Click to learn more about the Call to Action Steering Committee
In November, the Council of Bishops unanimously approved the key recommendations of the Call to Action Steering Team. The Connectional Table of the United Methodist Church (with representatives from all the General Boards) also unanimously approved the report. I hope that you have taken the opportunity to read news stories about the Call to Action. If not, you may wish to go to the website www.umc.org/calltoaction. With all the statistical analysis and data, the report runs to nearly 250 pages; however, the essentials are in the first 44 pages, and the Executive Summary and Key Recommendations are found on pages 23-30.
I am much encouraged by the actions of the Council and the Connectional Table. The directions set by this report have huge implications for our life and ministry, and for the mission of Christ through the United Methodist Church. Over the next few weeks, I plan to comment on many aspects of the report, and to encourage laity and clergy to think with me in fresh ways about our mission. Today I will introduce the five key recommendations, but during the weeks to come I hope to delve more deeply into what each of these might mean for the mission God gives as a church.
Key Recommendation One reads, “For a minimum of ten years, use the drivers of vital congregations as initial areas of attention for sustained and intense concentration on building effective practices in local churches.”
I think this is a wonderfully positive step. The primary place where the United Methodist Church fulfills its mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world is the local congregation, the faith community that invites, embraces, and welcomes people in the name of Christ, offers life-changing worship that connects people to God, provides opportunities for people to mature in faith by learning in community, and helps people discover God’s call on their life to make a positive difference for the purposes of Christ through service, mission, and justice ministries. If we do not figure out how to fulfill our mission through healthy, strong, outward-focused congregations, then there will be no connectional ministries, no effective efforts at fighting malaria, no disaster response teams in the future. I agree with the observations of one of the professional lay consultants who worked with the Call to Action Team when he said, “I actually think this should be a 40-year focus rather than a ten year emphasis.” This recommendation calls for sustained obedience in a consistent direction over time, and this will be hard for the United Methodist Church, but I’m excited by the prospects. In blogs to come, I will reflect on what this means for our understanding of connectionalism, how annual conferences can direct their attention, resources, and personnel in more intentional ways, what the implications are for the Five Practices and other helpful initiatives to strengthen congregations, and what the implications may be for general boards, seminaries, foundations and other UM institutions during the years to come as we seek to align resources, personnel and our best work toward fulfilling the mission of Christ through congregations.
Key Recommendation Two says, “Dramatically reform the clergy leadership development, deployment, evaluation, and accountability systems.”
There is much in this important recommendation as well. How do we design recruitment systems and credentialing systems that are understandable, accessible and appealing in order to attract gifted people to ministry while also sharpening our focus on fruitfulness, effectiveness, and accountability? How is our current system conducive to these outcomes, and how does it undermine these efforts? Do the recommendations coming out of the Ministry Study support these efforts? How might the appointment processes improve to strengthen the mission of the church and what are the real implications of adjusting our concept of the guaranteed appointment? What are the best means to prepare people for ministry in the future, and what are the varying and appropriate credentialing processes for diverse settings of ministry? For me, the fundamental issues are excellence and fruitfulness in ministry.
Key Recommendation Three says, “Collect, report and review, and act on statistical information that measures progress in key performance areas to learn and adjust our approaches to leadership, policies, and the use of human and financial resources.”
This recommendation requires us to focus on results, outcomes, impact, and fruitfulness in all of our ministries so that we break the unhealthy habit of merely focusing on inputs and of measuring success by how many people work on a project, how much money is spent, or how many buildings are built. Many things in ministry are measurable – attendance, professions of faith, baptisms, contributions, etc. On the other hand, much of the fruit of ministry is immeasurable and beyond our capacity to quantify and report. But this doesn’t get us off the hook and does not release us from the obligation to focus on fruit. We should use “measurables” where we can, and use “describables” where we cannot measure, and hold each other accountable for fruit. Most importantly, the recommendation says we must act on this information and adapt to better fulfill the mission.
