Surprising Annual Conference Data

I’m working frantically to finish my senior honors thesis on leadership and annual conferences, but in getting together data for my project I noticed tremendous variation in worship attendance among annual conferences. I wondered what would happen if I divided average weekly worship attendance by lay membership in annual conferences. If you assume that the vast majority of attenders are members, the results are interesting and not what I expected.

Whole United States (Average Worship Attendance / Lay Membership): 0.413

Ten Eleven (since there is now only one Indiana Conference) highest annual conferences:

1. North Indiana: 0.661
2. Desert Southwest: 0.660
3. Alaska Missionary: 0.615
4. California Pacific: 0.603
5. West Michigan: 0.599
6. Greater New Jersey: 0.548
7. South Indiana: 0.548
8. West Ohio: 0.541
9. Dakotas: 0.524
10. Yellowstone: 0.520
11. Oregon-Idaho: 0.499

Ten Thirteen (they’re monkeying with boundaries in New York too) lowest annual conferences:

1. Oklahoma: 0.242
2. Wyoming (NY and PA): 0.257
3. Central Texas: 0.287
4. North Central New York: 0.298
5. New York: 0.310
6. Troy (NY): 0.318
7. OIMC: 0.330
8. Rio Grande: 0.335
9. Northwest Texas: 0.337
10. Iowa: 0.337
11. Western Pennsylvania: 0.344
12: New England: 0.353
13: Virginia: 0.354

Jurisdictions (in order):

1. Western: 0.515
2. North Central: 0.477
3. Southeastern: 0.409
4. Northeastern: 0.385
5. South Central: 0.368

There are many more statistics that should be looked at, but this seems to be a valid one. It kind of blows my mind. The mission of the United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. If anything, I would call church attendance a measure of discipleship. The subtext in a lot of discussion is that the UMC in the southern US is thriving and in the West and Northeast it is declining. This is true when it comes to membership numbers, but what about worship attendance? The fractions above  are clearly not even close to a perfect measure of discipleship, but it gives one pause. There are clearly other factors to look at (and I may get to them at some point). Still, wow.

You can see the data here: http://www.gcfa.org/Data_Resources/excel/US_Annual_Conference_Membership_Summary.xls

Luke

Ending adolescence: what might that mean for the Church?

Newt Gingrich made an interesting proposal recently.

The video focuses on policy, while the article in Business Week talks a little bit more about this history and effects of what Gingrich rightly labels as a “social experiment”. I’m not tremendously interested in social policy, but I would like to ask some questions about what such a proposal would mean for the American (perhaps Western) Church. I’ll quote from the Gingrich article.

In the U.S., this principle of direct transition from the world of childhood play to the world of adult work was clearly established at the time of the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin was an example of this kind of young adulthood. At age 13, Franklin finished school in Boston, was apprenticed to his brother, a printer and publisher, and moved immediately into adulthood.

John Quincy Adams attended Leiden University in Holland at 13 and at 14 was employed as secretary and interpreter by the American Ambassador to Russia. At 16 he was secretary to the U.S. delegation during the negotiations with Britain that ended the Revolution.

Daniel Boone got his first rifle at 12, was an expert hunter at 13, and at 15 made a yearlong trek through the wilderness to begin his career as America’s most famous explorer. The list goes on and on.

We perhaps romanticize these figures too much, but imagine these figures in your youth groups. Bishop Joshua Soule, a great leader of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the early 19th century started preaching at 16, was a presiding elder (read district superintendent) at 23 and wrote the church’s constitution at 27. Imagine him in your campus ministry. Could our youth ministry ever look the same again if society took the abilities of young people seriously?

Adolescence was invented in the 19th century to enable middle-class families to keep their children out of sweatshops. But it has degenerated into a process of enforced boredom and age segregation that has produced one of the most destructive social arrangements in human history: consigning 13-year-old males to learning from 15-year-old males.

Most destructive… probably not. Pretty darn destructive, I think so. What might the consequences of age segregation be in our churches? Is our Sunday School curriculum and confirmation program engaging and challenging? Is there the opportunity for the young to begin to engage in serious theological reflection? Or could it better be described as “enforced boredom”? How would we structure our Christian education if under a social system that Gingrich describes? Could Confirmation take on a new (or renewed) meaning?

The costs of this social experiment have been horrendous. For the poor who most need to make money, learn seriously, and accumulate resources, adolescence has helped crush their future. By trapping poor people in bad schools, with no work opportunities and no culture of responsibility, we have left them in poverty, in gangs, in drugs, and in irresponsible sexual activity. As a result, we have ruined several generations of poor people who might have made it if we had provided a different model of being young.

