May I suggest that the question of the work of a lay leader in a congregation is one of great depth and importance?  Can courageous laity lead a shift from a pastor-centered paradigm to one of a discerning and serving ministry of all?

But let me begin somewhere else first. Several times now I have been in a particular church on a Sunday morning, gathered at the appointed time along with a few thousand other people.  Each time in our one hour together, there was no liturgy read, no hymns sung, no creed affirmed, no prayers offered, no leadership shared with anyone not on staff, no norms of quiet or silence to indicate we were involved in either sacred space or sacred time. Yet, these people gathered as a church, and a percentage of those present were young adults, each actively seeking a relationship with God and clarity in their own lives about what it means to be a Christian. But in my mind the experience begged a very central question: Is this worship?

Walter Brueggemann pointed out that every time the Israelites were in the wilderness, they had to renew their answers to two questions:

1. How will we now be with our God?
2. How will we now be with one another?

Those two questions remain at the center of much of what I now experience in the church. Moments of deep confusion compel us to both rehearse and renew our understanding of very fundamental realities we once thought were clearly understood. Topping the list of such questions, of course, is the central experience of the resurrection which forces us to rethink even our core understanding of life and death. But before, and again after, the resurrection, there have been multiple times – such as the Exodus, the Exile, the Great Schism, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the American Puritan experience, the Suburban Captivity of the Church, and Post-Christendom – when we have questioned fundamental assumptions and been driven back to these two questions.

We can easily add many more examples, both large and small, of our moments of dislocation as a people of faith when we were forced to rehearse central questions again. But what is consistent in our experience of the wilderness is the way in which we are driven back to our most basic questions. In the language of the sciences, it is a paradigm shift – and when the paradigm shifts, everything goes back to zero. Everything is necessarily up for question once again.

One of those central questions that is now forming and gaining traction in our current wilderness is, “What is the work of a lay leader in a congregation?” Over almost all of its history, the church has been clergy-centric, with laity given subsidiary roles of support and compliance. Clergy have been the trained experts, with a shared language and an authoritative role that both gave them a special jurisdiction to answer questions of meaning and protected that jurisdiction from others who neither shared the language nor the role. Our current church literature still identifies clergy as the vision casters, the spiritual leaders of the congregation, and the persons of accountability in our denominations.  Laity, on the other hand, are ancillary. Very gifted people, to be sure, and persons of faith.  But their role has been supportive rather than central.

The reality is that the need in our new changed mission field is too great for such limited assumptions. We can now more easily see that the work of a congregation has at least four significant facets:

1. The management of an institution
2. The leadership of a faith community pursuing God’s call
3. The formation of individuals in faith, which we call discipleship
4. The transformation of the world – that is, finding a way to live in the world so that through us the world is different

Put those four aspects of ministry together, and the work to be done is vast. But historically the church has asked little of laity, even with such a great agenda.  We have asked laity to serve on committees. We have asked more for their help than their leadership. We have divided the work of the church into spiritual and temporal components and given laity that portion which we foolishly thought to be of lesser importance. Is it surprising, then, that many gifted laity give their volunteer efforts to other organizations and around other issues where the challenges given them are more robust and the differences they can make more substantive.

So we are back to ask again a question that we thought we had the answer to: “What is the work of a lay leader in a congregation?” However, even as I ask the question, I am uncertain it is the correct question, or how much clarity we can gain in answering it. Should I have asked about the role of a lay leader in the congregation, or of a lay person in a community of faith, or of laity in the mission field?  It matters that we spend time thinking about the question because the question informs and directs the answers we will find.

For the moment, it seems that the question of a lay leader in a congregation is a sufficient place to start.  There are those who have already been asking and exploring this question in a new way in our current wilderness.  So, in this edition of our ejournal, we turn to them and ask for their help in newly exploring a role we too easily assumed we understood.  They will introduce themselves and offer their reflections. Meet our ejournal responders.  Consider their responses.  And then ask yourself with whom you would like to continue the conversation and help us ask again – as clergy and laity together: “How will we now be with our God?” and “How will we now be with one another?”

A couple of years ago I served on an Arkansas Conference task force charged with creating a document that described effective lay leaders. It was a hard job for me, as my mind wanted to create lists – lists of personal qualities found in a leader, lists of behaviors they had, or sets of activities they participated in. I’m an accountant by profession, and I like predictability, order, and tasks with achievable deadlines. It feels good to complete something and check it off the list! Wouldn’t the job of a lay leader be easier with a checklist?

