Is It Dawn or Dusk for Our United Methodist Church?

Three Petitions to General Conference 2012...

We offer three petitions to General Conference 2012 as an alternative vision to the "Call to Action" proposals. It is our hope that together we might find once again what it means to be a connectional people of God's grace and love at work in the world.

Click here to view the 3 models of UMC structure before us:
Current Structure, the Call to Action proposal, and
A New United Methodist Administrative Order.

How We Got Here & What's At Stake...

Metrics and Ministry: The Future Of The United Methodist Church

The United Methodist Church, as a twelve-million-member global Protestant denomination, faces a moment to decide if it will be a global, Wesleyan, connectional church. The "Call To Action" proposal from a leading body of the UMC approved a plan to reorganize the church that largely ignored more than a third of the denomination - four million United Methodists in Central Conferences who worship and live outside the United States. It is a plan that concentrates power in the hands of a few people and creates an increasingly colonial, hierarchical, centralized church

The serious issues associated with the proposals being presented to General Conference has led a group of clergy and laity assembled by the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) to draft legislation to address these concerns: the failure to provide equality for United Methodists who reside beyond the boundaries of the United States and the need for a model of church effectiveness that incorporates good business practices along with our Wesleyan commitments to connectionalism and social holiness. Out of its long history of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, because of its commitment to social justice ministries, and in recognition of the historical participatory nature of leadership in the church, MFSA is proposing legislation that supports the spiritual growth of the denomination, redefines the global nature of the church, and strengthens mutual accountability of clergy, congregations and denominational leadership.

Three key studies have been initiated this quadrennium which have generated reports to the Connectional Table and the General Conference. The Worldwide Nature of the Church study was commissioned by the 2008 General Conference and became especially important after the defeat of constitutional amendments designed to equalize the jurisdictions in the United States and the central conferences in other areas of the world. A second study, by business efficiency experts Towers Watson, identified congregations as the primary focus of the Call To Action report. A third study, produced the Study of Ministry Committee, was also initiated by the 2008 General Conference.

A priority of the sixty-three member Connectional Table has been to address membership loss, a trend experienced in all mainline Protestant denominations in the United States over the last fifty years. At the same time, membership is growing in the central conferences in Africa and the Philippines. In Africa, millions have been added to the rolls, thereby impacting the make-up of the approximately 1000 delegates to General Conference.
2012 2008 2004 2000
Central Conference Delegates 372 278 186 150
Delegates from Africa 282 194 106 82

In the United States, where members are dying or leaving more quickly than members are being born, baptized or received, the trends are fueling a crisis that some want to address through models of metrics, goals and consequences for poor performance.

In a seeming effort to place blame, the Call To Action plan recommends holding clergy to strict requirements of goal setting and weekly on-line reporting of membership, giving, and other metrics which position them for reward—or punishment. Additionally, the Study of Ministry committee has supported this view by proposing a method of removing pastors who do not measure up in this system. Although accountability and metrics are important, other factors also need to be considered: the character of the congregation, the nature of the surrounding financial and demographic realities, and mutual accountability at all levels of leadership.

Last year, the Connectional Table established an Interim Operations Team of eight people, all of them from the United States and Europe, to draft an implementation strategy for the Call To Action Report. In July 2011, the final plan was submitted and a small group called the Connectional Table Legislative Task Force was charged with drafting legislation. At the August 2011 Connectional Table meeting only 26 of the 43 people present voted for the proposed legislation. Seventeen members either voted against it or abstained from the vote.

Why did so few members favor the legislation? Was it because the global church was hardly addressed? Was it because a small fifteen member board of directors would manage the more than $600 million quadrennial budget? Was is because hundreds of volunteer board members, representing thousands of United Methodist local churches and millions of members, would be sidelined and replaced by a fifteen member board of directors? Was it because the board would not be large enough to include participation by many constituencies across the denomination?

The denomination currently uses a formula to elect members of boards and agencies from jurisdictional and central conferences. Using the existing calculations for the 45 member General Council on Strategy and Oversight, 35% of the members would be allocated to the Southeast and South Central Jurisdictions and only 11% would be allocated to the central conferences. Under this plan, the voices of the marginalized in our church would be marginalized even further, and the voices of the powerful would gain even more power.

The "Implementation of Call to Action Proposal" is now on the General Conference docket. The actions of General Conference will determine whether The United Methodist Church will move beyond the model of a colonial church where the US controls most decision making and whether The United Methodist Church is ready to restructure itself in a more efficient and visionary manner for the future.

The MFSA group which has been addressing the Call to Action Proposal believes that The United Methodist Church must maintain its core identity as a connectional church with shared and representative leadership and with a strong social witness consistent with the teachings and practices of John Wesley.

In the face of efforts to consolidate power in the hands of a few, the Methodist Federation for Social Action task force proposes three pieces of legislation.

Summary of the Three Petitions...

A New United Methodist Administrative Order: Establishes a Coordinating Council which replaces the Connectional Table, reconfigures program agencies into three, retaining the social witness as a strong component of the UMC's work, and establishes a Center for Resourcing and Operations to ensure the effective use of resources and to centralize administrative services where possible. This proposal will maintain appropriate legal and fiduciary management by elected boards of directors appropriate to the scale of ministry provided. You can read this petition at www.mfsagc12.org/A New United Methodist Administrative Order.pdf.

Clergy Evaluation Process: Places the responsibility for congregational success on the shoulders of the congregation, the pastors, the district superintendents and the bishops together, rather than solely on the shoulders of the pastors. You can read this petition at www.mfsagc12.org/Clergy Evaluation Process.pdf.

A More Equitable Worldwide Connection: Places all Central Conferences on an equal footing with the United States by establishing a United States Central Conference. It also permits larger Central Conferences to create Jurisdictional Conferences and to elect bishops under either Central Conference or Jurisdictional Conference proceedings. You can read this petition at www.mfsagc12.org/A More Equitable Worldwide Connection.pdf.