Recommended Viewing: Nazarenes Plan Regional Caucuses before General Assembly

The Church of the Nazarene recently announced plans related to their upcoming 30th General Assembly in 2023. The General Assembly is the denomination's highest body, analogous to The United Methodist Church's General Conference.

General Assembly had been scheduled for 2021, but the Nazarenes announced in June of 2020 that, due to travel difficulties and visa restrictions, General Assembly would be postponed until 2023. Like the UMC, the Nazarenes determined that an electronic or virtual meeting would not allow them to accomplish what was required by their Manual (the equivalent of the Book of Discipline). At the time of the postponement, they named "significant global participation via attendance and an appropriate emphasis on the health and safety of visitors and delegates" as goals for holding General Assembly.

In their recent update about General Assembly, the Church of the Nazarene acknowledged that, even though General Assembly is still over a year away, visa delays will prevent some delegates from attending. Delegates to General Assembly come from a very wide range of countries. The Church of the Nazarene will, however, continue with plans to hold General Assembly in June 2023, and still does not believe a virtual or distributed conference is feasible. Nevertheless, the Nazarene leadership emphasized that representation of all districts is important.

Fortunately for the Nazarenes, their Manual allows for several solutions: It provides more latitude for districts to select alternate delegates who already have visas. But more importantly, the Manual allows for early regional causes. Therefore, Nazarenes in regions outside the United States will gather by region before General Assembly meets to deliberate on the business of the General Assembly, make nominations for denomination-wide positions, and convey the results to the General Assembly via the delegates that can attend. While voting on final legislation is not possible at the regional caucuses, the recommendations will be taken into official consideration by the relevant legislative committees.

The Board of General Superintendents of the Church of the Nazarene recognizes that this arrangement is still "not ideal." Nevertheless, it is a way to balance the stated value of global participation and the need to hold a General Assembly.

This plan is only possible, though, because the provisions of the Nazarene manual allow for it. The United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline does not make similar provisions for early regional caucuses. Thus, this is not an alternative that the UMC could have taken to allow General Conference to meet in 2022.

But, it is a model that the UMC would be wise to keep in mind as it continues to develop its polity. I have previously suggested that regionalization would have prevented some of the problems with delaying General Conference 2020. The Church of the Nazarene shows that greater regionalization can also help address issues around equality of representation at denominational gatherings.

While the UMC cannot go back in time to prevent some of the problems associated with a delayed General Conference 2020, it can and should take steps to ensure that the next time General Conference is unable to meet or to meet fully--whether that is because of a future pandemic, war, climate disaster, or other reason--the church is able to be more flexible and respond better.

Other global Methodist bodies

In the wake of General Conference 2019, there has been many musings about what the outcome of that event has meant, and especially what it has meant for The United Methodist Church as a "global" or "worldwide" body. Some of these writings have stressed the UMC's unique nature as a worldwide yet connectional body. Certainly, the UMC is unique relative to Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, and many others with regard to how it combines connectionalism and geographic extent.

Yet is is worthwhile remembering in discussions that the UMC is not unique in its attempt to be a global yet connectional body. In varying ways, several of its sibling denominations seek to do the same thing: the Church of the Nazarene, the Free Methodist Church, The Wesleyan Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church all could lay claim to being worldwide and connectional. In fact, it is arguably the Church of the Nazarene, not the UMC, that is the most global Methodist body.

For those seeking a quick review on the worldwide polity of several of these bodies, some comparisons to the UMC, and what overall lessons can be drawn, here are some previous UM & Global posts on the topic:

Comparative Wesleyan Global Polity - The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and The United Methodist Church

Comparative Wesleyan Global Polity - The Wesleyan Church and The United Methodist Church

Comparative Global Wesleyan Polity - The Free Methodist Church and The United Methodist Church

Comparative Global Wesleyan Polity: The Church of the Nazarene and The United Methodist Church

Comparative Global Wesleyan Polity - Concluding Thoughts, Part I: Variety and Windows of Opportunity

Comparative Global Wesleyan Polity - Concluding Thoughts, Part II: Size and Focus

Conferencing, relationships, and denominational unity

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

Here is an interesting comparison for United Methodists: The Church of the Nazarene had their quadrennial General Assembly this past summer. Opening worship for the event, which brought together Nazarenes from around the world, emphasized “unity in diversity,” a theme participants enthusiastically affirmed, talking about how much they valued relationships across cultural and national differences in the church. Organizers and participants referred to General Assembly as a “global family reunion.” At GA2017, one of the big debates was whether to have future General Assemblies every four years or every five years. Delegates voted to keep future General Assemblies every four years because they so enjoyed meeting together.