The wilderness described by Dr. Rendle does not lend itself to predictability and order. Instead, we often find instability and uncertainty.  Instead of clearly understood tasks and known completion dates, we find ourselves on a journey that requires us to focus on questions rather than answers.

In January I attended my first meeting of the Association of Annual Conference Lay Leaders. Dr. David Lowes Watson was our speaker, and he described the role of clergy and laity like this: “The role of clergy is to preach and teach the gospel. The role of laity is to live out that gospel in the world.” The simple clarity of this statement amazed me. Living the gospel in the world requires that we focus on those most basic questions, “How will we now be with our God? How will we now be with one another?” These questions focus on relationship.

The relationship between a lay leader and their pastor can be invaluable.  The most effective lay leaders in congregations will work in partnership with their clergy to focus the attention of the congregation on the important questions asked of disciples:

Who is our neighbor?
What has God called us to do?
How are we called to the mission field?

Lay leaders also partner with pastors to encourage development of the practices of a disciplined Christian life, which in the words of John Wesley include, “acts of compassion, justice, worship and devotion under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” A disciplined Christian life equips us for the mission field. Kevin Watson, author of A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living, writes, “The challenge of the Christian life isn’t knowing what to do – it is doing it.”

Lay leaders and pastors working together can provide vision and leadership to congregations as they move from knowing the Christian life to living it.

Section 251 of the Discipline purports to set out the duties of the lay leader — increase awareness in the congregation of the role of laity, attend committee meetings, etc.  But that description doesn’t fit a lay “leader” — it describes a lay “organizer” or a lay “administrator.”  With all due respect, those roles could be filled by almost anyone.  To move our churches and congregations towards the kingdom of God, the lay leader truly needs to be the “leader” — not focused on meetings or what goes on inside the walls of the church, but focused on “doing” and where the church goes outside its walls.

The lay leader should lead the church to think big, helping the church answer the important questions, such as:

1. Who are our neighbors and how can we get to know them?
2. How can the church help create the kingdom of God in our neighborhood?
3. How can the church equip congregation members to move along a path of spiritual development, including service to others?
4. How can we encourage the church to focus on the work OF the church versus the work IN the church?
5. How do we inspire our churches to try bold new initiatives and mission efforts?

The lay leader must also act big.  Once the hard questions are answered, the lay leader must get to work — lead the congregation to establish new missions and ministries, lead the development of new spiritual programs, etc.

If Dr. Rendle is correct in saying that we are wandering in the wilderness, then the lay leader should play an important role in charting the church’s path in the wandering process.  We can’t leave this work up to clergy, who, due to our itinerant system, often don’t know our communities or even our congregations as well as the laity.  The lay leader has to actively participate in the strategy and planning processes, in the establishment of new ministries, and in encouraging and challenging the congregation to support these ministries.

But in leading on the big picture and the big efforts, the lay leader can’t forget the individuals in the congregation.  The lay leader needs to be the “head cheerleader,” encouraging those in the congregation.  The lay leader should obviously encourage and inspire those frustrated with their ministry or spiritual development.  But as important, the lay leader should not forget the encouragement and support of those who appear to be doing well.

I realize the job description I’ve described isn’t easy — certainly not as easy as attending a couple of meetings per month.  But I don’t recall the gospels promising it would be easy to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Indeed, the opposite is true.  This work is hard, but it is important, and the lay leader must lead the charge.

“What is the role of a lay leader in a congregation?”

In my years as Conference Lay Leader for the Texas Annual Conference, I’ve been asked that question any number of times.  In fact, we actually teach a session on just that each January when we do our District Training.  In those sessions we talk about what the Book of Discipline sets out for a Lay Leader and we talk about building a relationship with the clergy in your local church.

Having had that discussion innumerable times, I think that Gil is correct in questioning whether or not that is really the crucial question we need to be asking of both lay people and clergy.  To me, the real question might be, “How do we give passionate, gifted lay people the courage and permission to use their faith as a leadership tool both inside and outside of the church?”

