wfn.org | UMNS# 04473-Church's future depends on developing leaders,

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Church's future depends on developing leaders, bishop says

Oct. 12, 2004	 News media contact:   Linda  Green * (615) 7425470* 
Nashville
{04473}

NOTE: : Photographs and a related report, UMNS story #474, are available at
http://umns.umc.org.

By Linda Green*

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS)-The lack of leadership in the United Methodist Church
is the top issue facing the denomination in the 21st century, says a retired
bishop.

Bishop Joseph Pennel of Franklin, Tenn., who retired from the active
episcopacy in June, told the governing members of the United Methodist Board
of Higher Education and Ministry that the church is at a critical point
because of the absence of strong, spiritual leaders. "Leadership determines
the path and pathos of an institution and organization," he said.

"Every congregation deserves spiritual leaders," he said. "... We need
leaders
today who are concerned about more than institution maintenance. We need
leaders who are more concerned about faith than maintaining the status quo.
We
need leaders today who are nailed to the historic faith, which brought the
United Methodist Church into being."

The subject of leadership was woven throughout the Oct. 7-10 organizational
meeting of the Board of Higher Education's governing members.

The board is the church's program agency for educational, institutional and
ministerial leadership.  Its mission is to lead the denomination in the
recruitment, preparation, nurture, education and support of Christian
leaders,
both lay and clergy, for the mission of Christ in the world.

Jesus did not reject the past but was informed by it and lived out if it,
Pennel told the board's directors. Christ understood the context in which he
was to give leadership, the bishop said. Christian leaders must be like Jesus
by being counterculture leaders and understanding that if they lead out of
their convictions, others will reject them, he said.

The Rev. Jerome King del Pino, top staff executive of the board, emphasized
the need for global leaders for a global church. "Amid the bewildering
complexities of our 21st century world, what would it take to form and
nurture
leaders who have vision, the spiritual and theological grounding, and the
intellectual and practical skills to lead the United Methodist Church in
faithful ministry in the 21st century?" he asked.

The issue of leadership arises at a critical juncture for the denomination
because the church "is experiencing, if not a crisis, (then a) deep
ambivalence and confusion about the kind of leadership it needs in the years
ahead," he said.

That confusion led the denomination's top legislative body, the 2004 General
Conference, to establish a four-year study commission to discuss and define
the church's understanding of lay, licensed and ordained ministry.

Del Pino related the uncertainty about the nature of leadership in the church
to seismic shifts in the global village-religiously, technologically,
politically, socially and economically.

"The responsibilities of the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and
Ministry in the areas of call, preparation, support and accountability for
persons in ordained, diaconal and licensed ministry, and its oversight of
campus ministry and institutions of higher education, are areas of passion
for
me," said Bishop Gregory Palmer, the newly elected president of the board.
Palmer leads the church's Iowa Area.

"The church and the culture(s) have no greater need than well-prepared
Christian leaders. The United Methodist Board of Higher Education and
Ministry
is this church's agency at the critical nexus to assist the church in this
area," he said.

Palmer challenged the board members to perform their duties well because "we
cannot afford to be guilty of the sin of low expectation, with regard to
developing leadership for a global church."

Del Pino described three leadership characteristics that the United Methodist
Church needs as he laid out a "vision of global leaders for a global church."

The first characteristic of such a leader is that of being a guardian of the
connection, he said. The leader does not abandon the ideal of a global church
that is diverse in hues, languages, cultures and traditions. He said global
leaders take seriously the view of Methodism's founder, John Wesley, that the
world was his parish, and because the church is changing faces, such leaders
are not "prompt(ed) to trim their vision to the local, the familiar and the
domestic."

A global leader also bears a renewed vision of the church, Del Pino said. The
leader envisions a church that recovers its Methodist heritage without
"self-interested denominational navel gazing or anxious preoccupation with
its
own survival."	Leaders with renewed vision embrace the purpose for which the
Methodist movement was founded, he said. "From the beginning, Methodism
existed not for its own sake but for the sake of a larger catholicity."

He asked what would happen if United Methodists recovered the Methodist ethos
of nurturing disciples "bent on living not for themselves but for the larger
good of God's kingdom," and were not driven by a desire for institutional
maintenance and management.

A third characteristic of a global leader for a global church is that of
advocating for a learned leadership.

This leader, Del Pino said, calls for a renewal of the union of reason and
vital piety, intellectual excellence and holiness of heart and life. "Global
leaders for a global church uncompromisingly and unapologetically advocate
for
educated and educating leaders," he said. They strive for a "new public
space,
where issues that define our mission and ministry can be raised, debated and
resolved beyond the categories, dichotomies, and labels that now hold the
conversation captive."

Global leaders embrace Wesley's vision of providing education to everyone,
especially the poor and underserved. Methodists, historically, have thought
of
education as a tool for individual empowerment and social improvement and
providing education to all has been an issue of justice, he said. Global
leaders for a global church "envision an education pipeline that stretches
around the world, training leaders with the spiritual, moral and intellectual
wherewithal to lead the church and the society in the midst of profound
change."

In addition to Palmer's election as president, the board elected Bishop J.
Lawrence McClesky, Charlotte, N.C., vice president of the Division of Higher
Education; the Rev. Al Bowles, Chattanooga, Tenn., vice president of the
Division of Ordained Ministry; and the Rev. Elaine Stanovsky, Seattle,
secretary.

*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville,
Tenn.

News media contact: Linda Green, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org

You may leave the list at any time by going to
http://umns.umc.org/unsubscribe.html