Why Regionalization is Key to the Witness of The United Methodist Church

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.

Young people serving young people is our witness

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.