Key Recommendation Four reads, “Reform the Council of Bishops, with the active bishops (1) assuming responsibility and public accountability for improving results in attendance, professions of faith, baptisms, participation in servant/mission ministries, benevolent giving, and lowering the average age of participants in local church life; and (2) establishing a new culture of accountability throughout the church.”
This recommendation places the responsibility for forming a culture of accountability on the Council of Bishops. Also, notice that the language particularly focuses on the “active” bishops in contrast to the retired bishops. The Council is comprised of both, and there is much to be worked out on how this recommendation will be fulfilled. The consultant to the Call to Action Team made an insightful observation when he told us, “The Council of Bishops is a group of leaders who seeks to be a leadership group, but faces many restraints, internal and external.” I agree. Many effective and passionate leaders of the United Methodist Church serve on the Council of Bishops, but when we gather as a Council our leadership becomes diffused, blunted, distracted, and of questionable helpfulness to leading the church. I hope this call to reform the Council opens the way to new ways of leading.
Key Recommendation Five says, “Consolidate program and administrative agencies, align their work and resources with the priorities of the Church and the decade-long commitment to build vital congregations, and reconstitute them with much smaller competency-based boards of directors in order to overcome current lack of alignment, diffused and redundant activity, and higher than necessary expense due to independent structures.”
While this recommendation primarily focuses on general boards and agencies, I believe it calls for similar alignment at conference, district, and local church levels of ministry. General boards took their current form in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s. Since then, much has changed about how congregations fulfill their mission and about where conferences turn for resourcing and leadership. The size, focus, and diffused sense of purpose has contributed to a sense of disconnection from those who fund general church ministries, the local congregations. This recommendation invites open conversation about merging, reducing, redirecting resources, collaboration, and reconsidering how best to perform those functions that support the mission of the church that are beyond the capacity of local congregations and conferences to do for themselves.
Those are the recommendations of the Call to Action. The centrality of the mission of the church at the congregational level, the emphasis on congregational practices, the orientation toward results and fruitfulness – these and many other aspects of the Call to Action report mirror the work we’ve been doing in Missouri in recent years and reflect the same principles lifted up in Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. The alignment of our conference with Congregational Excellence and Pastoral Excellence provides one model for how conferences can take the first steps. I’m delighted and encouraged by the leadership of the church moving in this direction.
Pray with me for a spirit of openness, for a fresh receptivity to this moment, for a level of patient cooperation intertwined with an appropriate sense of urgency, so that our pastoral and lay leadership at every level of the United Methodist Church may see this as a moment ripe for deepening our mission so that Christ’s love and hope thrive in the hearts of increasing numbers of people, calling them to nothing less than the transformation of the world.
Yours in Christ,
RS
Thank you Bishop Schnase. I still must allow you to realize that in the connectional table, I see the Global Methodist-Nazarene Lamb’s Hope connecting local congregations with local people who are disabled to be discipled and disciple other people in the faith of Yeshua.
This particular edition of Bishop Schanse’s blog just must be made available to all local congregants. A much briefer version just *must* become available to people *without* local church leadership involvement as well as to all people who *lack* computer, internet access or abilities. *Please* do that. I believe that effort would cause us elderly no-longer-fully-active persons to feel that we still are “worth more than folks simply being kind to us.” Too, written in Bishop Schnase’s way with The Spirit’s aid, it can spark “pew fillers” to a sense of involvement.”
Anything you want to do with this reply is fine with me – after you shorten, improve it!
I “clicked on” Bishop Schnase when I first saw his website *because* I remember him from serving, a short while, on Southwest Texas Annual Conference’s “Christian Education” and recognized his pure focus on using himself for expanding the work of Christ Jesus. He was Austin District Superintendent then. If this is a *different* Robert Schnase, he too is God’s own man.
Mrs Annette Altgelt, now member of Cherry Hill UMC in Elkton MD, Wilmington District, Peninsula-Delaware Conference
Excellent! And timely as West Michigan prepares to launch our version of the Small Church Initiative pilot in 2011.
