I’m proud of the witness of The United Methodist Church to
the Wesleyan way of interpreting faith in Jesus Christ. A part of this witness is to become more
Christ-like or seek to live in partnership with sanctifying grace. This often means that we must confess our sin
or brokenness. I would say that some of our current difficulty lies within some of our basic polity.
The United Methodist Church is a worldwide denomination
whose origins from its Methodist Episcopal branch began side by side with the
birth of the United States of America.
It is organized in structure in a very similar way to the United States
government in that we have executive, legislative and judicial separation of powers.
Just as the country moved west following a self-styled manifest
destiny, the Methodist movement led the way, its witness establishing churches
in territories long before statehood.
Mission to other countries became a part of the movement just as it did
in many other denominations. In the
beginnings, the focus may have seemed rather colonial to those we were seeking
to reach. We sent over white, American
pastors to share the Good News with other countries and likely trod on local
cultures and peoples with a thought more toward justifying grace than
prevenient grace. As we recaptured the
sense that God was already at work in other areas through prevenient grace, our
focus began to change to include indigenous people of the areas where we sought to
plant churches. We called local people
of the countries we sought to be in relationship with into ministry alongside
us. Their witness proved to be more
authentic to the people they lived alongside.
We began to see a Wesleyan Methodist movement take shape in ways that
were diverse and beautiful even if somewhat different than what we experienced
in the United States.
But we have retained a dominance over the denomination within
the United States. All of our General
Conferences have been held in the United States. The legislation starts in English and then is
translated into other languages. English
is translated into other languages at General Conference but English is the
dominant language. While this may not
seem like a big deal, it may be more important if you come from somewhere
else. At my first General Conference in
Pittsburgh in 2004, I noticed signs that explained where to pick up your
translators. They were only in English.
In Tampa in 2012, I was seated at a table with delegates
from Africa. I was embarrassed at the
amount of time we spent discussing pension benefits that would only apply to
clergy from the United States. It was
apparent to me that this was a poor use of our stewardship as a global body. And of course, our stewardship is a part of
our witness.
The colonialism may seem subtle to us, but it is also set up
in our polity.
Within the Constitution of the Book of Discipline (the
constitution being our founding structure that has a higher bar to change),
paragraph eight begins our governance at the highest body which is the General Conference. The very next paragraph states, “There shall
be jurisdictional conferences for the Church in the United States of America,
with such powers, duties, and privileges as are hereinafter set forth”.
Paragraph ten then divides God’s church by stating, “There
shall be central conferences for the Church outside the United States of
America…”
It is fascinating that we seem to miss the sense of irony in
these statements given the fact that earlier in paragraph five, we have a
statement on racial justice. It states
specifically, “The United Methodist Church recognizes that the sin of racism
has been destructive to its unity throughout its history. Racism continues to
cause painful division and marginalization. The United Methodist Church shall
confront and seek to eliminate racism, whether
in organizations or in individuals, in every facet of its life and in
society at large.” (emphasis mine).
The question we haven’t been asking (at least very loudly)
up until now is why do we structure differently depending on if you live in the
United States or not?
If our polity is a part of our witness (it is), fortunately,
we quickly course correct.
Paragraph eleven then states that whether you are in a
central or jurisdictional conference, all organize as annual conferences at a
more localized level. In fact, paragraph
33 exclaims that “The annual conference is the basic body in the Church…” While our annual conferences may function
more contextually, we hold the same basic structures that allow for voice,
right to trial and vote for all of our clergy and laity.
One could say that through the annual conferences, we
already practice regionalization.
One of the major differences between the governance of a
jurisdictional conference within the United States and a central conference
outside of the United States is our sense of mission. Because we have recognized the US dominance through
how we have organized, we have made allowances for contextual ministry outside
the United States. In outlining the
powers of a central conference, paragraph 543.7 allows for adaptation of the
Book of Discipline within an area provided that it doesn’t violate the
constitution of the Book of Discipline or the General Rules. Jurisdictional conferences within the United
States do not have this same adaptability primarily because the Book of
Discipline has been so US-centric.
When The United Methodist Church was formed in 1968, the
United States was very Christo-centric at least from a standpoint of cultural self-identification (this is different from stating that Christian values were lived out on a wider scale).
There were not a lot of things happening outside church in our
communities on Sundays and Wednesday evenings in those days. It was advantageous to be even nominally Christian
in American society. The church and
clergy experienced privileges that we no longer exercise.
In 2008, we added “witness” to our membership vows. This is not because the church in Africa or the
Philippines was doing such a good job with their witness that we thought it
would be wise to emulate their practice (although this was true). Rather, it was because we were seeing the shift in
American culture and we recognized that American Christians needed to be
reminded of their responsibility to witness to their faith once more. We had grown complacent because we were used
to people just showing up to church when we opened the doors on Sunday
mornings.
Today, we recognize that the United States has become the
mission field. The UMC problem in the US
is that the majority of young people here do not embrace Jesus Christ as their
Lord and Savior. While we had been
steadily seeing an erosion of faith in recent decades, the pandemic really moved
this forward much more quickly than we had otherwise anticipated. Our churches in the US are aging and most of
them do not have multi-generational congregations. This means that unless we begin to address our
witness and reach the next generation, most of these local churches will have a
short shelf-life. It (almost) goes
without saying that this will greatly impact our sustainability as a
denomination. This erodes the vital witness that we have to the world.
Regionalization within our denomination will allow for the
same adaptability for the United States that is allowed around the globe. It is needed for multiple reasons but I have
pointed out two for our consideration that both impact our witness. The primary reason is so that we will regain
the integrity of our witness through our polity in that we will align ourselves
as a global church with the same structure whether you live inside or outside
the United States. As the world has flattened through globalization,
so must our structure. This helps us to
begin to end the vestiges of colonialism that remain a part of our identity
through our polity. This polity is
currently not a part of our witness
that I like to emphasize.
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Young people serving young people is our witness
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The secondary reason is that the United States as a mission
field needs to also recruit indigenous clergy from our populations so that they
may lead their communities.
While we still have work to do with all generations, the
indigenous people we primarily need to reach are younger.
Regionalization sends the right witness to
this generation by saying, “we believe that your context is important.
Who you are is important.
We believe that God loves you for who you are
and is already at work in your life.
We
would like to explore conversations to see how we might grow in spirit together
and learn from one another.”
Christian witness within specific context is something we
have done from our very beginnings. The
apostle Paul writing to the Church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 9 speaks of
becoming a slave to the context to reach people for Christ. He lived both inside and outside the law
depending on the people he was seeking to reach.
He states in verses 22b-23, “I have become all things to all people,
that I might by all means save some. I
do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I might become a partner in it.”
Within Jewish and Gentile culture in Paul’s day, there were
very different ways of understanding the faith.
Some undoubtedly called him a sellout to the ideals of scripture. He was injured many times over because of his stance. For Paul, the defining factor that tied all of these varieties of Christian expression together was the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Paul understood this witness to supersede
some of the most basic laws of identity so that the church could thrive. It was primary to his understanding. The church and its witness was regional in
intent so that more people could recognize that God is "above all and in all and through all." (Ephesians 4:6).
My hope is that we will pass regionalization by the necessary
2/3 margin at General Conference and then we will ratify it at our annual
conferences the next year. And just as
Paul’s leadership allowed the church to spread throughout the world by focusing
on what is primary, I believe that this will allow the church today to more
quickly speak to the world in ways that it can hear. We still have something worthy of sharing: the love of Jesus Christ. Let’s unleash our witness.
Photo taken by the author at the Oklahoma Conference Camp Spark, June 25, 2019.
Quoted scripture from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.