And for too many middle-class and wealthier young Americans, adolescence has been an excuse to delay work, family, and achievement—and thus contribute less to their own well-being and that of their communities.

While I’ve thought about these ideas for quite some time, the relationship of adolescence and poverty is one that I hadn’t thought about until now. It seems to make sense, but I’ll have to think more about it. Is there a justice issue here tied up inextricably in the social location of young people?

His comment about middle-class and wealthier young Americans makes a lot of sense to me though. Is delaying responsibility really a good thing? Socially, it seems to be viewed as a good thing. How is the Church reinforcing that delay? Are we in the Church doing a good job at conveying the particularity of Christian marriage as a vocation that builds up the body of Christ? Likewise, are we telling and showing people that singleness and holy orders are noble callings as well? Often we seem reflect the society (that we created) and make marriage the default option, but only when it is convenient.

Now, I’ve been framing this discussion of the Church in terms of a change in society, but is that even necessary? Does the Church need to wait for society to change the way it perceives and treats young people in order to change its own practices and perceptions? Are we being good stewards of the gifts of the young in our churches? Are we giving the young meaningful opportunity to contribute to their faith communities? Is ministry something we do with the young or to the young?

Is it even possible for the Church to challenge this social arrangement in its own ranks? Do we think our God is big enough?

Listen to the Mustn’ts (axed Duke Div essay)

I got ready to post this a while back after I submitted my Duke Divinity School application. This is an essay that I wrote under the first requirements I got from Duke. When they revised them, it didn’t fit anymore and I had to write another one. I since have heard from Duke and learned that I have been admitted and am being considered for one of their big scholarships. And that was without this gem of an essay you are about to read. I just had so much fun writing and revising it that I had to post it.

Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child. Listen to the DON’TS.
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS, the IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS.
Listen to the NEVER HAVES, then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, child, ANYTHING can be.[1]

This poem by the late Shel Silverstein was among the favorites in my family when I was growing up and is still referenced periodically to this day. My father in particular seemed to glory in its cadence and the way it flowed from his tongue. The result is that this poem is etched indelibly into my brain. Despite its earnestness, I can’t say that it ever was spoken with any profundity in my household. Indeed, as often as not it was modified in one of several humorous ways. My parents who never so much as swatted my siblings or me always told us that their comment at parent-teacher conferences would be to tell the teachers that they don’t hit us enough. In the same spirit, the last line frequently became an ironic, “I can beat you up my child, just you wait and see.”

Commitment to the notion that “ANYTHING can be” in the midst of echoing common wisdom about a tame and contented God has anchored my recent exploration in the Christian faith. I’m finding that this poem’s warning resonates deeply with my frustration in a Church that has too often reduced God to a predictable and undemanding force. This “dignified, businesslike, Rotary-club god”[2] stays within the bounds of our unimaginative theologizing, neglects to act in the world, and exists solely for our comfort and want-fulfillment. Worship of this inept god inevitably falls flat. In contrast to this, and perhaps in the spirit of Shel Silverstein, I have found myself newly embracing the wild, unpredictable God who acted throughout the Old Testament in amazing, baffling, or distressing ways (and sometimes all three at once) that we can scarce comprehend. Foremost though, this God came down into creation, flouted the MUSTN’TS, SHOULDN’TS and DON’TS, proclaimed an upside-down gospel that defied the WON’TS, IMPOSSIBLES and NEVER HAVES, and consented to death on a cross. This death though, this apparent surrender to the world’s brokenness, was really a promise for wholeness. In the Resurrection, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob booms, “anything can happen, child, ANYTHING can be.”

---

[1] Silverstein, Shel. Listen To The Mustn’ts. In Where the Sidewalk Ends. 1974. HarperCollins: New York, p. 26

[2] Willimon, William H. On a Wild and Windy Mountain. 1974. Abingdon Press: Nashville, p. 82

Jurisdictional Conference (quite late)

This has been sitting around for a while so I decided I’d finish it and post it.

Last week A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of leading the Kansas East delegation at the South Central Jurisdictional Conference in Dallas, TX. I didn’t have the time to blog while I was there and haven’t really had the inclination to blog since then. Barry Dundas from the Kansas West Conference did a really nice job covering jurisdictional conference on his blog, so I’d point you there if you want good daily summarys.

As most of you know we elected and consecrated three bishops: Earl Bledsoe from the Texas Conference, Mike Lowry from the Southwest Texas Conference, and Jim Dorff from the North Texas Conference. All of the current bishops will remain in their current assignments and the newly minted bishops will serve in North Texas, Central Texas, and Southwest Texas respectively. Bledsoe was elected quickly on the third ballot, Lowry on the eleventh, and Dorff on the twenty-third. It was frustrating to some of us that six of the last seven bishops elected have been from the state of Texas and that we haven’t elected a woman to the episcopacy since 1996.

