The UMC and Institutional Decline: What About Membership Decline?

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian 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.

In response to my series on the UMC and Institutional Decline, reader (and United Methodist Professor of Mission) Rev. Dr. Jack Jackson writes:

“Hello David, thanks for these articles. You are bringing up some important issues. I wonder if you plan to address the underlying problem which, if not addressed, will make all these other renovations irrelevant? Namely, the current collapse of the United Methodist species. We simply aren't reproducing ourselves in the West. Clearly the denomination is reproducing in the Philippines and a handful of countries in central Africa. But apart from those 6 or 7 countries (so much for being a global church) the UMC is in the midst of species collapse. Will you address the need [for a] new vision regarding mission and evangelism that centers on making disciples for Jesus? I'd love to hear more of your thoughts.”

Given the significance of Rev. Dr. Jackson’s question, I wanted to spend an entire post responding to it, rather than trying to do so within the confines of the comments section.

The Relationship between Membership Decline and Institutional Decline
First, in his comment, Jackson gets at what is absolutely an important truth: It doesn’t matter what denominational institutions look like if there are no denominational members left to be part of them. Decline in denominational membership (especially among white Westerners) is an essential bit of context that shapes and shades all other discussions of the UMC’s future, including discussions of its institutions.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to conclude that because membership decline has the potential to make institutional decline irrelevant that we should focus entirely on membership and not on denominational institutions (not that Jackson is saying so). Such an argument would only make sense if membership and institutions were unconnected, but there is a relationship between the two.

The sorts of institutions that we have as a denomination can influence how effective we are at inviting new members through evangelism, retaining our current members through discipleship, and developing the next generation of members through Christian education. Rightly conceived, updating institutions can be a means to better equip the church to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

A football analogy may help. The only undefeated NFL team in history was the Miami Dolphins in 1972, incidentally the same year that many of the institutions of the UMC achieved their current form. Obviously, that team knew how to win. But if we were able to bring that team and their equipment, strategies, and training regiments to the present, the 1972 Miami Dolphins would likely struggle in the 2021 NFL season, where rules of the game have changed, game strategies have changed, technology used to help players play their best has evolved, offensive and defensive lines are much larger physically, and the season is three games longer. We can’t assume that just because the 1972 Dolphins knew how to win, none of the rest of these changes would matter.

In a similar way, evangelism (and discipleship and Christian education) is not just about knowing how to win people to Jesus in some ahistoric sense. It’s about knowing how to win people to Jesus in our present time and contexts, as Jackson’s writings highlight, and then developing the systems of rules, equipment, strategies, etc. necessary to support that approach. And our rules, equipment, strategies, etc. should be updated from their 1972 versions, just as the 1972 Dolphins would need to update if they played in the 2021 NFL.

The importance of church structure for the growth of the church is something I have addressed in several other posts (http://www.umglobal.org/2018/03/mission-structure-and-innovation.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2018/05/structure-financing-and-early-methodism.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2018/05/movement-vs-institution-choices-and.html).

Tracking Membership Trends
Second, as Jackson points out, there are important differences across The United Methodist Church in terms of how the church is doing in reproducing itself. Assessing the danger of “species collapse” and responding appropriately requires good information about where The United Methodist Church is and is not growing, how those trends compare to other forms of Christianity and population demographics, and the group-specific trends within the whole.

Over the years, developing this sort of data that can help United Methodist leaders discern where the church is and is not doing well, including in comparison with others, has been a major effort of my writing on this blog and elsewhere:

