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
Dedicated to fostering conversations about the global nature of The United Methodist Church
Showing posts with label Free Methodist Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Methodist Church. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
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.
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.
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Comparative Global Wesleyan Polity - The Free Methodist Church
This is the third 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.
“How big should a global Book of Discipline be? And how big should regional units that craft contextual polity be?” Those are two questions that a comparison between the Free Methodist Church and The United Methodist Church begs, especially when The Wesleyan Church is also included in the comparison.
The Free Methodist Church originated in 1860, led by B. T. Roberts and constituted from members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The church spread to Canada in 1874 and overseas to India in 1881. Work in Africa and Latin America soon followed. Today, the denomination includes over 1.5 million members in 88 countries around the world. Over 90% of these members live outside North America, with large portions in Africa and Asia.
In many ways, the global polity of the Free Methodist Church is similar to that of The Wesleyan Church, profiled in last month’s piece on comparative global Wesleyan polity. Like The Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church is composed of annual conferences (or districts in Wesleyan Church lingo), which are grouped into multiple General Conferences, all of which relate to one World Conference (or International Conference in Wesleyan Church lingo). The Free Methodist Church does not have Regional Conferences as an intermediate step towards becoming an independent General Conference, as in The Wesleyan Church. Instead, it has regional fellowships of independent General Conferences in the same geographic area of the world for the sake of camaraderie and coordination.
Free Methodist General Conferences can be smaller than those in The Wesleyan Church – only 5,000 members are required to form a General Conference. Consequently, there are more of them than in The Wesleyan Church. The Free Methodist Church has 13 General Conferences and two provisional General Conferences. Each has its own Book of Discipline. Free Methodist General Conferences are led by 1-3 bishops per General Conference.
Also like The Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church has a common core that is affirmed by all General Conferences and thus binding on all Free Methodists around the world. For Free Methodists, this common core includes two chapters that are included in all Free Methodist Books of Discipline. The first contains a series of theological statements. The second includes rules about General Conferences, the World Conference, the international Council of Bishops, and the process for amending these two chapters.
For United Methodists, this two chapter constitutional core to the various Free Methodist Books of Discipline may make some think of the process of creating a United Methodist “global Book of Discipline.” The global Book of Discipline is an effort underway in the UMC to identify essential parts of the current UMC Book of Discipline which should be binding on all United Methodists everywhere and designate these as a General Book of Discipline. All other current provisions, especially those related to national property laws or specific national programmatic practices, would be left to regional bodies to determine.
Yet the Free Methodists, The Wesleyan Church, and The United Methodist Church have taken different approaches to understanding what constitutes the most important elements that should be shared by denominational compatriots around the world. For both the Free Methodist Church and The Wesleyan Church, the answer is that what’s absolutely essential for everyone in the denomination to share is some basic theological affirmations and an understanding of how they will relate to each other. As noted, for the Free Methodist Church, this core is presented in the first two chapters of all Books of Discipline, which is about three dozen pages of material. For The Wesleyan Church, this comes down to about two dozen pages of material contained in the “Charter of the International Conference of The Wesleyan Church.”
By contrast, even the stripped down General Book of Discipline in the UMC will still contain material from all six parts of the current Book of Discipline, the last part itself split into seven chapters. Work is still ongoing in developing the General Book of Discipline, yet the final product will likely come to over 200 pages, nearly twenty times as long as the common material for The Nazarene Church. Clearly, the UMC is opting for a much larger body of shared policies and procedures. There are advantages and disadvantages to such an approach, but the examples of the Free Methodists and Wesleyans should lead United Methodists to ask themselves what the advantages of a much larger shared body of policy are.
The size of the shared core of theology and polity is one question, and the size of the body elaborating the contextual aspects of theology and polity is another. For Free Methodists, these are the General Conferences and Provisional General Conferences. They are constituted on a national basis, and thus there are many of them, though not all national branches of the Free Methodist Church have become (Provisional) General Conferences. As noted, General Conferences can be as small as 5,000 people, though most are larger than this – in the 10,000s of members. In The Wesleyan Church, the General Conferences and Established National or Regional Conferences that write their own Books of Discipline can be either national or trans-national. A General Conference must have at least 15,000 members.
While this is still in progress, the bodies that will be adding contextual material to the General Book of Discipline in the UMC are likely to be the Central Conferences, which can be either national or transnational bodies. While there is no theoretical threshold membership level to become a central conference, in practice the smallest are Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference and the Central and Southern Europe Central Conference, both of which have just over 15,000 members. For comparison, the largest, the Congo Central conference, has 2.2 million members. The five US Jurisdictions, ranging from about a half million to over two million members in size, may be given similar authority (though creation of a new US-wide body is also an option). Such a practice is actually prohibited in the Free Methodist Church, which does not allow for more than one General Conference (and thus more than one contextual polity) in a single nation.
Looking at these three models, then, there are two correlated dimensions to the question of the bodies creating contextual polity: whether such bodies need be limited by national borders and whether it is possible to have multiple contextual polities within a single nation. Again, there are advantages and disadvantages to various answers. Nation states are not God-given, but their legal and political frameworks provide a reasonable set of contextual factors around which to adapt polity. Once these two questions are answered, then the question of size becomes in large part a practical matter based on the number of adherents within a particular subnational, national, or multi-national region.