Such a description is nigh-unthinkable for a General Conference of The United Methodist Church. If General Conference were to promote a theme of “unity in diversity,” it would be cynical dismissed by many participants as a top-down attempt to paper over divisions and preserve the institution. Participants often speak of the global nature of the church as a challenge rather than a blessing. Nobody thinks of General Conference as a family reunion. And no majority would vote to keep the meeting every four years for the fun of it. GC might be kept every four years, but the reason would be to address all of the important business facing it.

The Church of the Nazarene’s General Assembly and The United Methodist Church’s General Conference are both expressions of the Wesleyan practice of conferencing. But they seemingly could not be more different. How can we account for this difference, and what can it tell us about The United Methodist Church can effectively foster the sorts of familial Christian relationships necessary to undergird denominational unity?

In his book, The Methodist Conference in America: A History, Russ Richey argues that the practice of conferencing in American Methodism, at all levels from charge conferences to General Conferences, originally served three functions: polity, fraternity, and revival. Polity refers to official decision-making, fraternity refers to relationship-building, and revival refers to spirituality-building. One of Richey’s main arguments in the book is that, over time, the polity function has edged out the other two, especially at less local levels of the church. There’s certainly much to bemoan about the loss of the revival function, but for now my focus is on the loss of the fraternity function.

As Richey demonstrates, the reasons for the eclipse of fraternity by polity are many and long-term. The complexity of Methodist polity has increased. The number of Methodists has increased since the 18th century. The diversity of Methodists has increased. The culture around us has changed. And Richey barely touches on the global nature of The United Methodist Church. There is no simple one thing for us to reverse to go back to a better time in the history of United Methodism.

Yet, with the work of the Commission on a Way Forward and the called General Conference in February of 2019, we do have the opportunity to fashion new ways of going forward, new ways of being for the future, even if we cannot simply go back to the past.

One thing United Methodists can learn from our ancestors and from our Nazarene cousins is the importance of making time and space for relationships in our conferences. If we want our denomination to foster relationships, then we need to allot sufficient time in our gatherings to create genuine relationships.

Instead, United Methodists, following the logic of American culture and under the pressures of a slowly diminishing American base, have prized efficiency and impact in how we structure our conferences. We have prioritized making as many decisions on as many topics as possible. These priorities have left us with little time for relationship, which has not been a priority.

Creating time and space for relationships is not easy. It requires effort. It is expensive. It often means letting go of other things one could be doing with that time and space. Creating time and space for relationships requires prioritizing relationships over other functions.

The Nazarenes have some insight here in how they structure General Assembly: Minimize the decisions you need to make. Nazarenes have a strong practice of subsidiarity: more local organizations have a lot of the decision-making power, freeing up more time in General Assembly. In addition, while General Assembly does speak to important issues in the church and world, it does not try to be comprehensive in its proclamations, freeing up more time. Less is more: the fewer decisions that General Assembly needs to make, the more time for relationships.

Such principles could apply to United Methodism as well, and not just at General Conference. Where can more decision-making be entrusted to locals? What can we afford not to address at our conferences? How can we then open up more space for relationships?

In my post last week, I suggested denominations can’t get more relationship by doing more of what they’re already doing. Here I am suggesting something even stronger: to foster more relationship, we may even need to do less of what we’re already doing. The surprising insight is that in order to have a more unified denomination, we may need to let go rather than grab tight. In order to get more relationship and thus more unity, we must be willing to give up our own power and accept our limitations.

We may find comfort than in so doing, we will be following the way of Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Philippines 2:6-8). Jesus gave up his own power and accepted limitations, even the limitation of death, all for the sake of relationship, for the sake of love. May we have the courage to do likewise.

