April 25th Reflections

I’m too tired to come up with a title for tonight’s blog. It is getting harder and harder to keep up with everything that is going on. Let me just say, in my opinion Bishop James King is one of the great treasures of The United Methodist Church. He preached our closing worship service this evening — which was a nice upbeat focus on invitation — and he nailed a key concept missing from the contemporary church: actually taking the task of discipleship seriously. Our task is to make disciples for the transformation of the world, but HOW do we do this? We do it by taking our own lazy tails out of the church into the world and invite others into a relationship with Christ, and to enjoy fellowship with us. We can invest all we want in a new generation of clergy, but if the leadership of the church isn’t committed to equipping laity to be ministers in the world, it won’t make a bit of difference. Bishop King was brilliant.

The other main features of the evening were solid, inspirational presentations by various agency heads and prominent denominational leaders, most notably Moses Kumar (General Secretary, CF&A) and Adam Hamilton (lead pastor, Church of the Resurrection). Both did commendable jobs. In the case of Moses Kumar, this is a great thing. His approach was a gracious and sincere “thank you” for the 84% of apportionments we have been able to pay through a rough economy and a declining membership. Instead of guilting us into what we haven’t done or trying to scare us about what might be lurking around the next decade, he highlighted the many ways we are transforming the world with what we have. I was very impressed by his message and his narrative of success and faithfulness rather than anxiety and fear.

Adam Hamilton delivered a powerful message — of anxiety and fear. His presentation of the major proposals from the Call to Action laid the foundation of failure and imminent demise to inspire us to greatness. His delivery is incredibly reasoned — nothing he says is untrue (nor has it been untrue for quite some time). We’re not doing a very good job, we need to do better. We can’t keep doing what we have done and expect different results. We need to change. All well and good — who can argue? The problem is, I don’t believe the proposed solutions are appropriate to the problems identified.

We want more “vital congregations,” but the definition of “vital” is still numbers-dependent. “More” is still a primary guiding value — more new churches, more people, more young leaders = vital. How this aligns with getting more serious about discipleship (without watering down our definition of “discipleship”) is anybody’s guess. Expecting more from people isn’t the most effective means of attracting large numbers.

We want to give annual conferences more freedom to organize for “vitality,” though how restructuring results in growth is not clear. We want to downsize to reach more people, and limit leadership to be more inclusive. We will leave fewer openings for younger leaders, but we assume we can appeal more to younger people.

To reach more people, we need more churches. To reach more young people, we need more young pastors. We need to invest in leadership, but this means in clergy leadership. It was clearlycommunicated that only by turning young laity leadership into clergy leadership can our church hope to thrive. Laity leadership, it is implied, is insufficient and inadequate. We need clergy to lead laity — though our pastors don’t necessarily have to do anything to empower or equip laity to reach more people (which is why we are where we are today…) Once we professionalized ministry away from the laity, we made laity dependent and complacent. This is apparently okay, because our new recommendations don’t propose collaboration between clergy and laity anyway. We need to make sure we have 2,000 new young clergy in a decade or our church will die. (But, then, it is dead in 50 years anyway…)

A manipulative and depressing video ended the evening presentation — an old church dies, becoming a metaphor for all United Methodist churches. Yep, it could happen. The production values are great. It grabs the heart and squeezes. If this is the best we can do, we don’t have a snowball’s chance of attracting high-quality young leadership. Why bother? We’re not providing a vision for a thriving church, just wallowing in our “death tsunami” thinking and planning. Is it any wonder where we are? We need Moses and at the very best we get Jonah. Thank God our evening didn’t end with Adam Hamilton’s well-delivered eulogy. Bishop King brought us back with a vision and gave us what the earlier presentation only talked about — a future with hope.

Rate this:

14 responses to “April 25th Reflections”

David Kueker

April 26, 2012

There’s a lot to digest here … but I believe the diffusion of innovations understanding of change has a lot to offer.

First, large organizations are not led by innovators or early adopters. They are led by middle adopters whose primary goal is to keep everybody happy and everything running smoothly – this is what holds a tribe together. They are not dangerous and don’t bring dangerous ideas into the discussion. This sounded like a smoothly orchestrated presentation of the problem to increase anxiety to motivate people to adopt the solution that will be presented later.

Second, by the time a middle adopter has manipulated a truly innovative idea to the point where he/she is comfy with it, everything innovative will have been removed from the idea. In short, it’s the “active ingredients” that are hard to agree on … but once all that is left is “filler” everyone can get behind that. And comfy is defined as this: the most comfortable result is if nothing changes. So the problem is that ideas typically brought to people groups by middle adopters are widely accepted precisely because they have been “denatured” – they will not work.