Since the UMC is in the process of creating its General Book of Discipline, these comparative lessons from the Free Methodist Church and The Wesleyan Church are timely ones, and we would do well to learn from our sibling denominations.
“How big should a global Book of Discipline be? And how big should regional units that craft contextual polity be?” Those are two questions that a comparison between the Free Methodist Church and The United Methodist Church begs, especially when The Wesleyan Church is also included in the comparison.
The Free Methodist Church originated in 1860, led by B. T. Roberts and constituted from members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The church spread to Canada in 1874 and overseas to India in 1881. Work in Africa and Latin America soon followed. Today, the denomination includes over 1.5 million members in 88 countries around the world. Over 90% of these members live outside North America, with large portions in Africa and Asia.
In many ways, the global polity of the Free Methodist Church is similar to that of The Wesleyan Church, profiled in last month’s piece on comparative global Wesleyan polity. Like The Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church is composed of annual conferences (or districts in Wesleyan Church lingo), which are grouped into multiple General Conferences, all of which relate to one World Conference (or International Conference in Wesleyan Church lingo). The Free Methodist Church does not have Regional Conferences as an intermediate step towards becoming an independent General Conference, as in The Wesleyan Church. Instead, it has regional fellowships of independent General Conferences in the same geographic area of the world for the sake of camaraderie and coordination.
Free Methodist General Conferences can be smaller than those in The Wesleyan Church – only 5,000 members are required to form a General Conference. Consequently, there are more of them than in The Wesleyan Church. The Free Methodist Church has 13 General Conferences and two provisional General Conferences. Each has its own Book of Discipline. Free Methodist General Conferences are led by 1-3 bishops per General Conference.
Also like The Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church has a common core that is affirmed by all General Conferences and thus binding on all Free Methodists around the world. For Free Methodists, this common core includes two chapters that are included in all Free Methodist Books of Discipline. The first contains a series of theological statements. The second includes rules about General Conferences, the World Conference, the international Council of Bishops, and the process for amending these two chapters.
For United Methodists, this two chapter constitutional core to the various Free Methodist Books of Discipline may make some think of the process of creating a United Methodist “global Book of Discipline.” The global Book of Discipline is an effort underway in the UMC to identify essential parts of the current UMC Book of Discipline which should be binding on all United Methodists everywhere and designate these as a General Book of Discipline. All other current provisions, especially those related to national property laws or specific national programmatic practices, would be left to regional bodies to determine.
Yet the Free Methodists, The Wesleyan Church, and The United Methodist Church have taken different approaches to understanding what constitutes the most important elements that should be shared by denominational compatriots around the world. For both the Free Methodist Church and The Wesleyan Church, the answer is that what’s absolutely essential for everyone in the denomination to share is some basic theological affirmations and an understanding of how they will relate to each other. As noted, for the Free Methodist Church, this core is presented in the first two chapters of all Books of Discipline, which is about three dozen pages of material. For The Wesleyan Church, this comes down to about two dozen pages of material contained in the “Charter of the International Conference of The Wesleyan Church.”
By contrast, even the stripped down General Book of Discipline in the UMC will still contain material from all six parts of the current Book of Discipline, the last part itself split into seven chapters. Work is still ongoing in developing the General Book of Discipline, yet the final product will likely come to over 200 pages, nearly twenty times as long as the common material for The Nazarene Church. Clearly, the UMC is opting for a much larger body of shared policies and procedures. There are advantages and disadvantages to such an approach, but the examples of the Free Methodists and Wesleyans should lead United Methodists to ask themselves what the advantages of a much larger shared body of policy are.
The size of the shared core of theology and polity is one question, and the size of the body elaborating the contextual aspects of theology and polity is another. For Free Methodists, these are the General Conferences and Provisional General Conferences. They are constituted on a national basis, and thus there are many of them, though not all national branches of the Free Methodist Church have become (Provisional) General Conferences. As noted, General Conferences can be as small as 5,000 people, though most are larger than this – in the 10,000s of members. In The Wesleyan Church, the General Conferences and Established National or Regional Conferences that write their own Books of Discipline can be either national or trans-national. A General Conference must have at least 15,000 members.
While this is still in progress, the bodies that will be adding contextual material to the General Book of Discipline in the UMC are likely to be the Central Conferences, which can be either national or transnational bodies. While there is no theoretical threshold membership level to become a central conference, in practice the smallest are Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference and the Central and Southern Europe Central Conference, both of which have just over 15,000 members. For comparison, the largest, the Congo Central conference, has 2.2 million members. The five US Jurisdictions, ranging from about a half million to over two million members in size, may be given similar authority (though creation of a new US-wide body is also an option). Such a practice is actually prohibited in the Free Methodist Church, which does not allow for more than one General Conference (and thus more than one contextual polity) in a single nation.
Looking at these three models, then, there are two correlated dimensions to the question of the bodies creating contextual polity: whether such bodies need be limited by national borders and whether it is possible to have multiple contextual polities within a single nation. Again, there are advantages and disadvantages to various answers. Nation states are not God-given, but their legal and political frameworks provide a reasonable set of contextual factors around which to adapt polity. Once these two questions are answered, then the question of size becomes in large part a practical matter based on the number of adherents within a particular subnational, national, or multi-national region.
Since the UMC is in the process of creating its General Book of Discipline, these comparative lessons from the Free Methodist Church and The Wesleyan Church are timely ones, and we would do well to learn from our sibling denominations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)