The role of a lay leader may be as good a place as any to start that conversation.  To be an effective lay leader the first priority must be regular communication with the pastor so that between them they nurture God’s call on that church.  The lay leader should be an integral part of the clergy’s decision making process so that as the lay person shares the vision, he or she can take the pulse of the church.  A real lay leader must be a truth teller — to the pastors as well as the congregation.  Who better to let the senior pastor know that his or her ideas of where the church is headed may be not in sync with what the people sitting in the pews believe?  Who better to challenge the congregation to be a new church for new people?  Or facilitate new ways of being the church — instead of just doing things the way we have always done them.

To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, the partnership between clergy and laity must exist in every aspect of the life and work of each church.  A gifted lay leader must be a dreamer; someone who puts no limits on what God can do in every day and every situation!  Although the lay leader should continue to do the dictated tasks of sitting on the various church standing committees, the joy of the job will come with being a dreamer, visionary and partner, seeking God’s will for his or her community of faith.

Hope is now building in the United Methodist Church like a fire.  What started at first as a small spark some years ago among a small group of loosely connected leaders has continuously and increasingly found fuel and is now spreading.  It is not just hope that is building but an impatience to engage the possibility of the mission field instead of the problems of the institution.  A movement is forming.

But movements must deal with gaps that arise when some have been in the conversation about the purpose of the change from the beginning, others join later, and there are still many who don’t even know about the conversation (or don’t want to.)  If hope is to grow we will need to address the gap.

In this issue of our TMF e-journal we offer two vignettes about hope and the gap:

1-      An Experience of the Gap

Rev. Bobbi Kaye Jones shares a real-life experience as a district superintendent where she has been working intentionally to shift people’s focus from protecting their own church to engaging the mission field.  Consider what it is like to be a leader who sees the hope, who works intentionally to help others see and respond, and is then confronted with the gap.  This is a picture of where we are in the wilderness of an established denomination living in a deeply changed mission field.

2-     An Example of Bridging the Gap

One of the great supports of the new and growing hope is that there are already examples of people who deeply understand the new mission field – which often demands very non-traditional responses that are very different from standard congregational fare.  The ability to offer non-traditional responses is often the key to addressing younger generations. However, it requires that these people actively bridge the gap between what ministry once was and what it is yet to be.  It means standing between being accountable to the long established institutional church and simultaneously risk building non-traditional approaches that can introduce discipleship to people who live in a changed culture.  District Superintendent Ellen Alston from the Louisiana Conference helps us listen in on the experience and reflections of some young clergy who are already bridging the gap.  One of the reasons we can hope for a changed and more Wesleyan United Methodist Church is because it is already happening. There are some already bridging the gap.

Every brave pilgrimage through a wilderness requires us to continue to draw the picture of the faithful future, to look back at that part of ourselves that is lagging behind, and to be willing to close the gap as an effort of hope.  Where are you in the conversation?

“Mind the gap” is a warning to train passengers to take caution while crossing the gap between the train door and the station platform. It was introduced in 1969 on the London Underground. You can find similar words, primarily outside the US, at the end of moving sidewalks, the entrance to airplanes, or the bottom of escalators. I would have appreciated such ‘encouragement’ recently, while I spent many hours boarding and exiting the NYC subway. There was, indeed, a gap.

There is a gap in student achievement across state lines, a gap in availability of assistive technology and people who need it, and a gap between men and women in our country’s highest paying jobs. There is a gap between health care needs and health care services. Political polls revel in discovering opinion gaps, and there is probably a GAP near you, selling jeans that will reveal a gap between the wearer’s shirt and her belt. Sometimes I think gaps R us.

You are a learner. Reading blogs, probably even reading books, attending seminars, practicing and implementing what you learn, intentionally sharing with folks in your congregation and with peers. Yeah, me too. And this issue of our ejournal invites a conversation about the gap between what some us have been hearing, and what most of us have not yet heard.

Late in the spring, when still a District Superintendent, I introduced a new pastor to a congregation with my usual format: review priorities from the church’s consultation form and remind them about our cabinet’s appointive process and how we arrived at this decision. Just before bringing the pastor in, I also share current demographic information and a 10-year history of the congregation’s vital signs. In this particular situation, demographics of the mission field and recurring worship attendance plateaus suggested undertaking holy conversations about diversity and multi-ethnic worship, sooner rather than later. The outgoing pastor knew this truth and the incoming pastor had gifts for this work. It surprised me when the question came from a long time Methodist serving on the SPR Committee, “Are you saying (dramatic pause) that the District has an agenda for our church?” Mind the gap.

