Frederick W. Schmidt, "What Is Being Asked of You? Canonical Theism and Theological Education", from Canonical Theism, 2008, pp. 273-4.

Schmidt goes on to say that the blame can be place into three areas:

• The quest for credibility from the larger academic community - which preferred historical discussions over faith and spiritual experience.
• The adoption of the university model for graduate education - which drove professors to be more specialized in a few disciplines and led to religious vocational amnesia
• The issues of praxis which diverted the theological task away from spiritual formation towards the importance of leadership, administrative prowness, psychological therapist, and social prophecy

In short, we're teaching pastors a lot about church administration, biblical form criticism, systematic theology (the Barth & Tillich show), social psychology (the Freud and Jung show), and philosophy of religion (the Schleiermacher and Schopenhauer show). I learned these things - and they are certainly important things.

But what about lectio divina? Patristics (the Early Church Fathers)? Prayer offices? Spiritual disciplines? Spiritual discernment? Incarnational theology? Pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit)? Sacramental theology? Discipleship and disciple-ing? Sanctification? I was very blessed by Don Saliers and Ted Hackett, mentors of mine, to develop an interest and passion for these things. But it was self-directed - it was not a mandatory part of the seminary curriculum for United Methodists (or any other Protestants), and to my knowledge it still is not. That leads me to believe we need to quit calling them "seminaries" and start calling them "schools of theology." Good information, but no anchor or undergirding of where these things fit in a life lived with Christ.

If we clergy cannot locate ourselves in our Christian quest and pilgrimage, we certainly cannot lead our churches to see where they are located in the Kingdom of God. We cannot lead with any sense of spiritual or theological authority (only that which is granted by the Book of Discipline!). We cannot tell the Christian story from a standpoint of faith - just from the standpoint as recorded by history.

Schmidt says, most importantly, those who teach present and future clergy must "remember that it is not enough to learn what it is that clergy do. They need to be in touch with what it is that clergy are meant to become. Their own relationship with God, their growth in faith, and the practice of spiritual disciplines are keys to that becoming and to the knowing that accompanies it. In turn, those same experiences are indispensable to the seminarians' own ability to make disciples of others." (p. 285)

If we pastors are mandated to "nurture and cultivate spiritual disciplines and patters of holiness" for our congregations (and we are), then we had better learn them ourselves. According to the Book of Discipline, it's not just "Catholic" - it's Methodist, too. I'm convinced it's Christian to the core.

Sounds like we better get on this. Soon.

Pax,
Sky+

Standard: Does It Make Disciples?

I recently read an operational assessment of the United Methodist Church - a very critical look at our denomination and its effectiveness. In reviewing some of my former blogs, a lot of what I was perceiving (and fearing) was confirmed by the assessment. Rather that gloat, I would hope we would prayerfully consider the changes we need to make to be faithful to God and His Kingdom as United Methodists.

One main observation is that there is too much "distance" between the local church, the Annual Conference, and the General Church. That is probably not a real shocker to most folks in the local church, but I suspect annual conferences and the General Church find this at best hard to believe and at worst are in denial that this is the perception. However, General Agencies and Annual Conference agencies often find themselves competing against each other (ever listen to or read Annual Conference reports?). Plus, some General Church work often alienates or sends mixed signals to local and even Annual Conference work (remember the infamous UMW study on Israel and Palestine?). This serves to confuse folks, and sometimes leaving the person in the pew to wonder, "Is anyone leading us? Is there any rhyme and reason to our denomination?" One particularly negative impression from some interviewed for the assessment even remarked, "[The agencies] 'dictate rather than serve.'" That's not good.

Another observation was one I made a few years ago, that jurisdictions are a "middle entity" that need to be discontinued. This was also mentioned in the assessment: "Our finding is that the costs (in distance and in dollars) may not be justified by the 'benefit' that is delivered by the Jurisdictional Conference structures." Basically, jurisdictions elect bishops; other than that, anything else is redundant to what General Church and Annual Conference structures do. Why not elect them at General Conference, as was the case for many years? Added to the fact that the costs are not worth the benefit, Jurisdictional conferences were birthed mainly from racism. Why keep that vestige around? I don't buy the argument that it's a matter of tradition or heritage: that seems akin to the "Heritage not Hate" stickers I occasionally see on bumpers with the Rebel Flag.

As far as effective leadership, the assessment gives the UMC a bleak future: we have no clarity of mission or responsibility (who does what?), we have lots of distrust of both the leaders and institutional church, and we cannot define competency. One interviewee was quoted to say that the Church "has a systemic allergy to authority." We probably got that honestly, starting with the earliest Methodist preachers who sometimes referred to John Wesley as "Pope John."