• In a co-written article from 2011, Dana L. Robert and I looked at UMC demographic trends relative to other Methodist and closely related denominations (https://www.methodistreview.org/index.php/mr/article/view/48), and I very briefly touched on a similar comparison this year (http://www.umglobal.org/2021/04/us-membership-decline-and-rhetoric-of.html).
• I crunched the numbers to analyze worldwide UMC membership growth or decline relative to the overall population (http://www.umglobal.org/2019/05/umc-membership-growth-and-decline.html), and I have encouraged United Methodists to be more specific in their thinking about global growth or decline (http://www.umglobal.org/2016/11/getting-specific-about-global-umc.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2018/02/making-sense-of-umc-membership-numbers.html).
• For another perspective on growth and decline, I put together an analysis of worldwide UMC clergy numbers relative to laity membership (http://www.umglobal.org/2021/01/clergy-vs-laity-membership-numbers.html).
• I have examined the racial components of membership trends in the United States (http://www.umglobal.org/2017/03/american-umc-decline-is-white-people.html) and compared membership decline to contextual economic factors (http://www.umglobal.org/2013/07/middle-class-methodists-and-church.html).
• I have put together comprehensive data on where Methodists from all denominations are located around the world (http://www.umglobal.org/2018/02/resource-maps-of-locations-of-world.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2018/04/resource-more-world-methodist-maps.html) and have looked at how these maps highlight historical factors influencing the spread of Methodism to date (http://www.umglobal.org/2018/02/analysis-of-locations-of-world.html).

Much of the above work can be found in the UM & Global collection “Methodist Maps and Membership”: http://www.umglobal.org/2021/01/um-global-collection-methodist-maps-and.html.

In addition, I have suggested a variety of explanations for these trends that try to look not just at The United Methodist Church but at other forms of Christianity and wider societal contexts, especially in the United States.

I have tried to enumerate factors influencing church growth (http://www.umglobal.org/2019/05/factors-influencing-church-growth.html) including organizational and cultural explanations (http://www.umglobal.org/2021/04/organizational-vs-cultural-explanations.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2016/04/coming-to-terms-with-numeric-decline-in.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2018/03/are-there-too-few-mainline-denominations.html) and the role of the witness of the church amidst suffering (http://www.umglobal.org/2018/06/is-suffering-cause-of-umc-growth-in.html).

I have examined the role of empire in the fate of Christianity in the West: http://www.umglobal.org/2020/06/secularization-and-collapse-of-empire.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2020/12/what-is-imperial-religion-and-why-do.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2020/12/american-christianity-as-imperial.html; http://www.umglobal.org/2020/12/routes-forward-from-imperial-american.html

This work is not the same as developing a theology or method of evangelism, but I do see it as important background for such work. Since evangelism must be contextual, United Methodists must understand the contexts in which they evangelize.

Evangelism
Jackson suggests that the UMC needs a “new vision regarding mission and evangelism that centers on making disciples for Jesus.” I wholeheartedly agree that evangelism is an essential part of mission and that the UMC should be engaged in evangelism.

That is an important part of why I developed the definition of mission I use in my book on mission for congregations, Crossing Boundaries: Mission is “cultivating relationships across boundaries for the sake of fostering conversations in word and deed about the nature of God’s good news” (http://www.umglobal.org/2019/03/a-new-definition-of-mission.html). By emphasizing conversations about God’s good news, this definition of mission is intended to include evangelism as a core component of mission.

This conviction that evangelism is an essential part of mission means that evangelism is among the subjects that UM & Global covers, even if I don’t always write those articles myself. You can find UM & Global articles about evangelism here: http://www.umglobal.org/search/label/evangelism.

Given my background as a social historian, I tend to write about areas that I feel I am uniquely qualified to analyze and that others are not writing about extensively (such as organizational theory and demographics). I then try to lift up the voices of those who are more insightful than me on other topics. Evangelism tends to fall into that latter category, not because I don’t believe it is important, but because I recognize the insights that others have go beyond my own in this area. I believe I can better contribute to furthering evangelism by doing some of this background work that I hope others will draw upon.

United Methodists and the American Religious Landscape

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian 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.

 

PRRI (the Public Religion Research Institute) just released their 2020 Census of American Religion. And surprisingly, the results of the census contain some encouraging news for United Methodists.

For decades, The United Methodist Church and other mainline denominations have declined in membership and as a percentage of the overall US population. In the UMC, this decline has been primarily driven by declining white membership.

Thus, it comes as a bit of a surprise that, according to PRRI surveys, the percentage of the US population who self-identify as white mainline Protestants has increased over the past four years, from 12.8% in 2016 to 16.4% in 2020. Based on the numbers, it seems that in the past few years, white mainline Protestants have benefited from transfers both from white evangelicals and white unaffiliated.

At the same time that white mainline Christians have grown, Christians of color have held steady as a share of the population, though the PRRI report does not break out trends over time for each sub-group within that larger amalgamation (Black non-evangelical Protestants, Hispanic evangelicals, Asian Catholics, etc.).