Third, what this means is that there will be discontinuity between the ideas that truly will make a difference and the ideas that will be presented. A “chasm” will develop between the idea that might work roposed by the “innovative minority’ (16%) and the “pragmatic majority” (84%). (See http://www.disciplewalk.com/parable_light_bulb_2.html for the categories.) In response to the broadcasting of ideas (a major error in change), each segment will develop its own quick fix representing the needs of that group.

Fourth, the process by which an innovative idea moves toward full adoption is outlined in Everett Rogers “The Diffusion of Innovation” but the particularly difficult task of helping an idea cross from the minds of the innovators and early adoptiers, who love ideas, into the behavior and daily life of the rest of the organization is outlined in Geoffrey Moore’s brilliant “Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers.” It’s much more organic and not what will be happening at a General Conference.

Fifth, if discipleship is the innovation which is the solution, care needs to be taken that the innovation not be simplified to the point where it does not work on the way to being adopted by the majority. The poor numbers over decades indicate that our basic understanding of discipleship is inadequate … not that we are not working hard enough at it. We don’t need new and better tubes when the rest of the world is moving toward transistors. We need to go back and take a very good look at what Jesus actually did to make disciples and derive pure principles from that, then cross those timeless principles with our current situation to achieve hybrid vigor.

Sixth, as an innovator specializing in dangerous ideas in disciple making – “the fusion bulb” – such as CPM and T4T and the third world cell church, innovations in disciple making that have converted millions in the third world, I can genuinely tell you that a church focused on replacing tubes with transistors has little or no interest in the potential of integrated circuits – computer chips – that are becoming possible.

Seventh, I can’t help pointing the way to what I think is the answer before concluding:

Mat 4:19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.”
Mat 28:20 … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you;

Between these two sign posts I believe that you will find a timeless methodology for making disciples. And the key word is “all” rather than on emphasizing one aspect or the other – for what is needed is for all the principles to work together. (And by between I mean the teaching of Jesus on disciple making in all four gospels.)

And the key point to me that seems to be missed, again and again, is that the end result of this process of teaching is NOT that people become disciples (conversion) or that disciples become better disciples (sanctification/missional), but that disciples are intended to become disciple makers.

T4T puts it simply: there are only two kinds of people in the world, people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers. Where is our focus?

Reply
michelleperram

April 26, 2012

Sorry I posted and didn’t see it appear and tried to recreate my post. My apologies.

Reply
michelleperram

April 26, 2012

Thank you Dan for all your hard work at covering the GC and keeping us posted on what is happening.

I agree that “clergy” leadership is not the answer to our problems. Unless by leadership, you mean listening to the laity and empowering them to live out their calls. I also suspect that when the UMC speaks of “clergy” leadership they are focusing on elders. While deacons are ordained clergy and supposedly equal to elders it is my experience that the role of deacons is often just paid lip service by the church organization. It is the role of the deacon to empower and equip the laity so as to make the bridge between the Church and the World, the Congregation and the Community.

I believe that sadly, deacons are underutilized and relegated to special ministry (youth, music, education) and are rarely unleashed to make that bridge to the World through their specialties in ministry. Perhaps, if instead of a top-down design of ministry, we could work in partnership with one another we could be a real presence in the World.

Peace and joy to you.

Reply
Logan Garth Swanger

April 26, 2012

It has all of the earmarks of the proverbial rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Who wants to join us?

Reply
michelleperram

April 26, 2012

Dan you are doing a great job of covering GC.
I agree with you that more clergy leadership is not the answer. Unless by leadership one means clergy who listen more and empower the laity to live out their own calls. I’m also disappointed because I sense (and perhaps I’m reading my own bias into this) that “clergy” leadership means elders. Even though the UMC has brought into being the Order of Deacons I fear that deacons are only paid lip service regarding their value to the church. It is exactly the role of deacons to empower the laity and help make the bridge between the Church and the World, the Congregation and the Community.
Keep up the good work. I’m really enjoying reading your posts.
Peace and joy to you.

Reply
jwaynepratt

April 26, 2012

Dan, you have well-thought out yet another post which gives a very accurate picture of where we have been, are presently, and the unknown of where we are headed. There is a tremendous need to grow, but direction is needed, and I believe it lies in better empowering laity to take responsibility as co-workers in the kingdom. We also need positive encouragement, not images that we are in a hospice situation. An ICU might be a better image as there is more hope for the future.

Reply
Wayne Cook

April 26, 2012

Dan, thank you for sharing your reflections. Doing the work of my charges kept me from being able to watch much of the live feed today, although I did get to catch the approval of the rules (without changes, I believe) while eating lunch. I’m tired of the “woe is us” mantra and the negativity. I did catch evening worship just prior to the start of Bishop King’s message. Inspiring! (Although I do hope that the audio mix in the hall is better than what we’re getting on the feed.)

Blessings to all of you as you seek the will of the Spirit.

Reply