Days later, two pastors of churches with overlapping mission fields came to my office.  They brought statistics from their school district, as well as their learnings from an extraordinarily successful ‘back to school’ giveaway last year. The larger of the two churches had already hired a bi-lingual staff member, and they came asking how fast they could move toward expansive, inclusive worship. Gap closing.

Conversation is the currency of change. Yes. I do wonder if some of us have spent a little too long talking to each other and a little too little talking to everyone else – mainly the folks who will need to be on board to implement needed change and will be first impacted by it.  Methinks I spy a gap.

Oxford Illustrated Dictionary defines ‘gap’ as 1. An unfilled space or interval; a break in continuity. 2. A wide (usually undesirable) divergence in views. 3. A gorge or pass.  Colleagues, do you ever feel like the more you learn about what is needed to revitalize our congregations and reach the mission field, the greater grows the gap between what could happen and what will happen? Are we in an interval or a gorge?

On the other hand, the ‘gap’ is not fully a negative concept. In fact, the gap is where the action is, where we struggle with how to live the counter-cultural, counter-intuitive Christian life: between love and fear; between a life of the spirit and worldly satisfactions; between scarcity and abundance; between hope and the status quo; between who we are and who God intends us to be.

The trick is how to live faithfully in the gap. The life and works of Jesus remind us of the gaps we cannot dwell complacently in—the gap between the poor and the good news, captivity and release, blindness and sight, oppression and liberty, the now and the not yet. Living faithfully in the gap is not possible with a posture of complacency or even the lure of ‘waiting things out.’ And we who stand in this gap can feel painfully stretched between our beloved communities and our blessed opportunities. While each congregation is unique in their demographics, gifts, and calling, each mission field is, likewise, unique in their needs and opportunities. The more effective we are at creating intersections between the two, the more faithfully and effectively we can live in the gap.

On most Sydney (Australia) CityRail stations, there is an automated announcement reminding passengers to mind the gap as well as posters informing riders about the number of people who fall down the gap each year!

Should we have been posting signs of our own the last few years? In lieu of that, my colleagues, I plan to continue conversing for change with as many new conversation partners as I can, while both standing in, and striving to close, the gap. Learning, listening, conversing, and discerning can only move us in the right direction, from what is toward what is possible.

In your place of ministry, where would you post the largest ‘mind the gap’ sign?

What gap would you most like to see closing in the next year?

Where is a sign of hope for you in closing the gap between denominational ‘teachings’ and local ‘learnings’?

What happens when three young pastors, who have brushed elbows and dreams across the years in college and through the United Methodist connection, land in adjacent zip codes?

It’s like sunshine, soil, and water converging, where something new can take root.  Especially around a shifting “front porch” of the culture bringing new experiences, questions, and challenges for the established church.

Reverends Juan Huertas, Katie McKay Simpson, and Drew Sutton have been catalysts for Rooted Baton Rouge, a Lenten study group rooted in evangelism and building relationships with young adults across the city.  Their ministerial appointments – St. John’s United Methodist Church, First United Methodist Church, and LSU Wesley Foundation, respectively – resource, but do not define their scope and direction in this effort.   Rather, they are led by the question, “How can we launch and build new relationships and help the city be transformed?”

At the approach of Lent 2012, about 30 young adults gathered at a local coffee shop to begin the journey:  group meetings in homes and coffee shops, videos and discussions around how the Christian faith is interpreted in contemporary and relevant questions and concerns, internet presence and interaction, collaborative mission work, whole group mixers, and encouragement to worship at one’s place of choice.   Their endeavor caught the attention of the Baton Rouge daily newspaper, The Advocate:  http://theadvocate.com/utility/homepagestories/2249990-129/young-pastors-use-lent-to

Besides investing in small groups, which created space for questions, doubt, discovery and community, the Lenten study demonstrated the strength of “non-territorial ministry.”  Katie points out that the ‘front porch’ of our culture is shifting, from a geographically specific community based in neighborhoods, to larger opportunities of communicating and connecting in places like Facebook.  “Even though it has its issues and is not perfect alone for community building, the internet is that ‘front porch’ for folks who are 30’s and younger, and it becomes a place where those conversations and connections can happen in partnership with real face to face relationship building and creation of community,”  she observed. The partnership of these two contexts – internet and face-to-face interaction – seems to be key.

