wfn.org | Council considers radical changes, seeks church feedback

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 1, 2001 News media contact: Thomas S. McAnally7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.     10-21-71B{504}

NOTE: For related coverage of the General Council on Ministries meeting, see
UMNS stories #502 and #505.

By Tom McAnally*

MIAMI (UMNS) - One governing board for churchwide program agencies. A
bicameral General Conference. Autonomy that would allow Methodist movements
to find their own natural character within different world cultures. 

Those key proposals came during opening sessions of the General Council on
Ministries (GCOM), prompting members to alter their Oct. 26-30 agenda and
invite further discussion and response from across the church.

In his opening address as GCOM's staff executive, Daniel Church asked the 68
voting members to seriously consider "bold, radical changes in the ways in
which the United Methodist Church pursues God's mission to make disciples of
Jesus Christ."

Church became executive of the GCOM staff in October 2000, just as the new
governing members were beginning their 2001-2004 terms. President of the
agency is Bishop Ed Paup of the church's Portland (Ore.) Area.  

In his first address to the council last October in Dayton, Church said, "If
anything is wrong with the church, it is not structure; it is about
something else, something amorphous, something interpersonal, something
spiritual." A year later, at the council's semiannual meeting in Miami, he
concluded, "I tell you today, it is about structure." Despite its many
strengths, the United  Methodist Church has structured itself for
competition, not conciliation, he observed. 

Church expressed despair that GCOM had spent so much time this year on
issues related to the tenure and election of program agency executives.
Agencies nominate the executives, but the GCOM must elect. "Commending this
important process to a third party like GCOM is a failed policy and it must
be changed," he said. 

Church traced the history of the GCOM following the 1968 conference uniting
the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren Churches. The council was to
have included a representative from every annual (regional) conference and
have authority to act on behalf of the General Conference between sessions
every four years. "That model was never fully realized and even what
authority was granted has been gradually chipped away in the intervening
decades," Church said. "Indeed, so low is the confidence in the council's
value, that a year ago we narrowly escaped dissolution of it entirely."

Also recounting history for the council members was retired Bishop Joseph
Yeakel, Smithsburg, Md., a former EUB and staff executive of the church's
evangelism agency. The bishop was invited to help council members consider
"Empowering the connection for ministry," one of five "transformational
directions" developed by a Connectional Process Team during the 1996-2000
quadrennium and forwarded by the 2000 General Conference to the GCOM.

Along with the transformational directions, Yeakel said the most important
agenda items for the council is a mandate from the General Conference asking
it to "determine the most effective design for the work of the general
agencies and to provide implementing legislation to the 2004 General
Conference."  

"That's the main thing for you," he said.  "If you don't do this, you are
dead in the water."

He reminded the group it had only two calendar years to accomplish the task.
"You have no time to lose ... In the fall of 2003 you will have to vote on a
final product that will be sent to General Conference delegates Dec. 1."
The 2004 General Conference will be held in the spring of 2004 in
Pittsburgh.

In a list of recommendations, Yeakel urged council members to create a
connectional, not competitive, design, one that could be replicated at the
annual conference and local church levels. He urged them to recognize that
agencies have special representative ministries to fulfill that neither the
annual conference nor local church can accomplish.  He also noted they don't
have to change everything in four years.  

Speaking of the mandate for a new structure, Church said, "For once, the
General Conference did not call for additional study.  It issued an
invitation ... to provide concrete, practical leadership to the church in
addressing these issues."  For that purpose, the General Conference spared
the life of the GCOM, he observed.

"Today, an opportunity beckons," he continued.  "An opportunity to embrace a
proposal for a bold change, an opportunity to be faithful to our
foreparents' vision for the church, an opportunity granted to us, even
mandated by people of good will but little patience, an opportunity to meet
the needs for reformation and renewal by fashioning a model for ministry
which will serve Christ's church in the 21st century."

Church then made three specific proposals. (To read the full text of the
address and to respond, go to the GCOM Web site:
www.gcom-umc.org/agency_info/news_general_secretary.shtml)

First, he proposed that all churchwide agencies, including the GCOM but
excluding the United Methodist Publishing House and the Board of Pension and
Health Benefits, be dissolved as free-standing, semi-autonomous entities
with their own governing boards.  In their place he proposed a "General
Board of the United Methodist Church" that would be elected through a
broadly distributed, representative process that would provide governance
accountability to all ministries of the general church.