Comparative Global Wesleyan Polity - Concluding Thoughts, Part I

This is the fifth in an occasional series of articles comparing the different ways in which Methodist/Wesleyan denominations historically related to The United Methodist Church structure themselves as global bodies. Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

This series of blog posts comparing the various approaches to being a global Wesleyan/Methodist denomination has thus far looked at four denominations and compared them to The United Methodist Church and each other: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, The Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church, and the Church of the Nazarene. While it might be possible to continue the series by looking at other churches (the AME Zion, the Salvation Army, the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, etc.), these four and the UMC cover significant and distinct examples of how a Methodist/Wesleyan church might approach being a global denomination.

After surveying these various examples, what are the overall takeaways from this exercise in comparative polity? There are two main ones related to being a global church:

1. There are several ways to be a global Methodist/Wesleyan body, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

The AME, the Wesleyans and Free Methodists, and the Nazarenes have each taken distinct approaches to trying to craft a global denomination that is not just dominated by Americans but fully supports and recognizes the gifts, ministries, and voices of members around the world.

The AME pursues that goal through denominational bodies (the Global Development Council and Committee on Global Development) with significant power to make changes in the denomination to better accommodate non-US members.

Both The Wesleyan Church and the Free Methodist Church pursue that goal by allowing the creation of separate General Conferences with separate Books of Discipline, united into one International Conference with a common kernel of shared doctrine and polity.

The Church of the Nazarene pursues that goal through emphasizing three-self theory and the creation of Phase 3 districts around the world which are self-supporting, self-led, and self-propagating.

The United Methodist Church has elements of the AME approach (in the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters) and the Wesleyan/Free Methodist approach (in the provision for central conference adaptation of the Book of Discipline) but has not gone as far as any of these denominations.

Yet the takeaway should be that there are many possible models for The United Methodist Church to adopt as well as the possibility of crafting a unique model of its own.

2. There are windows of opportunities for denominations to make changes to structurally reflect the global/international nature of their membership more fully.

Surveying the other four denominations as well as United Methodist history, it seems there have been three eras in which questions of how to be a global denomination have been particularly pressing.

The first is an era of early missionary expansion. Especially for the Church of the Nazarene, but also for the Free Methodist Church, mission was integral to the beginning of the denomination, and questions of global polity were already being worked out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, forerunner of the UMC, was also experimenting with its global polity at the same time, creating central conferences and missionary bishops, but the MEC stepped back from fully thinking through the implications of these new structures because it wanted to focus on the upcoming merger with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Methodist Protestant Church.

The second is an era of decolonialization, staring in the early 1960s and running through the early 1970s. For the Wesleyans, Free Methodists, and Nazarenes, this period was an important time for beginning to shift structures to reflect a more international membership.

The Methodist Church and Evangelical United Brethren has such conversations at the same time, especially through the Committee on the Status of Methodism Overseas (COSMOS), but real changes were sidelined because the major focus of the time was on working out the merger between the two denominations.

The third is an era of world Christianity starting in the 1980s or 1990s and running through the present. All four other denominations have made significant changes in their polity in response to shifting trends in membership, with overseas membership increasing significantly and American membership declining or growing slowly.

The UMC has changed the mandates of some of its general boards and agencies and adjusted formulas for membership on boards of directors but thus far has not made the same sort of significant changes the other denominations have. While such changes (including creating a US central conference) have been proposed and even passed by General Conference, major changes have been sideline by ongoing conflicts about human sexuality (which has been much less a debate in the other traditions).

We are not yet done with the era of world Christianity, though. There is still a chance for The United Methodist Church to join with its Methodist and Wesleyan sibling denominations to try to more fully live into the goal of being a global church that unites members from around the world while recognizing and enabling the variety of vital ministries each engage in. Focus on mergers prevented Methodists from taking such opportunities in the past. The question for us today is whether focus on separation will do the same thing.

Comparative Global Wesleyan Polity: The Church of the Nazarene

This is the fourth in an occasional series of articles comparing the different ways in which Methodist/Wesleyan denominations historically related to The United Methodist Church structure themselves as global bodies. Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

What would The United Methodist Church look like if three-self mission theology were written into the Book of Discipline? One possible answer is the Church of the Nazarene.

The historical roots of the Church of the Nazarene are many and complex, but they include early leaders such as former Methodist Phineas Bresee, along with others who were part of the diverse holiness movement in late nineteenth century America as well as abroad. The Church of the Nazarene sees itself as a Wesleyan body in the Methodist tradition. It strongly emphasizes the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification, and although there are congregational influences on its polity as well (pastors are called by local churches, not appointed), on the whole, its polity is distinctively Wesleyan/Methodist.