Katie, Drew, and Juan began to develop a blog weaving together videos with various social media, in order to share content and discussion starters for groups that would be meeting in different times and places:  http://www.rootedbr.com/

From connecting with others at a coffee house to creating a spiritual community on the web, this model of study and relationship building typifies Wesley’s calling to “do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” But right now in the church, this Wesleyan calling has faded, creating a gap. Drew describes this current gap and how Rooted Baton Rouge is addressing the challenges it brings:  “There is an image problem for the church… lots of images and ideas of who God is and what the church is all about, and so one of our goals was to create an environment where people with those different ideas or misunderstandings or questions or concerns about who God is or what the church is about, can step in and have a trusted space to ask those questions and explore.”  Interestingly, closing the gap takes creating a space to welcome conversations about the very concerns that describe the gap.

Drew finds insight for the process of creating this safe space in the story of Samuel and Eli, where “the word of God was rare in those days, and visions were not widespread.” (I Samuel 3:1).   And yet, Samuel is doing the work of God without even realizing it.  Eli doesn’t tell Samuel what to do; he just observes what seems to be happening, and then prepares Samuel to respond to God’s call and develop his own relationship with God.  Perhaps the role of a current-day “Eli,” as the church and its leaders would be, is to step back from claiming what God is doing with an effort to structure and control, and instead to foster a culture of listening among “Samuels,” and readiness for responding with “Here I am” to something bigger than ourselves, particularly when the call is unanticipated and surprising.

If this focus on small groups nurturing growth doesn’t sound all that new, it’s because it’s not.  Methodists have a tradition of honoring the space for accountability and reflection in a trusting environment where people can listen and respond.  These pastors see this initiative as well-rooted in the earliest Methodist Movement, which yoked established congregations with fresh efforts to reach out and build new relationships for hospitality, invitation, and growth in discipleship.   Juan reminds that Wesley’s original model was also cross-congregational, while keeping connection to the local congregation.  Congregations matter, but congregations cannot do it all, so discipling communities need to be created, where persons may come and struggle with what it means to be a person of faith.  Wesley knew this, and also brought together the leaders of such communities for further discipling and accountability.  Katie describes the “two-pronged approach” a congregation must embrace if the gap is to be closed as both outreach and “in-reach,” which creates the opportunity for not only evangelism but also leadership development.

But inevitably, there were unexpected challenges faced by these three energetic and committed clergy.  They wanted to create the content fresh, which meant working on some pretty tight deadlines.  After group meetings, they would check in with each other to ask, “What are you hearing?” and see how the next set of video and questions needed to be directed and edited.  They found that their visionary processes needed to be partnered with technical expertise and time that they couldn’t provide alone.  The question emerged of how to involve more persons, more gifts in the leadership and implementation of many moving parts.  And like Samuel, their congregations answered the call for support saying, “Here I am.” Churches provided childcare for participants who were juggling parenting responsibilities, collaborated on mission opportunities and provided resources in numerous other ways. It wasn’t until the necessity of the “two-pronged approach” was realized, which includes reaching outside church walls in tandem with internal growth, that Wesley’s definition of what it means to be a community in Christ was fully enacted, bridging the gap.

An essential move toward permanently closing the gap is embracing the understanding that this dual effort is an integral part of our ministry. It’s not optional or some extra-curricular thing we do on the side. It is a reframing of expectations in our own congregations, to communicate that the ministry of the church is not limited to those who show up in the pews on Sunday mornings. The ministry of a congregation can be seen in a coffee shop or even online. As a Church, we should always be searching for new people with whom to share ministry, and in new and often nontraditional places. It is a part of our work that we are called and appointed by God to do.

By diversifying points of entry into a congregation’s ministry, the church allows for people in different stages of life, with different perceptions of the church, to be met where they are spiritually, physically and technologically.  These efforts require using a 21^st century model, while still maintaining a very ancient approach of connection and community-building, thus providing a rich and fertile framework for producing new life.

