Notebook

The five practices and the four areas of focus: congregational habits and denominational priorities

Notebook · Published 2026-10-23

United Methodist congregations in the late 2000s were offered two frameworks almost at once. In 2007 the five practices of fruitful congregations began spreading through districts and church councils. In 2008 the denomination's General Conference affirmed "four areas of focus" to orient its churchwide ministry. Leaders soon asked how the two fit together. The question is still useful, because the confusion it reveals, between habits of local communities and priorities of large institutions, is common far beyond one denomination.

The four areas of focus

The four areas were proposed jointly by the Council of Bishops, the chief executives of the church's general agencies and the Connectional Table, the body that coordinates the denomination's mission and resources. They were affirmed by the 2008 General Conference and used, for the first time, to shape the churchwide budget around intended outcomes. In the wording commonly used at the time, they were:

1. Developing principled Christian leaders for the church and the world.
2. Creating new places for new people and renewing existing congregations.
3. Engaging in ministry with the poor.
4. Stamping out the killer diseases of poverty by improving health globally.

The fourth area later found its best-known expression in the denomination's campaign against malaria in Africa. The second gave impetus to church planting and congregational renewal efforts. The first and third shaped work in theological education, campus ministry and community development.

Two frameworks, two jobs

The simplest way to see the relationship is to notice who each framework is for and what it is meant to do.

• The five practices describe what a congregation does, every week, in its own life: welcome, worship, learning, service and generosity. They are meant to be memorable to everyone from the pastor to the newest member. Their vocabulary is personal and spiritual.
• The four areas of focus describe where a global denomination concentrates attention and money over a period of years. They speak to bishops, conferences, agencies and boards. Their vocabulary is strategic and programmatic.

An analogy from any large organization helps. Employees on the front line need a few simple values that guide daily decisions. The board needs a short list of strategic priorities for allocating capital. Both lists are necessary, and a company that tried to motivate front-line staff with its capital-allocation plan, or to run its board meetings on its customer-service slogans, would be confused. Something similar is true of churches. A sermon series on "developing principled Christian leaders" is hard to imagine; a conference budget organized around "passionate worship" would be equally odd.

Where they meet

The frameworks are not unrelated. Each of the four areas depends on congregations that live the five practices.

• Leaders emerge from congregations where people grow through intentional faith development and are given responsibility early.
• New places for new people require congregations practised in radical hospitality, willing to adapt to people unlike their current members, and generous enough to send members and money to start something new.
• Ministry with the poor is a form of risk-taking mission and service, especially when it moves from charity toward partnership and justice. The phrase "with the poor" rather than "to" or "for" was deliberate.
• Global health depends on extravagant generosity from congregations, alongside prayer and advocacy.

In other words, the four areas describe some of the fruit the denomination hoped congregations would bear in the world; the five practices describe how congregations become the kind of communities that bear it.

Lessons for any congregation

Most congregations are handed frameworks from outside: from their denomination, a regional body, a consultant or a popular book. A few principles help avoid framework fatigue.

• Know which level a framework addresses. Is it describing congregational life, or institutional priorities? Use each at its own level.
• Translate rather than repeat. Denominational priorities usually need translating into concrete local commitments: a partnership with a school, a medical mission team, a new Spanish-language service.
• Keep one vocabulary for everyone. Congregations function best with one shared language for their life together. Additional frameworks can inform planning without replacing it.
• Measure what you can influence. A congregation cannot eradicate malaria, but it can decide how generously it will give and how faithfully it will pray and advocate.

A worked example

Consider a mid-sized congregation in a small city. Its council has been using the five practices for several years. Its regional conference then asks every church to report how it supports the four areas of focus. The council could treat this as a second, competing agenda. A better approach is to ask, for each area, which of the congregation's existing practices already contributes, and where one modest commitment would make the connection real. The youth ministry, part of intentional faith development, could deliberately invite older teenagers to lead, feeding the first area. A Saturday breakfast that currently serves guests could be redesigned with them, turning service into ministry with the poor. A yearly mission offering could be directed, after study, to a health partnership abroad. Nothing new is added to the calendar; existing practices are simply pointed at a wider horizon.

Since 2008

The four areas of focus continued to guide the denomination's budget and agencies through the following decade, while the five practices remained a popular tool in congregations. Both frameworks were then overshadowed in many places by the denomination's long conflict over sexuality, which culminated in thousands of congregations disaffiliating between 2019 and 2023 and in major changes adopted by the 2024 General Conference. Whatever their denominational setting, congregations still face the questions both frameworks raised: how to be communities of real welcome and growth, and how to make a difference far beyond their own walls.

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