I think the obvious question is, "Do we want to make disciples?" And if we do, we have to throw out some of the old standby arguments we used to hold dear and challenge them, like, "Numbers don't have anything to do with ministry." As a friend of mine said, if I have three children and take them to the park, and only come back with two, my wife probably won't settle for me saying, "But honey, just think how much better we can raise these two children as opposed to three!!" And, as Jason Byassee reminds us, numbers aren't bean-counting; numbers DO matter and their upward trend is a sign of church health.

John Wesley certainly wasn't a perfect human being; his marriage was a tragedy and he could be downright boorish at times. But the Method of Methodism was genius, and proven. It involves trust in Christ, vulnerability in spirit, and willingness to be obedient and faithful.

We will have to own up to our mistakes (and I use the collective "our" because we CLAIM to be one in Christ and to be in a Connection). We will have to realize that our pensions might run out. We will have to realize that guaranteed pastoral appointments and salaries, General Church Agencies, and other entities are not realistically sustainable with current membership decline and rising costs. We will have to objectively diagnose ourselves and embrace the reality that we are dying - and do something about it rather than give into the insanity of continuing to do the same thing and expecting things to change.

Don't get me wrong - there ARE good things happening. There ARE faithful folks making disciples. And there are churches in the UMC who are growing. But they seem to be the exception rather than the rule, and we often intellectually dismiss them! "Well, that's not Methodist what they're doing!" Unfortunately, some of these same objections could have been lodged at Wesley himself. What we call "Methodist" is often more about our likes and dislikes, rather than the Method of making disciples.

For clergy, the temptation is to coast and retire. For laity, the temptation is to go through the motions and emulate (but not build upon) what our parents and grandparents did.

Lead us not into temptation, O Lord...

Pax,
Sky+

Guaranteed Pastoral Appointments - A Luxury We Can Afford Anymore? Revisited.

The Commission to Study Ministry will be recommending to the General Conference in 2012 to do away with guaranteed pastoral appointments. I wrote about this last year in this blog.

One statement confirms what I always thought - the clergy shortage was a myth. Yes, a lot of clergy are retiring, but the general membership of the church is declining as well. We desperately need leadership borne out of passion, not entitlement.

My only caution is that we not see this as a "fix all." One commission member noted: "Guaranteeing clergy jobs produces 'a culture of mediocrity. It allows people to coast rather than to continue to strive and to grow,' said Seattle Area Bishop Grant Hagiya, a commission member. 'What we need is the flexibility to maximize our leadership to those who are going to make a difference.'"

Maybe. But Southern Baptists are losing members too, and they certainly can't blame guaranteed appointments for their demise. Leadership, an understanding of discipleship, and a willingness to be spiritual guides and models seem to be needed now more than ever.

John Meunier, a fellow blogger and bi-vocational local pastor, writes a very good blog about this and what doing away with guaranteed jobs in the UMC might mean. An exerpt:

I think radical changes in the rules for ministry must go hand-in-hand with a renewal of a shared sense of our Wesleyan roots. It is from our shared identity as a people called Methodist that we need to define what we mean by effective ministry and the nature of the mission of the church.

Such a move also places much more importance on the role and quality of conference leadership. Do we select bishops and district superintendents to be the leaders with an clear eye for ministerial effectiveness and the skills and gifts to nurture and support mission-oriented churches and clergy?

Will our church structure and rules need significant rewriting to free clergy to do what they would be expected to do?

Does the denomination need to take on itself more of the expense of the educating of new pastors?

I look forward to the conversation.

So do I. Of course... does it have a chance of passing?

Pax,
Sky+

Are We Thinking Ahead? Who's Job Is It?

In the past few weeks, our bishop and cabinet sent out a letter: "Making the System Work." You can find a copy of the letter here.

The letter has rubbed some clergy the wrong way. Some see it as a threat. Others see it as void of anything pastoral. I see it as a retelling of what is already in the Book of Discipline. The problem is, we really haven't followed the spirit or the letter of the Discipline when it comes to the itinerancy. We are "selectively itinerant" these days, in my opinion, because we have been allowed to be. From the letter:

1. The mission of the local church comes first. As ministers, we are called to serve, not to be served. Our primary effort will be to place the best qualified minister, according to the needs of the church. Churches involved in mission and ministry for Jesus Christ and supportive of the connection will be given first consideration.
2. The appointment process deserves our honesty, a view for the good of the whole connection. Ministers are members of the Annual Conference and open to appointment in any part of the Conference.