So as congregations reach out to the mission field, they find they are not only offering something for those who are not there, but they are also being enriched with new challenges and new opportunities that help them grow in their own journeys.   The church is called to prioritize its work, to identify its gifts, and to look for new ways to be in partnership.

The example of Rooted Baton Rouge is just one instance of bridging the gap we too often stumble upon when we forget to look for ministry outside church walls, in nontraditional places.  Juan leaves us with his hope for a future that charts new territories using the unceasingly relevant practices of Methodism’s beginnings. “I’m committed to an ancient future…to a Methodist movement that is both congregational as well as devoted to discipling communities.  They both need each other.  Wesley knew this.  It wasn’t either/or.  The movement renewed the institution.  The institution fueled the movement. Without congregations, there wouldn’t have been discipling communities.  What happened to Methodism in America is that we lost the discipling communities.  So let’s go, let’s create them.  Let’s create the spaces for them.  We need to bring forth discipling communities alongside congregations, to help folk be shaped and formed in the way of Jesus, so that the kingdom of God can be made known.”

Many of us have heard about that moment at General Conference when hopes for a substantive reorganization of the UMC were dashed. As Jay Brim, one of the primary authors of the restructure legislation coming from the Connectional Table’s Call to Action, describes in his piece below, “the shock in the hall was palpable. None of us could breathe for a few moments.”  The Call to Action recommendations were a response to the Towers Watson Report, an analysis of our denomination that presents an irrefutably unsustainable model for ministry. Hence, the profound disappointment in the failure to face up to self-reinforcing systems, practices, and economic imperatives that will inevitably further our decline.

But alongside that very trajectory is one of change. Perhaps the gridlock has actually deepened a sense of responsibility for changing the reality in which we find ourselves. Though plans for more widespread change were overturned at General Conference, a majority of delegates endorsed significant change over and over again. Mackey Yokem, GC delegate and District Superintendent in the Arkansas Conference describes one of those changes to the role of District Superintendent in his article below, a change that heralds hope for more and more congregations fulfilling God’s purposes in new and compelling ways.

The bad news reminds us that if we are a people of faith, we must always be impatient with who we are, so we can become who God intends us to be. God has something different in store for us. That is powerful and empowering.

By something close to pure chance, I became the lead editor of the legislative writing team for the Connectional Table (CT) in advance of General Conference 2012.  Three years earlier, the CT nominating committee had put my name in for chair of the Legislative Task Force as part of the complete list of nominations, and the die was cast.  A year after that, the Council of Bishops determined that it would issue the Call to Action which eventually led to nine recommendations for change in the denomination.  In July of 2011, in support of one of those recommendations, the CT voted to propose a massive restructure of the governing apparatus of general agencies, and my life for the next thirty-three days (the time left before the deadline to file petitions by agencies of the Church) was committed to taking that recommendation from a mere outline of a set of ideas to an omnibus rewrite of the Book of Discipline (BOD).

The CT chair, Bishop John Hopkins of the East Ohio residential area, made the smart move to hire Rich Peck, a long-time journalist and observer of the UMC, to be the staff writer for our project. He then asked me and Neil Alexander, head of the United Methodist Publishing House and former chair of the General Secretaries Table, to shepherd the project to fruition. Rich began immediately to organize the portions of the BOD that required amending, into a petition format; at one point his draft exceeded 250 pages.  Neil and I reviewed his work daily by email and phone, giving directions, small and large, to the work.

We “discussed” how to address the changes a lot.  The directions were miniscule compared to the breadth of change being considered, and the Interim Operations Team (the IOT, a group of nine people at the heart of the Call to Action process by the summer of 2011) had proposed a very significant change in operational leadership for the general agencies, which gained lukewarm endorsement from the CT: they called for a board of 15 directors to run the whole operation world-wide.  Although an easy call to make by private industry veterans, as are half of the members of the IOT, the idea of having 15 individuals replace approximately 600 directors for the nine affected agencies was NOT consistent with the current polity of the UMC, to say the least.  We shoe-horned the concept into the petition, although I never felt it had a real chance to pass at General Conference.

The three of us pulled together the basic draft of the petition, then brought other members of the CT and the Call to Action group to review and polish what we had; it was a 79-page document by the time it was sent around to the full CT for a vote to file it.  Most CT members grumbled about having to vote up or down on such a significant piece of legislation, but there was just no other way to handle it.  There are 47 voting members of CT, plus 13 general secretaries whose oxen were being gored, one way or another, and everyone had an opinion.  Nevertheless, a majority voted to file the petition with the knowledge that all would have a shot at amending it in Tampa.

