This is part 2 of my post about change in the UMC. See part 1 here.

Lessons for Leaders

For those of you who are exasperated with the system – who feel that you are fighting your best fight to see the slightest change, or worse, just to prevent things from getting worse – I pray that you won’t give up hope. I know there are many who have had enough and decided to give up. Some have remained in the system, conceded defeat, and continue to go about ministry with a cynical half-heartedness. Some have left altogether. I hope that many of our most passionate leaders will choose a third option. I hope you will dedicate yourselves to the ministry you envision and to encouraging like-minded leaders in the same pursuit. Invest yourselves fully in your own study and growth, aggressive personal evangelism, and intensive discipleship. By your actions, fight for the great ministry to which God has called you more passionately than you have ever fought for it in a boardroom. 

If the members of the failed task force mentioned in the previous post had spent just 50 hours on campuses and in dorm rooms, rather than the 500 hours we spent in meetings and planning, we would have had more contact with students  (and, I believe, much more effect) than some of the ministries we were evaluating. I believe this personal investment in ministry is the road to significant change, not only in an individual’s parish, but ultimately with broad, conference- and nation-wide effect.

My further encouragement for leaders who desire revival and change in the UMC may sound counter-intuitive. I think you need to quit and decline the committees you are being asked to serve. If you have proven to be a leader, you will continually be asked. But our system does not want, or will not allow, the change you desire. It perhaps wants to hear your suggestions so that it can choose a more moderate option and consider it movement in the right direction; it may openly reject your suggestions and be happy that all options were given a voice. But unless you have seen radical change take place already, you have no reason to expect it will come with your leadership. You simply do not have the power to accomplish it. I needed to hear this, and if you don’t already know it, I believe you need to hear it, too. Let people who love meetings go to the meetings while those who love ministry focus on ministry.

Quitting and avoiding committees is no boycott and no sour grapes, and we will do no favors to ourselves or the system by treating it as such. We do not need to be cynical about the system, but we do ourselves harm if we become idealistic and lose sight of the system’s inherent constraints. The committees themselves are not the problems. The problem is the distraction and the lost hours and energy on projects that will achieve minor change at best. The problem is that every hour you spend in a meeting is an hour not in a living room or knocking on doors. Every hour fighting to move larger structures in a slight direction one way or another is an hour not spent in study and personal growth. I am convinced that the minor change you may accomplish across the larger Church pales in comparison to the incredible change you will accomplish by actively doing ministry. I fear that those who continue accepting each committee invitation will look back in twenty years and realize that they have spent far too little time doing the ministry they believe in because they were fighting for the idea of that ministry in a meeting.

Some will say that they have a chance to achieve broad change in meetings, while their time in visitation will change only an individual. Our movement tells us something different. I don’t know whether the Church of England had committees, task forces, boards, and other strategic teams in John Wesley’s day. Whether they did or not, I am thankful that Wesley chose to spend his time doing the ministry he believed needed to happen rather than advocating for it in a Church of England boardroom.

Wesley transformed the Church of England more than any other pastor of his time, and yet we have no record of him achieving institutional change by working through the hierarchy. For idealistic leaders in the UMC who deeply desire a return to some of the great practices of the early Methodists, perhaps we should recognize that one of those practices was spending more time doing the ministry that needed to be done, even when the system made such ministry difficult, and less time trying to change the system from the top down.

I believe the UMC is dying, but I do not believe its diagnosis is yet terminal. I believe our greatest hope comes from those leaders who believe in renewing Wesleyan theology, aggressive apostolic evangelism, and intensive discipleship. I believe our best hope for change is from the bottom up, coming from these impassioned leaders doing what they believe in. To those leaders, I pray that you will not lose hope because of failures to change the system. I pray equally that you will not be distracted from the ministry by trying to change or manage the system. Devote yourselves to study, prayer, evangelism, and discipleship, and I believe this dying denomination still has hope for revival. Devote yourselves to the system – whether its management or its change – and I believe that system will soon be dead.

Part 1 of this 2-part post illustrates the problem. I hope you’ll continue to part 2, as part 1 by itself may sound merely depressing or hopeless. I have great hope for change, but I believe it will come in a very different form than most are advocating today.