There was some unexpected nastiness involved in the whole process. Rumors started to spread, especially when there was only one bishop left to elect, that Candidate X was involved in the Confessing Movement or Candidate Y would have 24 years to serve as bishop (when they actually had much fewer). This was probably the most disheartening part of the whole process. The best part of the process were the times when the Kansas area delegations and sometimes folks from Nebraska, Missouri and elsewhere surrounded one of the Kansas West Conference candidates Cheryl Bell and prayed some of the most fervent and heartfelt prayers that I have ever been a part of.

During one of the worship services a soloist gave a beautiful rendition of “My Life Flows On (How Can I Keep from Singing?)” which elevated the song to among my favorites.

Another task of the jurisdictional conference is to make assignments to the directorates of general boards and agencies of the United Methodist Church. I made the decision not to return for a second quadrennium on the General Board of Discipleship and instead will serve on the board of General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns. I’m excited to learn more about the pan-Methodist and Latin American/Caribbean Autonomous Affiliated discussions especially.

My jurisdictional responsibilities will continue as I serve on the Episcopacy Committee. The first meeting will probably be sometime in January or February. This committee meets throughout the quadrennium to help address episcopal concerns. It also is the one that goes into seclusion after the final bishop is elected in 2012 and hashes out where the bishops will go. I’m pretty excited about this responsibility. The committee is just a really gifted group of people, although I certainly lost some respect for one or two of them as jurisdictional conference went on. That will pass though. I imagine, although I don’t know for sure, that I am the youngest person in the SCJ to serve in this capacity, which is a pretty cool thing. I have expended tremendous time and energy to show that young people can contribute to general church administrative and program work with remarkable competence and this is another opportunity to impress that fact upon people. Foremost, it is another chance that I’ve been given to use the gifts that God has given me.

-Luke

First Female African UM Bishop!

Praise God! This is really neat. UMNS reported on it today.

United Methodists in Africa elect first female bishop

(Rev. Joaquina Filipe) Nhanala, 51, the pastor of Matola United Methodist Church in Mozambique, was elected during the July 22-24 meeting of the denomination’s Africa Central Conference at Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe. Effective Sept. 1, she will succeed Bishop João Somane Machado, who is retiring as the leader of the Mozambique area.

…

Besides serving a large church in Matola, a suburb of Maputo, Nhanala has coordinated women’s projects for the Mozambique church and led a World Relief HIV/AIDS program designed to mobilize churches for education and advocacy in Mozambique’s three southern provinces. Nhanala and the program were featured in the 2004 Bread for the World video, “Keep the Promise on Hunger and Health.”

Episcopal Elections by text message!

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Crazy dreams about preaching

I have only just started preaching, and not anywhere close to regularly, but have had a couple strange dreams about preaching that I thought I should share, hopefully to prompt some reciprocal sharing.

In the most recent dream I was to preach at my home church and found myself sitting in the congregation without any pants on. I was sitting next to my brother and tried to convince him to give me his pants so that I could preach. “Oh, you don’t need any pants to preach,” he said, “no one will notice.” (all I remember)

In a less recent dream I was preaching somewhere and my sermon, for some odd reason, was written on pieces of PVC pipe. Nothing seemed unusual about this at the time either. Successfully delivering the sermon depended on me carrying the pipes to the pulpit, laying them out in the proper order, at the proper height, and in the proper rotation, and not knocking the pipes off of the pulpit. The pipes were all oriented vertically, while the text was written normally, left to right, so the pipes had to be at the right height, and not turned too far one way or the other. It worked fine the first service, didn’t seem at all awkward, but at the the second service, the pipes started rolling off the pulpit mid-sermon and I struggled to continue the sermon. It was, needless to say, distressing. (all I remember)

What about the rest of you? Surely some of you more seasoned preachers (and I am not at all seasoned) have some funny dreams to share! What about recurring dreams?

On demeaning teenagers

I have been passionate about treatment of young people in society and church since I was in junior high school. I promise I won’t write every post about young people, but it seems to be where I’ve been wanting to go lately.

This letter was published in “Dear Abby” on June 30, 2008.

DEAR ABBY: I am a 14-year-old girl. I don’t get angry often, but when I do my parents disregard it by calling me a “hormonal teenager.” They say things like, “She’s such a CHARMING 14-year-old” and “There are hormones raging.” I find their comments hurtful and degrading.