Today, the Church of the Nazarene is the largest Wesleyan holiness denomination in the world. According to its 2016 figures, the church has nearly 2.5 million members across 192 “world areas” (countries or substantially distinct portions of countries, such as Guam). That makes the Church of the Nazarene an extremely well-distributed church globally, more so than the UMC. Among its membership, 26% reside in Africa, 26% in the US & Canada, 16% in Mesoamerica, 13% in Eurasia (Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia), 13% in South America, and 5% in Asia-Pacific.

The Church of the Nazarene is structured into three legislative/deliberative levels – local congregations, districts (equivalent to annual conferences), and General Assembly (equivalent to General Conference). Districts are overseen by district superintendents, and the denomination as a whole is led by six General Superintendents, who have individual responsibilities for specific parts of the denomination as well as shared responsibility for the entire denomination.

The Church of the Nazarene groups districts into six continental “regions,” which are not legislative but instead allow for contextually-relevant administrative structures and upon the basis of which some denominational representatives are elected. Thus, the regions are somewhat analogous to jurisdictions or central conferences in the UMC, though there is no distinction between the USA/Canada region and other regions, in the same way that differences do exist between the UMC jurisdictions and annual conferences.

In additional to regional programs, the Church of the Nazarene also has three denomination-wide agencies covering the areas of education, mission, and Sunday School/discipleship. Though based in the US, these three agencies are intended to serve all Nazarenes throughout the world.

The regions facilitate some level of contextualization. Nevertheless, like the UMC, but unlike The Wesleyan Church and Free Methodist Church, there is one standard policy book for the entire denomination. The Church of the Nazarene’s Manual (equivalent to the Book of Discipline) is about 400 pages long and binding on churches everywhere, including a standard set of committees that are expected to exist in all districts and congregations. The Manual does stipulate contextualization in places, such as the development of educational standards for pastors.

The approach to being a global church that the Church of the Nazarene has taken does not emphasize contextual adaptation of polity so much as thorough implementation of Anderson/Venn “three-self” theory: that the goal for new mission churches should be to become self-led by indigenous pastors, financially self-supporting, and self-propagating through the ability to start new churches themselves. The roots of this approach in the Church of the Nazarene go all the way back to founder Hiram Reynolds, who as a mission executive and then General Superintendent sought to make this approach to mission standard policy for Nazarenes.

This emphasis on creating three-self churches which remain part of a worldwide denomination (rather than become autonomous) has led to a long history of self-reflection by Nazarenes on what it means to be a global denomination. There are many milestones on this path, including important decisions in favor of “internationalization” in 1980.

An emphasis on three-self churches is still part of Nazarene policy. Nazarenes make distinctions between three types of districts: Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3. Phase 1 districts are for new mission work. Phase 2 corresponds to a certain amount of growth in size. A district doesn’t become a Phase 3 district, however, until it is “100% self-supporting in regard to district administration.”

This means that once a district becomes a “Phase 3 district,” no matter where in the world it is, it is able to take its place as a full equal to other Phase 3 districts throughout the rest of the world. A Phase 3 district in Africa is not financially dependent on districts in the US, in the same way that many UMC annual conferences in Africa still subsist on donations from the US to cover basic expenses such as pastors’ salaries. American Nazarenes may donate to charitable work in Africa or elsewhere, but as far as the basic operations of the church, those are fully in the hands of locals.

Of course, the process of internationalization is on-going work in the Church of the Nazarene. Questions about use of the English language and delegate visas for General Assembly still remain. General Assembly is always in the US, as is the denomination’s headquarters. Most of the General Superintendents have been white American men.

However, at the most recent General Assembly earlier this summer, Nazarenes elected two new General Superintendents, both originally from outside the US. That gives the Church of the Nazarene a majority of non-US General Superintendents for the first time ever. Watching the Twitter comments about General Assembly as a whole, one noted the frequency of positive references to the global nature and racial, ethnic, national, and linguistic diversity of the church.

While the Church of the Nazarene still has work to do in its process of internationalization, it is clearly well on its way. Indeed, it may well deserve the title of most global of the Methodist/Wesleyan denominations.