It’s a Mad Mission… Sign Me Up

Well, things are wrapping up with school. I made a lot of progress today on my “General Conference Study Trip” class paper, so I can afford a few minutes of blogging. Once that is in by 5:00 tomorrow afternoon I just have my Theology of Wesley and Methodist Doctrine final and I’m home free.

As I read other blogs I’m struck by the amount of misunderstanding that there is about the world-wide nature of the church constitutional amendments and petition. On one hand it is unremarkable. I’m not convinced that the Church can pull together 1000 people who really get it. The UMC makes a big mistake when it elects people to go and fight about homosexuality. On the other hand, our annual conferences will be seeing the amendments in a year and between the confusion and demagoguery, they may well fail. If you click here and then click on the text of the committee (majority) report you will see more or less as adopted the guidelines that the study committee will be working with. The social principles, orders of ministry, meaning of membership, episcopacy, etc. all remain the same. The General Conference will still be in charge of “all matters distinctly connectional.” The regional conference (of which there will be only ONE for the United States) will be responsible for local church, conference, etc. administration, distinctly regional funds (ie black college fund), etc.

This is all a really good thing! This is actually a step towards a global witness, not away. It will cause us to have to struggle together about what really makes us a United Methodist Church. Non-US United Methodists are in favor of it. When Matt Laferty finished leading the conference through the constitutional amendments, the bishop of Angola came up to him and said, “thank you, we’ve been trying to get this done for forty years!” There will still be a quadrennial General Conference. It will still be worldwide. There will also be a US regional conference (just like there are central/regional conferences in other countries!). It will meet to address distinctly US concerns (just like central conferences do now with their regional concerns!). It won’t be significantly more expensive because the US Regional Conference and the General Conference will meet back to back at the same site. There will be much less business for the General Conference because it won’t have to fight about how many members belong on the Annual Conference Board of Church and Society, an issue that doesn’t effect the church in Africa or the Philippines now because they are allowed to ignore the result and organize as they see fit in their contexts.

It won’t be easy, we will have to learn how to really listen to each other. We in the US will have to learn how to give up our dominance. I think it can still be done with a representative system. So does the General Conference because there were two other petitions that called for a non-representative system.

Two posts ago I noted the fact that it was middle-aged white men from the Southeastern Jurisdiction who dominated the against side of the global nature debate. I actually typed “Old. Southern. White. Men.” Actually, the one southern white woman who spoke against was the one who was looking to table it because the central conference delegates were “confused”. More on that later though. The regional tone to this debate was remarkable in my mind. I still don’t have a handle on it. The sexuality debates weren’t as regional as this debate. Perhaps one person from another jurisdiction spoke against it. I’m pretty sure no one from a central conference did. I think it has to be lingering Methodist Episcopal, South consolidation of power issues. I can’t see what else it could be. If it were about the church’s stance on homosexuality there would be more people from other jurisdictions hollering about it.

Now as for the central conference delegates being “confused”. That was a remarkably ignorant statement first of all. Second of all, if people were paying attention, they would realize that the central conferences, especially Africa and Philippines are sending their A-teams and we’re the ones who look more than a little slow in comparison. We elected a Filipino Supreme Court Justice to our Judicial Council last week! The Africa central conferences are sending university presidents. We are letting 20-year-old college students chair our delegations! They are where we were seventy years ago. Former Kansas governor and presidential nominee Alf Landon was a delegate to the 1939 Uniting Conference. Now, we clearly weren’t sending as diverse delegations back then, but that doesn’t change the core issue. You don’t see many of our top businesspeople, politicians, doctors, or lawyers serving the church today. I’m going to go a step further and say that you don’t see many (note I don’t say any) of our best and brightest lay people period serving the church today (or becoming clergy for that matter). Something about the work we do is not compelling. We aren’t starting clinics or schools any more. Heck, we are hardly starting new churches!

I’m biased, but I think a handful of the young people that were at General Conference as lay people are those best and brightest in society who we need offering leadership in the Church. I know that some of them will be our best and brightest clergy. I would not be surprised one bit if four or five of the young people giving service to the General Church today were elected to the episcopacy in 24, 28, 32, 36 years.

I’ve diverged quite a bit and haven’t given an altogether coherent discussion. I’ll definitely be exploring some of these themes more though.

Now, to dinner and back to work.

-Luke