Learning Wesleyan Leadership in England

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

The General Board of Discipleship (GBOD) is sponsoring a "Wesleyan Pilgrimage" to England next July.  The 10-day trip promises to focus on "An Immersion in Wesleyan Leadership."  The trip will visit sites associated with John and Charles Wesley and the origins of the Methodist movement in an attempt to learn principles of leadership that the Wesleys employed.

This trip follows up from a similar trip that six young-adult UMC clergy from the United States took in 2012.  A video released by GBOD chronicles that trip.  In the video, an explicit connection is made between the purpose for learning through the trip and the membership decline of the UMC in the United States.  The participants talk about the pressure as young adult pastors to turn around the denomination and how the trip renewed and encouraged them in their ministry.

The strategy of looking back to one's roots to solve present problems is age old.  Thus, an approach that tries to solve the membership woes of the contemporary UMC in the United States is not surprising.  Another frequent approach to try to solve the membership problems of the church in the United States is to look at branches of the UMC elsewhere around the world where numbers are increasing, deduce lessons from those countries, and then try to apply them to the United States.  Both approaches have their pitfalls but can help Americans to think outside their own cultural matrices.

What struck me as I was watching the video is how infrequently we try to combine these two strategies.  The six clergypersons on the trip were all serving in the United States (though one was originally from Kenya).  They were asking our British heritage questions about their American context and then trying to hear the answers from their American perspectives.  But what would it look like if Americans, Africans, Europeans, and Asians were to go on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Methodism to learn together?  How might the answers that John Wesley provides to the problems of the church in the United States sound different when given from a Zimbabwean perspective?  Or what might the Oxford Club have to say to Russian Methodists through Filipino voices?  Looking to our past and looking to our sisters and brothers around the world for advice about the problems we face are sound strategies.  We should remember that they can be combined and, indeed, may be richer when they are.

New Visitor Facilities Planned for Oldest Methodist Building in the World

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

As I've mentioned before, history is one of the important threads that ties Methodists (United or not) around the world to each other.  This recent article describes new plans being laid at one of the most important historical sites in Methodism: the New Room in Bristol, the first building to be build by John Wesley specifically as a Methodist building.  The New Room is seeking funds from the British government (through their Heritage Lottery Fund) to construct a new three-story building adjacent to the New Room.  This new building will house archives, a library, a lecture hall, a kitchen, and an elevator.  The project will allow more people to visit and learn Methodist history at the New Room.

The project seems like a good example of well-laid plans to make improvements that will expand people's access to Methodist history.  The new building serves good purposes and is being designed to fit with its settings.  Ironically, though, by building a new building at the site, the plans also change that history a bit.  Nevertheless, that's not necessarily a problem.  It's more like the Heisenberg principle of historical preservation: it's impossible to both allow people to observe a historical site and keep it exactly the way it is.

For Methodists who want to use the New Room as a way to continue to teach about Methodism and help Methodists form a Methodist identity, access trumps lack of change.  I think that's as it should be too.  If the past is to be of service to the present, it must be accessible by the present.  Sometimes, that means telling stories, writing histories, and preserving documents.  Sometimes it means building a new building for visitors.  While the second may seem more intrusive upon the past, that doesn't mean it can't be a good idea if done well.

What can the UMC learn from British Methodists re-envisioning mission?

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.

The Methodist Church in Britain held its annual conference over the last week.  One important decision to come out of that conference was to fully integrate the Methodist Missionary Society into the rest of the denomination.  In its announcement about the move, the church stated, "We have a unique opportunity to assert the understanding that the mission of the Church is one in which work at home and overseas is essentially the same mission."  David Friswell, Leader of World Church Relationships, added that "God's mission [is] one mission for all people wherever they call home." This move shows a dramatic move away from a colonial, metropole-missions or center-periphery understanding of the Methodist Church in Britain.  In this decision, the Methodist Conference asserts the equality (and similarity) of all areas of mission and ministry for the church.

The United Methodist Church still draws distinctions between its work in the United States and elsewhere around the globe in several ways.  Perhaps most obvious are the differences between the Central Conferences and the U.S.-based Jurisdictions.  Like the Methodist Church in Britain up until this point, the structure of the denomination's agencies also reflects a colonial privileging of the home body.  Most denominational agencies, while not operating entirely in the U.S., are nonetheless heavily U.S.-focused.  The UMC maintains a General Board of Global Ministries, tasked with furthering the church's work around the world.

What would it mean for the UMC to affirm along with the Methodist Church in Britain that "God's mission is one mission for all people wherever they call home?"  How would such an affirmation not only change our structures but change the ways in which we think about the relationships between the various branches of the UMC?  How would it change our understanding of mission and ministry?

These are all questions worth asking, and the Methodist Church in Britain's decision should be taken as an occasion for United Methodists to ask themselves those questions.

Discussion: Trip celebrates historical roots of the global Methodist movement

World Methodist Evangelism sponsored a recent trip to England to visit historical sites associated with the origins of the Methodist movement in England in the 1700s.  The trip began with a celebration on May 24th of the 275th anniversary of John Wesley's Aldergate experience, the even in which his heart was "strangely warmed," issuing in a live of deeper and more vital piety for Wesley.  From there, the trip proceeded to visit other Methodist sites.  For a larger description of the trip, see this coverage by the United Methodist News Service.

The trip raises several questions about connections in the global Methodist movement.  World Methodist Evangelism is a project of the World Methodist Council, an international body consisting of denominations around the world (including The United Methodist Church) with Methodist roots.  World Methodist Evangelism's executive director, Dr. H. Eddie Fox, is American and a United Methodist, and the organization is based in Nashville.  Three out of the five officers of World Methodist Evangelism are also American United Methodists (one other is an American AME bishop and one is a bishop in the Kenyan Methodist Church).  The worship at the trip was led by four American United Methodists and one bishop of the Methodist Church in Nigeria.

Does this trip represent history uniting Methodists across the world and even across denominational boundaries?  Is it really an American United Methodist endeavor with token diversity?  Does it have anything to say about the role of history in forging a global UMC?  Share your comments below.