We all know that while this is the theory, it has not been the practice. Some clergy have been truly itinerant, serving in varying appointments (and often across state lines, as our conference includes Western Tennessee and the Purchase Area of Kentucky). Some have requested that they not be appointed outside of a metropolitan area or across a state line. Some have citied educational needs for children, vocational needs for spouses, and consideration for those with aging parents - the list of variables is long and convoluted, and not without merit or concern.

But to complicate matters, we started selling off parsonages a few years ago. When this issue was raised a few years ago, someone found a realtor who spoke on the floor of the annual conference and said that one could "break even" on buying a house and selling it within 6 years (the length of a district superintendent tenure). I suppose that would be possible in a FEW places in the U.S... but nowhere close to where I live! As a result, we have added another variable to the itinerancy: the buying and selling of a house. Of course this is not a new phenomenon to most professions, but in our annual conference, clergy often move at the drop of a hat, and even in a "good" conference year pastoral appointments are rarely close to "done" until a month before a move happens. Four weeks is a very short window to (1) list a house for sale, (2) pack to move, (3) say farewell to a congregation, (4) move into a house that (5) hopefully you've bought (and been able to sell the other one), and (6) begin work at your new church/parish.

I think all of these more recent "convolutions" for the itinerancy makes it very difficult for our bishop and cabinet to try and "Make the System Work," because our ideas and practices about the itinerancy have strayed so far away from the ideal. When bishops and cabinets send us such statements, they sound harsh because we've been casual about being truly itinerant. But all of us who were ordained elders agreed to be appointed "without reservation." If we weren't comfortable with that, we had the option of being a local pastor, appointed year to year, but without a guaranteed appointment.

If we look at all of this from the standpoint of our laity, however, we begin to see another side. They can very easily and accurately say, "We have been faithful to what we've been asked to do." They have provided parsonages (or housing allowances), paid salaries, pensions, and insurance. They want the best pastor for their church, because that is what the church promises to provide for them. It is very hard to defend against the claim of some of our laity that our leadership has failed them. We have. And that's a corporate "we" - that's the nature of the covenant and the Connection.


Problem? The same institution that says: "The mission of the local church comes first. As ministers, we are called to serve, not to be served," also allowed parsonages to be sold off and allowed clergy to be selectively itinerant. Can we blame this bishop and cabinet? Not fully. But we clergy ultimately do have to take responsibility for our failure of leadership. That's the nature of the Order of Elder - we are in COVENANT with each other to serve the church.

Are we thinking ahead? One thing I learned from my mentor Don Saliers many years ago was this: The Holy Spirit rarely rejects good planning. In these difficult times, I think the Spirit demands it. It's our job to lead our congregations - and to serve, not to be served. That requires a lot of prayer, planning, and sacrifice, all with a Gospel bent.

Pax,
Sky+

Do We Need to Reconsider Seminary-Trained Clergy?

I learned the other day that a candidate for the ordained ministry in another annual conference was deferred ordination not because he didn't measure up to doctrinal or psychological issues or didn't have the gifts for preaching or teaching; he had too much educational debt (for those of you not United Methodist, ordination candidates are asked, "Are you presently in debt as to embarrass you in your ministry?").

After doing some checking, I discovered that the average student gets out of undergraduate school at a public university with about $21k of debt, a 108% increase from 10 years ago (God only knows what the average debt is from a private school). In looking around at United Methodist related seminaries (the encouraged education of UM clergy), the average seminary debt (3 years of graduate school) is presently running around $30k. That's really not that bad, considering a year's tuition and at Duke Divinity runs $21,640, a year at Emory runs $15,500, a year at Asbury $14,400, and a year at Garrett-Evangelical $15,600 (I didn't include yearly living expenses, which estimates run $11k to $18k a year).

So let's say an ordination candidate gets the minimum education required and comes out of undergraduate and graduate school with "average" educational debt. That will be $51k. The problem is that the minimum salary for seminary graduates ranges from $25k (Rio Grand) to $47k (Western New York). In other words, the debt load (at least from a financial institution's viewpoint) is unacceptable given the income of the individual.

My education has served me well: I have diplomas from the University of Tennessee and Emory University hanging on the wall of my office. My educational debt? $0. I got 1/2 of my undergraduate tuition covered since my father was UT faculty, and I was able to work to pay the other half. I received a fellowship for seminary that paid my tuition and served as a student pastor for a place to live and living expenses. My situation was not - and is not - the norm, I fear.

Are we pricing ourselves out of ministry? One blogger suggests so ("Can We Afford Seminary?"). And more to the point, does the M.Div really serve the Church well? Has it contributed to the life of the Church or exacerbated clericalism? Do we see the role of clergy as "keepers of the faith" or do we see clergy leadership and preaching as part of what the Church does as a whole body?