This survey is based on self-identity, not denominational membership, so there is some possibility that the changes reflected in the survey are the result of new self-understandings rather than new congregational or denominational homes.

Still, the survey should give some encouragement to United Methodists in the United States. For the first time in a half century, there is a growing interest in mainline Christianity as a religious option in the United States, at least among white Americans. As the largest mainline denomination and a predominantly white body, that should be good news for United Methodists, even as it seeks to dismantle racism and contemplates a denominational split.

More than just it being good news that United Methodists celebrate, these survey results should be good news that encourages United Methodists of all backgrounds to think more about the Good News and how to share it with others regardless of racial background. These encouraging survey results are an indicator of a spiritual hunger that the UMC, despite all its flaws, is capable of fulfilling by sharing with others the fruits of Wesleyan theology and spirituality. That should be an incentive to evangelism.

Moreover, there are a number of excellent evangelism resources that have come out in the past several years by a number of United Methodist evangelism professors. It is as easy as ever for churches and individuals to prepare themselves to share the Good News with others in a culturally-sensitive, informed, non-coercive way.

It is easy these days as a United Methodist to get down on the church, its internal politics, and its standing in the world. And the PRRI report isn't all good news. The percentage of the population that self-identifies as Christian in the United States still declines among younger groups, a corollary of an increasing number of younger people who do not identify with any religion. That trend will still negatively impact United Methodist membership numbers.

Nonetheless, it is good to be reminded that the good things we experience from our Methodist heritage and Methodist way of being church are not just good for us, but might be good things that others could appreciate as well.

We will see in another four years or so when PRRI or Pew comes out with their next poll whether this increase in white mainline Protestantism persists or not and how trends among Christians of color develop. But how that future plays out depends in part on whether United Methodists take courage from this current report and engage in evangelism because of it.

US Membership Decline and the Rhetoric of the Global Church

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian 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.

As I indicated last week, given the overall trends in the United States away from church membership, it is likely that the future United Methodist Church and other successor denominations will continue to struggle with membership. The new Global Methodist Church may grow in members over the next decade, in part through a drawn-out process of member and church transfers from the UMC, but unless long-term trends change, they will likely eventually struggle as well.

This prediction is based not only on the long-term experience of the UMC, but the recent experience of other Methodist denominations as well, most of them more theologically conservative, more evangelism-oriented, and more organizationally streamlined than the UMC. The Free Methodist Church is down about 10% in its US membership over the past decade (see this vs this). The Church of the Nazarene is down over 5% in its US and Canadian membership. The Wesleyan Church has fared the best, with increasing worship attendance but essentially flat membership. Good data is difficult to attain on predominantly black Methodist denominations, but none of the UMC’s successors will be predominantly black.

One particular problem that arises out of this likely continued decline in US membership has to do with the way that Methodists have thought theologically about membership statistics from the very beginning of the movement. In Methodist understandings, increasing membership is a sign of the movement of the Spirit. This was true when Wesley was determining how to deploy his preachers, and this has remained true right up to recent conversations about “vital congregations.” Increasing membership is seen as a sign that the work of the church and the will of God are aligned.

By pointing out this assumption, I do not mean to say that membership growth is bad or never correlated with the work of the Spirit. I do mean to say that membership growth has a much greater level of theological importance in Methodism that in, say, the Anabaptist tradition.

This concern with membership numbers plays out most often in assessing the work of local congregations, districts, or areas of new mission work. But it also characterizes how Methodist denominations think about themselves as a whole. Methodists of any stripe tend to see the numerical growth in their denomination’s membership as a reflection that they are being good and faithful to God and the movement of the Spirit.

But if one assumes that is true, then it is easy to assume the converse is true as well: Decline in denominational membership is a sign that the denomination is out of alignment with God’s will. I think this reasoning is why US membership decline has provoked so much handwringing for United Methodists: It conjures up not only organizational anxieties but theological anxieties as well.

These theological anxieties are heightened for Methodists from the United States, where there is a high cultural emphasis on numerical growth as a demonstration of success and a high cultural stigma on numerical decline as a demonstration of failure.