I stumped for the legislation over the next nine months, while also talking to the various groups who had different ideas about how to improve our governance: the “Plan B” group, MFSA, the general secretaries, and members of the Council of Bishops.  No clean line of agreement ever came to us, though the Plan B team had some hope of leading compromise.  The largest problem we faced was that there was not a way for real debate to occur about what needed to be done, and many people felt left out of the process.  According to the BOD, the CT is responsible for  proposing such change, but many people never recognized that the proposal was correctly brought forward, arguing that there should have been a traveling road show of sorts taken around the Church to give people at the grass roots level a chance to weigh in.

A second major problem was broad agreement that changing the governance of the agencies was not the “fix” needed to reignite Methodism.  Those of us hoping to fix what we could reach were hamstrung for an answer to that critique; agreement with those critics would derail our efforts, while denying the merits of that concern undermined our credibility.  Mostly, I just avoided answering that criticism.

Tampa was a roller coaster ride.  Our legislation went to the General Administration legislative committee with the MFSA petition which were both printed in the advanced material. A group stood ready to present Plan B, a wholesale re-write of our petition, for substitution when the opportunity appeared.  Through three days of debate and subcommittee work, none of the three plans gained a working majority of support from the 75-80 committee members, most of whom arrived with a favorite in mind.  On Saturday night, each of the three approaches got an opportunity to be voted out of committee, and none got more than 35% of the votes available.  Restructure appeared to be dead.

On Sunday, the leader of the Plan B group, Joe Whittemore from North Georgia, and a floor leader for the IOT/CT Plan, Rev. Don Underwood from North Texas, got together and debated how to build a compromise that would gain broad support.  After two days and nights of discussion, and conversations with African delegates and others for input and support, Joe and Don announced the creation of “Plan UMC.”  Because of a 3:00 p.m. deadline for printing the petitions to be laid out the following day, the new petition went to press with some errors. I did not, however, imagine it was unconstitutional, nor did any of the other people crafting the legislation.

The debate on Wednesday, May 2, was interesting mainly for the consistently strong vote of support the compromise got.  After an initial friendly amendment was passed giving the central conferences more votes on the new “General Council for Strategy and Oversight” (which would replace the Connectional Table), all attempts by the opposition to amend the document were repulsed by at least a 55% voting majority, and the petition was adopted by a 60% vote.  I was overjoyed, but that was to be short-lived.

On the last day of General Conference, when the decision of the Judicial Council (JC) concerning the unconstitutionality of Plan UMC was announced, the shock in the hall was palpable.  None of us could breathe for a few moments.  The wording of the decision was very harsh in places, but clearly the JC wanted to help us avoid rash decisions in the last few hours of the conference.  They needn’t have worried about that.  Ultimately, I believe the best wisdom shared was that it would take four years under the leadership of the Council of Bishops to come up with a new plan.  That is my hope.

As for the feeling that changing our governance structure is something akin to rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship, I believe that even though we have larger hills to climb to recapture the passion of our early years as a denomination, revisiting the underpinnings of of our “Connexion” as Mr. Wesley called it will help new generations of Methodists to feel a part of that history.  If we have nothing unique to offer Christians, other denominations and prophets can tell the Good News just as well as we have.  I believe there is something unique about us that makes the Church Universal stronger for our existence as a part of the Church.  May God bless our efforts to find a common vision for our future!

In the wake of General Conference, there has been a great deal of lamenting over what was not accomplished and little notice of a sweeping change that did occur.  Few United Methodists are aware of the major shift in the role and responsibilities of the District Superintendent, a change that will empower the United Methodist Church on the local level by assisting leaders and congregations in making disciples and transforming lives and communities.

Mission Field Strategist

At General Conference, the definition of the purpose of Superintending was revised to direct the function of the District Superintendent (DS) to that of a “Mission Field Strategist.”  At present in our denomination, no one is given direct responsibility for developing a comprehensive ministry strategy for a district or area to help congregations see opportunities for making new disciples.  Congregations have become either too comfortable with who they are (and don’t want to change) or have lost the ability to understand or communicate with a rapidly changing culture and, therefore, have missed the opportunity to speak the Gospel in creative and timely ways and capture the hearts and minds of those not involved in the Church.  We now have a person designated to strategize with congregations about how to most effectively reach their mission field.