I am convinced that God doesn't need our M.Div degrees, but I am equally convinced that God does not need our ignorance either. However, we might be better served going back of the very traditional model of local seminaries and apprenticeships as opposed to a professional degree. For one, it's much, much cheaper. For another, the last 50-70 years when M.Div's have become the norm have not seen a marked increase in the number of Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc. - in fact, we have gotten smaller.

Perhaps we would be served much better by a work-study type of program, night classes, online study, and the like. Some say this is dumbing down - but the reality is, especially in the United Methodist Church where the "average" church is less than 150 folks, that we probably need fewer M.Div graduates and more folks who are spiritually formed and called. It certainly worked for 1900 years.

The other alternatives are not viable ones: higher clergy salaries are not realistic. Raising church apportionments to cover the total costs of seminary graduates is unrealistic as well. And as a seminary education necessarily takes place in a private university, private education is not cheap. I am just wondering how long this present model will work: we can't require folks to get an education to be qualified and then tell them they are carrying too much educational debt so we won't ordain them.

I think are kidding ourselves if we think this problem will simply go away. If I were 44 years old with a family and felt the call to preach, I don't think I could do it in the United Methodist Church: I couldn't afford it unless a rich uncle paid my way... and I am fairly sure I don't have any rich uncles.

Perhaps a model the General Board of Ministry should consider is a localized seminary option (it worked in the Early Church for a long long time). Maybe we've bought into American consumerism too much and just tried to "buy" what we need instead of doing the hard work ourselves.

Pax,
Sky+

Ordained Ministry in the UMC - Part II

Someone asked me when I was going to write a book about my thoughts about the UMC. I told him in light of my last post, writing such a book would fall under Category Three of the Magliozzi's theory: "Reinvent Everything." Plus, if I did write a book and got it published, someone might get the idea that I was considering a run at the episcopacy. Yikes.

There are way too many good things already written that need to be heeded. Related to ordained ministry, a document that REALLY needs to be read, studied, and implemented is "Becoming a Pastor: Reflections on the Transition into Ministry." You can download it by clicking here. The Alban Institute did the work, and the Lilly Endowment funded it. That's enough authority for me.

The report looked at 800 beginning pastors in their first call or appointment in parish ministry, a collective endeavor that was named Transition into Ministry. It shows, with damning evidence, the wide disconnects between beginning pastors, seminary education, and denominational judicatories (in the UMC, that would be our Cabinets and Conference Boards of Ministry). The bottom line is that the transition into ministry is an increasingly complex and lonely process which is not just undermining clergy effectiveness, but starving churches of leadership and spiritual direction.

Seminary doesn't always help. The report quoted a book that a Lutheran pastor had written several years ago about his first church (Richard Lischer's Open Secrets: A Spiritual Journey through a Country Church). Years of theological and ministerial preparation, along with a Ph.D, had not adequately prepared him for the average church in Southern Illinois (just a hop, skip, and a jump from where I presently live). He made it through, but came to a very shocking discovery. In his words:

Eight years of theological education had rendered us [Lischer and his seminary classmates] uncertain of our identity and, like our professors, unemployable in the real world. After years of grooming, we were no longer sure what it meant to be a pastor or if we wanted to be one. (Open Secrets, p. 40, and "Becoming a Pastor", p. 9)

It is quite possible that we have approached arrogance in our model of educating and training clergy. A cookie-cutter process, psychological evaluations, and theological evaluation of clergy candidates may have their place, but it is not contributing to the essentials that are evidently not being taught: being the local spiritual leader in a community, being able to work collaboratively with a parish that has a broad range of viewpoints and inviting shared vision to church ministry and mission. Seminaries tend to reward folks with self-initiative. Congregations need leaders who can work with people. Before we knock seminaries too hard, most seminary professors are folks steeped in academia, not ecclesia. And in all honesty, at least in United Methodism, our seminaries are really not seminaries - they are schools of divinity/theology.

While I don't want to knock academia, it is possible that we have made it the focus of the learning experience for those called to pastoral ministry. That seems misplaced to me, and I agree with the report: the congregation should be the focus of the learning experience for training clergy. We have probably gotten too academic for our own good. I think we should co-opt the model used for the training of medical physicians: academia AND residency. The report says it better:

Only when both domains of pastoral formation - the seminary and the congregation - recognize and resource one another can the full range of formation be accomplished. (p. 20)

We need to look at ways to approach addressing the inadequacies. And if anyone says that we don't need to do this, ask yourself: are we making disciples for Jesus Christ? So far, the United Methodist Church, since its birth in 1968 from the merger of two denominations, hasn't gained in membership - it's only lost membership. While it might not ALL be due to pastoral ineffectiveness, leadership DOES play a big part.

Pax,

Sky+