Thank you.
There is much in the Bishop’s blog regarding the Call to Action approved by the Council of Bishops and summarized by Bishop Schnase here that gives me hope as a lay person in the United Methodist Church. While I do not see any specific language reference to John Wesley’s concern for “lost souls” in this blog, the intention seems clear–an outwardly focused and missional church that exists for the transformation of the world. Surely if there was ever a time that needs to hear and heed this message, then that time is now; Surely if there was ever a people called United Methodists who need to heed this message and become doers of the word and not hearers only, then those people are us. If not us, then who? If not now, then when? I can only hope that this Call to Action will not be just another letter read from the pulpit or at an administrative council meeting but a living letter that will be read and reread as well as lived out and incorporated into the faith beliefs and practices of each individual United Methoidist and each United Methodist Church congregation. This certainly is a clarion call for our generation of UMC members to be Christians and to invite other to become Christian. I pray that it will be so!
Since details of the Call to Action have come out there has been a bit of buzz amongst UM clergy especially. Let me first say that I am all for a direction that is serious about reforming and renewing our denomination. So many people are predicting the demise of United Methodism, or at least a split. I find hope when our leaders are seeking to be faithful instead of just maintaining our tradition.
That being said, there are a couple of things I would lift. The first is that The Council of Bishops needs to take seriously the lack of trust that many pastors and churches have for those in authority. When I first became a pastor I was a bit taken back by the distrust of District Superintendents, and Bishops, and even other pastors. That same distrust is in many churches that don’t think that conference or denomination should be telling them how to do church. I have made it part of my mission in ministry to re-establish trust, but it’s a big job. The top down effort the Call to Action suggests is probably not going to be received well by many simply because it comes from the top, regardless of how good and true it might be.
The other thing I would lift is that pastors are already beginning to look over their shoulder because of what they are hearing in the Call to Action. Many are wondering where it leaves them for a couple of reasons, neither of which is really about concern that they are ineffective. One reason is that it seems to describe a type of pastor leader that many don’t see in themselves. If I don’t fit this particular description what happens to me? What I have been learning from reading and experience is that it takes all kinds of leadership for a church to be fruitful. If the pastor doesn’t have a particular gift, someone in the church probably does. The focus become building a leadership team that has a full complement of leadership styles and gifts. This seems to fit better with 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4.
The other reason pastors are looking over their shoulder is that so far that hasn’t been mention of churches that refuse to change even when they have a pastor that is trying to institute positive change. Where is the evaluation that takes stubborn congregations into account?
The last thing that I want to lift is that there is a lot of language of accountability and not enough about how support is going to be offered. I haven’t read the whole report, so maybe it’s in there. I am all for accountability, but our Book of Discipline says that accountability without support is cruel. How are we going to offer, and encourage people and churches to take advantage of, training to begin to fulfill the mandates of the report?
I really do want you to hear that I support the ideas that are being presented and I am doing my best to fulfill our vision and mission as a United Methodist church. I believe that our denomination has a vital future and that we can become more fruitful through these types of efforts. I just want to make sure that we take time to help pastors and churches feel heard and supported. If the pastors and churches can own the Call to Action real fruitfulness will become a reality.
Each church has unique characteristics–one writer tells of stubborness—on the other hand–how do we deal with apathy? Mark Payne tells of a “Leadership Team”; how can I hear more? Our committee system seems to have each group on their own, we are not working together for common goals and purpose; the committee chairs are focused on themselves. The Administrative Council is nothing more than a report hearing meeting–what a waste!
Does someone have a Leadership Development Plan that prepares persons to serve and serve effectively on committees and boards. Personnel changes in committees should be routine; why is it so difficult to find people to serve?
I’m writing as a Lay person—I facilitate classes of adults: we’ve done Three Simple Rules; an overview of NCD; Church Marketing 101; and Five Principles of Fruitful Living. We are up to our eyebrows in “How to” and “Why We should” . We can’t get this bunch off the Dime.
Hal Neff Bismarck
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