Last year, I had a front-row seat to a cause of the American UMC’s slow death. I write with the hope that we are not too late for change. My final goal is to give advice and encouragement to others working in the system: those not yet ready to give up; those with a great vision, if not hope, for the UMC’s future; those who believe in God’s powerful work through Wesleyan theology, apostolic evangelism, and discipleship unto holiness.

The Problem

The American UMC is a dying institution. This is hardly debatable. Membership and attendance numbers have steadily declined for a century, only mitigated by mergers. The average age of members has steadily risen. No one believes these are the “glory days” of American Methodism, whether measuring by numbers or by religious experience. Given the most recently reported average age of members (57), our death may come more quickly than expected, as the next generation passes and contributions rapidly decline.

In dying institutions, change only comes from (a) a bold, loud leader at the top, (b) the bottom up, or (c) rock bottom. As the below illustration demonstrates, top-down change won’t work without a bold, loud, and trusted leader supporting it. Unless urged by their leader, such a large majority will revert to status quo. The only other time people will embrace change is when they know they are in crisis. Our majority does not yet realize our crisis. By the time they realize it, will it be too late to change our failing status quo?

An Illustration of the Problem

Two years ago, I was asked to serve on a task force for our conference. I declined. I had spent too much time on too many committees that had no apparent effect. But I was assured that this would be different. We had an opportunity to make significant change to a failing structure in the conference – our college chaplaincies and Wesley Foundations. These consume 8% of the current budget. (Those are failing structures that catch the Bishop’s attention!) The Bishop had acknowledged the inherent flaws in the current structure and commissioned a group to recommend major changes. I saw the opportunity to serve on a committee that would make a difference and accepted the invitation.

Over the next 18 months, we consumed no less than 500 cumulative hours of task force members’ time in meetings, teleconferences, research, document drafting, presentation prep, etc. Some members were already among the conference’s experts in this area: one Wesley Foundation director, three former directors, three former board chairs, a college president, and the conference staff person and chairman, who had each overseen this area for the past six years. All agreed that the existing system was fraught with problems and frustration and must change. In time, we developed a plan that would require significant change but allow for great opportunity. The plan gave us hope for starting new ministries, better resourcing some of our most needy existing ones, and providing real accountability where little had existed before.

Last year, we brought our recommendations to the Annual Conference. Some who were unhappy with the new proposal organized an effort to reject it. People stood on the conference floor and talked about the great importance campus ministry had played in their lives, urging us not to make change that could jeopardize that.

In the end, the members of Annual Conference were presented the choice of keeping a system they understood and have seen work in the past or accepting a new proposal that they could not fully understand in the short time available to present it. They amended the new proposal to the point that it looked like that old, familiar system, with a few minor variations. Then they happily approved it. Their amendments essentially mandated we keep in place our failing system.

I already have some regrets about our approach and presentation (e.g. choosing not to share some of the dirty laundry of the present situation), but I believe we were fighting a losing battle from the start.

This experience was exactly what I needed. I was clinging to the belief that significant change in the UMC could happen from the top down. This vote helped me to fully realize that we are a democracy – a large democracy – unready for significant change. Large democracies do not vote for major change. [See, more recently, the debacle that was GC2012.] It brings too many fears. It moves too far from too many people’s comfort. The majority cannot effectively be educated to the point that they understand the problems that make such drastic change necessary and the reasons proposed solutions might do better.

In the end, fifteen minutes of debate trumped 18 months of work. The majority, with little real awareness of the issues we face, voted against the group of experts who were commissioned to solve those issues. Given equal voice, uncertainty and change will lose to heartstrings and status quo almost every time. This proposal was the only proposal for any significant changes at last year’s Annual Conference. Its death serves as illustration of the slow death we are choosing as a denomination.

The Solution

We cannot expect life-giving, course-altering change to come out of a General, Jurisdictional, or Annual Conference. We have little reason to hope that the right task force or committee decision will set us on a great new path. We must instead embrace change from the bottom up, before we hit rock bottom. The following post will address the potential for that kind of change.

Those reading this may sense some frustration in my own experiences, and this is undoubtedly true. Large expenditures of effort with little result are disappointing. Some who have experienced similar difficulties may be reminded of their own discontent. The goal of this article, though, is not to vent my frustrations and encourage others in their own. Instead, I write expecting that many others have experienced — or will experience in the coming months — similar frustrations and are looking for answers.  Part 2 will attempt to provide encouragement and direction for anyone dealing with similar concerns.