How then can Methodists in the United States respond to the situation of US membership decline and thereby address these theological (and cultural) anxieties about whether their denomination is aligned with God’s will?

One set of solutions is to try various efforts to realign the denomination with God’s will (either theologically or organizationally, as discussed last week) to begin to grow in US membership again. So far, none of these efforts have proven successful in the UMC.

The failure of this first set of solutions highlights the importance of a second solution to the theological problem of US membership decline: factoring in the growth of world Christianity. Growing membership outside of the United States can offset membership declines in the United States, resulting in the denomination as a whole continuing to grow in membership. While this does not completely alleviate anxieties about US membership decline, it can provide some psychological reassurance that the denomination is still doing God’s will, as evidenced by the growth of the church globally.

Within the UMC, membership gains outside the US have made up for membership loss in the United States, and thus the overall membership of the denomination has increased modestly over the past decade. For the Wesleyans, Free Methodists, Nazarenes, AME, AME Zion, and CME, membership gains outside the United States have more than compensated for membership losses within the United States, and thus all of these traditions can think of themselves as growing churches, despite US membership trends. And, in the Methodist way of thinking, being a growing church means being a church in God’s favor.

While there are a variety of reasons why both US Traditionalists and those in the United States intending to remain within the UMC want to court Africans, Filipinos, and others outside the United States to choose their side of the denominational split, I think a recognition, at least implicitly, of the rhetorical importance of connections to places where Christianity is growing is among the reasons.

Having been in an international denomination, and having been shaped by the rhetoric that the church is growing and doing exciting things outside the United States, few are willing to give that up and settle down to the challenges of being church in an increasingly secular society. Instead, they want to preserve the romance and the sense of alignment with God’s will that come with being part of a growing denomination, even if that growth is happening elsewhere in the world.

Of course, this desire for global connection is very US centric. Methodists elsewhere in the world are, by and large, not concerning themselves with assuaging US theological fears provoked by membership loss. Instead, they have their own sets of concerns that are impacting their decisions about whether to remain in the UMC or affiliate with the Global Methodist Church. I will turn to those next week.

Organizational vs. Cultural Explanations for US Membership Decline

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian 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.

Gallup recently reported that the percentage of US Americans who are members of a church, mosque, synagogue or other religious institution has fallen below 50% for the first time in the 80-some years that Gallup has been tracking it. According to Gallup surveys, the downward trend in religious membership has been driven primarily by the increase in the number of Americans who do not identify as being connected to any particular religion and secondarily by a decrease in the number of religious Americans with membership in a specific congregation.

It is worth reflecting on membership trends in The United Methodist Church in the light of this news story and the large number of similar stories about the "rise of the nones" and decrease in US religiosity that have come out for a decade or more.

The United Methodist Church has, famously, been dropping in US membership since the year it was created. This long-term trend has been the source of much hand-wringing and many schemes to reverse the downward trend in membership.

Most proposed plans to address US UMC membership decline take what I would call an organizational approach to the problem of membership decline. The assume that the cause of decline is internal to the organization and thus can be solved by making changes to the organization.

The variety of proposed changes varies: Some involve bureaucratic retrenchment. Other solutions involve new programs to be adopted by US congregations. Both strengthening and abolishing the church's teachings against homosexuality have been touted as ways to reverse membership decline. Focusing on organizational factors draws on the valid insight that there are choices organizations can make that impact their health, either positively and negatively.

But what all of these proposals miss is that UMC membership decline is not occurring in a vacuum. This organizational trend is part of a much larger cultural trend in the United States away from organized religion, especially Christianity.

That trend has affected almost all aspects of the US religious landscape, cutting across race, class, and theological traditions. To be sure, there are variations in how significantly religious membership has declined according to race, politics, theological tradition, economic class, education, and other factors, but the trend everywhere has been downward. It is just a question of how much. Even the vaunted growth of evangelical Protestantism in the 1980s and 90s has stalled out in the past 20 years, and membership decline has impacted that sector of the religious economy too.

This does not mean that there is nothing denominations can do in the face of a cultural move away from Christianity. To be sure, there are denominational traditions that have managed to grow in membership within this overall current of decline. They tend to be small, relatively young, and conservative denominations, though small and young may be the most salient features. There are too few small, relatively young, and liberal denominations to make a fair comparison.