Please don’t misunderstand. My parents are usually nice, but when something bothers me they automatically resort to the above comments. I personally believe I am pretty good at handling and expressing my emotions calmly. It just seems that my parents don’t consider the credibility of my emotions and blame them on my being a teen. Is it wrong for them to say these things? What should I do when they say them? — DISREGARDED IN OREGON

DEAR DISREGARDED: No one of any age wants to feel patronized, and that goes for people from 13 to 93. (And, interestingly, it happens to people from both ends of the spectrum.) If your parents want to exchange comments like the ones you mentioned, it would be better if they did so in private. However, if they are saying things like, “She’s such a charming 14-year-old,” it may be a clue to the fact that you’re acting like anything BUT — and perhaps you should find a more mature and controlled way of expressing your emotions.

Sarcastic and humorous comments about teenagers are remarkably common. In this case they were directed towards an individual, probably in frustration, although it is hard to tell. Other times they function as a means of forming bonds between two or more parents. One person makes a joking comment about teenagers, those hearing laugh, and the two are brought closer together by the shared understanding. I have observed it in conversation, job interviews, and even from the pulpit.

I’m going to speak prophetically and say that such behavior in most situations is sinful. Whatever is gained by making those kind of comments is more than offset by the demeaning effect of those comments on young people, whether or not young people are in fact present. When young people are present it is especially demeaning. Individuals find it “hurtful and degrading” as Disregarded put it in the letter. Comments like that dehumanize the subject of the comment. A person ceases to be “Sally” they are a “CHARMING (read “whiny” or alternatively “bitch of a”) 14-year-old.” They aren’t experiencing legitimized feelings like anger or sadness, but rather they are “hormonal”. If indeed the response of the teenager is inappropriate and influenced by changes in the body, the teenager may well know it and the sarcastic comments about hormones only increase the shame and the feeling of powerlessness.

Generic comments about teenagers are every bit as demeaning. In the case of jokes, community is built among the old at the expense of the young. They only increase the gulf between young and old that we have constructed in society. This is true whether or not teenagers are present. The understanding that these kind of comments build is artificial. Rather than sharing frustrations with being a parent of teenagers (which I acknowledge are often many) with other parents to build real understanding and gain real insight and comfort, people make throw-away comments that demean all teenagers, their children especially.

The presence of these kind of comments in the Church of Jesus Christ is unconscionable. They do not glorify God. They tear apart the body of Christ of which all people young and old are essential. When made from the pulpit, I can say from experience, they alienate the young from worship.

The point of this is not to deny that parenting teenagers isn’t frustrating. I obviously have no direct experience in that regard, but I have every confidence that is the case. The point is to condemn speech that is unproductive and harmful, that demeans the humanity of an individual and group of people for some temporary relief of frustration or a laugh.

So to answer the two questions that “Disregarded” asked and Abby rather condescendingly neglected to answer:

DEAR DISREGARDED: Yes, it is absolutely wrong of them to say those things. They fail to address you anger or what makes you angry while demeaning you and your feelings in the process. Further, those kind of sarcastic comments are not productive, whether you hear them or not. Next time this happens you should wait until both you and your parents cool down and talk to them honestly about how those kind of words make you feel. Whether you are 8, 14, 21, 35, 50, or older, an open, honest, and respectful relationship with your parents is a great thing to cultivate.

Peace,

Luke

Pray for Mike Ratliff DMYP leader

Mike is the Associate General Secretary of the Division on Ministries with Young People of the General Board of Discipleship and a friend of mine. His mother, Carolyn Aldridge died in an accidental drowning while she, Mike, and Mike’s wife Lynn were on a mission trip in Belize.

This is the GBOD press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mother of Young People’s Leader Dies in Tragic Accident

NASHVILLE, Tenn., July 1, 2008 /GBOD/ –Carolyn Aldridge, mother of the Rev. Michael Ratliff , died Monday while on a mission trip in Belize with Ratliff and his wife Lynn.

Aldridge, of Waycross , Ga. , lost her life in an accidental drowning.  According to unconfirmed news reports from a Belize-based radio station, Mrs. Aldridge was in a Jeep Cherokee that rolled from its parked location into the nearby flooded San Jacinto River .  The river was believed to be over 20 feet deep.

“We are deeply saddened by Mrs. Carolyn Aldridge’s tragic death. We ask for prayers for Mike and Lynn, their family and all others impacted by this devastating news,” said the Rev. Karen Greenwaldt , top executive for the General Board of Discipleship (GBOD).

Ratliff, the associate general secretary for GBOD’s Division on Ministries with Young People, and his wife and mother were part of a volunteer mission team assisting with service projects in Punta Gorda.