"One of the most horrifying and unsettling conclusions to which I have come
is that there is no one who sees the whole church but Christ himself," he
said.  "There is, in the United Methodist Church, no group, no entity, no
person who is in a position to see the breadth and depth of our work on
behalf of Christ's mission. No one!"

There are 587 United Methodists serving as members of the boards of
directors of 12 general agencies, excluding the publishing house and
pensions board, he reported. The total includes 44 members from outside the
United States and 48 bishops. The cost for  meetings in 2000 exceeded $1.4
million, an average annual meeting cost per member of $2,409, he reported.

"If it were politically necessary to give every incumbent director a seat as
a member of the single, new general board and if we maintained every current
staff position in each instrumentality and portfolio, great economy could
still be gained in managing two regular meetings plus committees per year,"
he said. "Think of the money which would be freed for the mission of
Christ's church!"

Second, Church proposed a bicameral legislature that would meet every four
years.  One house would be much like the current General Conference.  The
other would comprise bishops. Once every four years, the Council of Bishops
would be reconstituted as a "house of bishops" with legislative
responsibility.  Its members would have authority to initiate, debate and
approve legislation subject to ratification by the other house.  In the same
spirit, the actions of the other house would be subject to the ratifying
vote of the bishops.   Currently, bishops attend the church's General
Conference, but do not have voice or vote.

Church said he abhors arrogance in leaders but is not afraid of leaders with
authority. "It is my prayer that in empowering the connection, we will
experience new trust in worthy leaders who are able to move forward the
agenda of the Savior through the instrumentalities of the church and, in so
doing, embrace more fully the reign of God."

Third, Church said United Methodists must have a clear understanding of what
is meant by the "global nature" of the church.  The United Methodist Church
has 8.4 million members in the United States and more than a million in
Europe, Africa and the Philippines. Dozens of Methodist denominations around
the world are autonomous.  

The current structure of the United Methodist Church was developed for the
American context, he said.  "In some countries the primary reason autonomy
is not sought is because of the relatively large number of U.S. dollars
which flow into the church in regions of the world where money is
desperately needed," he said.  "The historic pattern ... is that when a
church becomes autonomous, even an affiliated autonomous church, the money
tends to disappear relatively soon after the break with 'United' Methodism."

"I suggest we start talking about our unity within the church of Jesus
Christ and encourage our sisters and brothers who are eager to find their
own local applications of the Methodist impulse or unique variations on our
polity to do so without risk of the U.S. church immediately withdrawing its
mission support."

At the close of his address, Church urged members not to let GCOM "settle
for an unfulfilling, unwelcome, unhealthy role as a regulatory agency set on
exacting compliance.  Please don't be party to the reduction of leadership
to bureaucracy." 

During closing sessions, a recommendation was approved asking Church, in
consultation with Paup and other GCOM members and resource people, to
"develop and implement a plan to solicit feedback to the address from across
the denomination and provide a preliminary design by the Spring 2002 GCOM
meeting based upon the feedback."

A position paper, based on the feedback, was requested for the February
meeting of the Servant Leadership Team, a GCOM group that functions much
like an executive committee. The team was asked to set the agenda for GCOM's
April meeting, including a new organizational design in response to the
General Conference mandate. The proposed design is to be available for
feedback and perfection to the entire church. A final revision is to be
available when an interagency legislative task force meets in the fall of
2002. Enabling legislation would be considered at the GCOM fall 2002
meeting.

"In the remembering of who we are as God's people, we will learn that we
know how to empower the connection for ministry," said the Rev. Karen
Greenwaldt, in an address to the council.  Greenwaldt is general secretary
of the Nashville, Tenn.-based Board of Discipleship. "Ministry is not
prescribed by another," she said.  "It is not ordered by legislative action.
Ministry is not pushed out of the end of a manufacturing system that
produces good Christians.  Rather, ministry erupts from the center of our
lives lived in obedience to the risen Christ."

# # #

*McAnally is director of United Methodist News Service, the official news
agency of the United Methodist Church.

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United Methodist News Service
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