It’s about the Mission Field!

The “Mission Field” is best defined not as the current participants in a congregation but rather as the community surrounding that congregation.  Many of our established congregations are seeing demographic changes in their neighborhoods.  These “neighbors” could be persons seeking or needing the ministries of the church.  The DS can proactively assist congregations in meeting those in their surrounding neighborhood at their point of need.

Leadership, not Management

Prior to this dramatic change, District Superintendents were primarily managers seeking to answer the question “Are we doing things right?” with the consequent expectations of report gathering and fact checking. While management systems are important for providing standards for efficiency and best practices, they also tend to look backwards, assuming a “right” way to do things. This paradigm shift invites District Superintendents to answer a leadership question:  “Are we doing the right things?” This is a new question and one that the DS of the future needs to be well versed in asking and assisting congregations in answering.  While they will need help in carrying out the necessary administrative linkage, the DS’s primary responsibility will be to the mission field and to showing fruitfulness in making disciples and transforming lives and communities.

A New Skill Set

In the future, Bishops will need to appoint – and Annual Conferences should expect – District Superintendents with a unique skill set:

• A passion for making disciples of Jesus Christ
• A vision for the uninvolved
• An ability to articulate the need and opportunity for new and creative ministries
• The courage to challenge others to lead and follow in the name of Christ

In short, to quote the revised description, the DS must be “committed to living out the values of the church, including a mandate of inclusiveness, modeling, teaching and promoting generous Christian giving, cooperating to develop Christian unity, and ecumenical, multicultural, multiracial, and cooperative ministries; and working with persons across the Church to develop programs of ministry and mission which extend the witness of Christ into the world.”

Applying Resources to the Mission Field

This new skill set will also require the ability to identify effective clergy and lay leadership. For clergy, the goal is to “put the right people in the right place at the right time for the right reason.”  Clergy effectiveness and fruitfulness, as well as congregational and lay leadership and fruitfulness, must be determined, so the DS can, as described in the new legislation, “develop the best strategic deployment of clergy possible in the district, including realignment of pastoral charges when needed, and the exploration of larger parishes, cooperative parishes, multiple staff configurations, new faith communities and ecumenical shared communities.”

Why?

What purpose is served by our denominational move to this intentional leadership model?   The answer is very simple.  If we are to reclaim our heritage as a movement, someone must be charged to help our leaders, both lay and clergy, to see where and how to make disciples.   A real life example:

“On May 28, 1742, Wesley reached Newcastle. He found that he had not come too soon. In his first walk through the town he says, ‘I was surprised: so much drunkenness, cursing, and swearing (even from the mouths of little children), do I never remember to have seen and heard before in so small a compass of time. Surely this place is ripe for Him ‘who came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.’  He could find no one who appeared to care for religion. At seven o’clock on the Sunday morning, he walked down to Sandgate, the poorest and most contemptible part of the town, with his travelling companion, John Taylor. Standing alone at the end of the street, they began to sing the hundredth Psalm. Three or four people came out to see what was the matter. Soon the number increased to four or five hundred, and before the service was over, twelve or fifteen hundred assembled. Wesley’s text was, ‘He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and by His stripes we are healed.’  When the sermon was over, the people stood gaping and staring at the preacher in profound astonishment. Seeing their amazement, he said, ‘If you desire to know who I am, my name is John Wesley. At five in the evening, with God’s help, I design to preach here again.’ At the appointed hour, the bill on which he intended to stand was covered from top to bottom. Neither at Moorfields nor at Kennington Common had he seen such an audience. Wesley knew that even his voice, strong and clear though it was, could not reach one half of this vast concourse; but he stood where he had all in view, ranged on the side of the hill. Then he explained and applied that promise, ‘I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely.” Wesley had never received such a welcome as he found in the metropolis of the north. The poor people, he says, were ready to tread him under foot out of pure love and kindness.’   The Life of John Wesley by John Telford, Chapter 11

The District Superintendent of the future will be equipped, trained and expected to take us to the Sandgate streets of our neighborhoods and communities.