GBOD’s mission is to support annual conference and local church leaders for their task of equipping world-changing disciples. An agency of The United Methodist Church, GBOD is located at 1908 Grand Ave.   in Nashville , Tenn. Visit www.gbod.org for more information or call the Media Relations Office toll free at (877) 899-2780, Ext. 7017.

Willimon Wallaby Woo (2 of 2)

A commenter to the aforementioned post on young people and annual conference by Bishop Willimon made the following comment:

Dear Bishop,
I am well aware of your policy of discouraging the trend of second career folk entering ministry. I was sitting in a United Methodist Men’s retreat day in Baton Rouge where you were the guest speaker and you said as much. I had just experienced the call to ministry and was so excited. I had already applied to a Methodist seminary with which you were associated. Funny, I didn’t think you could possibly be speaking to me. I was only thirty six years old.

Thank God, when I was denied admission to your school, I picked myself up and reapplied to a school just south of there. Now, I’m a member in full connection in another annual conference. I serve on a district board of ordained ministry. I’ve mentored people of all ages as they discern their own call into ministry. I’ve pointed young people to the ministry beginning with their confirmation experience. I’ve worked with older youth and young adults getting them acquainted with district and conference ministries in hopes that ordained ministry would be in their career sights.

I’m an old forty nine years old now. I’ve served churches for the past twelve years. Nobody I know expects to retire before seventy. My thirty-plus years of ministry will only be richer and more fruitful because of my experiences in a first career.

Thank the Lord, I didn’t let you tell me no.

Whew! Praise God for the ministry of this fellow and praise God for the ministry of Bishop Willimon! Isn’t it  nice to be able to do both? I’m not in the least bit interested in judging either Bishop Willimon or his anonymous commenter because even if I did know intimately about the commenter’s situation and what Bishop Willimon tends to advocate, I wouldn’t be qualified.

I think I can safely opine though that this post can be seen as an indicator of what turns into a false dichotomy between encouraging the young to answer their call and discouraging the old from doing the same. While Bishop Willimon’s comments in particular may have affected the anonymous comment greatly, they probably weren’t the only affront that he has felt given his response to Willimon’s post that didn’t even deal with this issue explicitly.

Age and sensitivity to age is such a peculiar thing. People don’t like to be considered old. Inevitably discussions about connectional young adult ministry for example turn to age definitions. About the time somebody turns 31, they start to think that we should be defining young adult ministry as including through age 35 or 40. They are often vehement. At those moments I have trouble believing that it is about a missional imperative so much as it is about individual vanity or more charitably a reaction to the culture. I think that the age definition issue as well as the encouraging young/discouraging old dichotomy are symptoms of a very real “cult of youth” that is present in society. The overvaluing of young in the culture (but undervaluing in decision-making structures in society) can make it sound like someone who is encouraging young people in particular to go into ministry is discouraging old people.

We don’t have the luxury in the church to to discourage older people from answering their call to ministry. There is something unfaithful and disrespectful about it. First of all, we need to be taking everybody’s calls seriously, period. Second of all, it can be argued that second-career folks have bailed out a church that has done a poor job of encouraging younger people to go into the ministry. Based on my relatively limited experience though, we haven’t been discouraging older people from answering their calls. There have been more than one second-career pastor on the cabinet in Kansas East in the past few years. They are getting some of our more challenging appointments and doing wonderful ministry there. Other professional experiences can be a great asset to pastoral ministry and I think that the church has recognized that.

At the same time, we can’t afford to go the other way. It is vitally important to help people recognize their calls as young people and fulfill them. It is vital to our leadership development, it is vital to our efforts to attract new people to the church, and frankly it is vital to our pension and health insurance funds. Leaders in the church need to consider the unique gifts that a younger person might bring to the ministries of some of our medium to large churches. An attitude of “paying your dues” and “moving up the ladder” is not scriptural, nor is it missionally essential, much less advisable. Gaining experience is important, don’t get me wrong and no pastor, young or old, should feel entitled to a certain kind of appointment. That said, I think it is possible that young clergy with some creative mentoring and assistance could bring a breath of fresh air into our congregations that may just be coasting.

I think that our efforts to encourage young people to pursue ordained ministry and to take a greater role in the work of the church have been right on the money. We have identified the lack of young clergy as a problem and are seeking to address it. We can not do this at the expense of older persons who have discerned a call, but I don’t believe we are doing so. Let us boldly go forward challenging all people, young and old, to answer the call that God has put on their lives (and I’m not just talking about ordained ministry) in the interest of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world!

Peace,

Luke