Still, I'm sure these counter examples of membership growth give those forming the Global Methodist Church some hope, and there is a chance that their US membership will grow, at least in the short term. Unless something changes in US culture as a whole, though, they will likely find it difficult to sustain membership growth in the United States a decade after their creation. And the remaining UMC will almost certainly continue to drop in US membership.

That does not make organizational changes unimportant. Again, organizations can actually make choices that lead to greater or lesser health. Yet, US Methodists (and US Christians generally) are fooling themselves if they think that they can solve a cultural problem with organizational solutions. Such an approach is an example of what leadership expert Ron Heifetz refers to as a technical solution to an adaptive problem.

I don't know what the adaptive solution to the cultural problem of US religious decline is. I wish I did. But I am sure that understanding the nature of the problem is the first step in finding the solution.

UM & Global Collection: Methodist Maps and Membership

The latest (and final, at least for a while) UM & Global collection is now available. This collection examines the distribution of Methodism around the world Methodist membership data, or in other words, Methodist maps and membership.

The collection is broken into three sections: one on maps of global Methodism, one on global membership data for The United Methodist Church and other Methodist denominations, and one on membership decline in The United Methodist Church in the United States.

Along with the text of the posts, this collection includes images of many maps and several tables worth of data. Thus, this collection can serve as a Methodist gazetteer and reference point in addition to the value of the interpretive essays.

The posts are predominantly authored by David W. Scott, with a couple of response posts from Robert Harman and William Payne included. As with other collections, there is a set of discussion questions at the end of the volume.

The UMC and Jared Diamond’s Upheaval, Part 5: Group Cohesion and Conclusion

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.
 
Having laid out an assessment of the crisis that the UMC is facing, and having laid out the framework that Jared Diamond used in his book Upheaval to assess nation’s abilities to effectively resolve national crisis, I will now examine those factors (adapted for denominations instead of nations) as they apply to The United Methodist Church. I will look at the factors in a different order that Diamond listed them, grouping them instead into four related categories. This post will look at the fourth category:

Denominational Factors Related to Group Cohesion
Finally are two factors related not to a crisis itself, but to the group experiencing it: How strong are the senses of denominational identity and a shared set of denominational core values? Diamond writes about national identity being a particularly important factor for nations resolving crises.

6. Denominational identity
Up until 2019, a sense of denominational identity was rather high in The United Methodist Church. For many leaders and active participants in the UMC, it was important not just that they were Christians or that they were in the Wesleyan/Methodist family, but that they were specifically United Methodist. This is shown, for instance, in attachment to the cross and flame logo or denominational touchstones like the hymn “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” or pride in UMCOR.

There was not necessarily strong agreement as to what constituted the core of that identity, and indeed that has been a matter of significant debate. Nevertheless, most parties did have a sense that a United Methodist identity, however defined, was important to them.

It is this sense of denominational identity that has kept the various parties within the UMC at the table. None were willing to walk away because each had a sense that there would be a real loss associated with no longer being part of this denominational identity.

That has changed for many US American United Methodists since General Conference 2019. Many US Americans have begun to question how important it is to them to be specifically United Methodist and to consider futures in which they are no longer part of the UMC.

This decrease in the perceived importance of denominational identity makes it less likely that the denomination will successfully resolve its crisis as an organizational whole. It increases the possibility that the crisis will be resolved by some leaving the denomination, singly or in groups.

11. Denominational core values
While, as noted above, certain touchstones of United Methodist identity are widely shared – the cross and flame, UMCOR, etc. – there is significant debate over the core of denominational identity. Nowhere is that more true than the area of denominational core values.

Debates over the status of LGBTQ persons in the church have highlighted the differences in what different groups of United Methodists perceive to be the core values of the denomination. Kendall Soulen and others have analyzed the debate between traditionalists and progressives as the consequence of different framings of the situation that emphasize either holiness and obedience or justice and liberation. Mission is a core value for many United Methodists, but that value is understood and practiced differently.

The issue of shared core values becomes even more complicated when one takes into account the international nature of the church. As I have shown for Filipino United Methodists, even when Filipinos share core values with American Traditionalists, Centrists, or Progressives, they way they understand those values and connect them to one another differs from the way US American United Methodists approach these core values.

Thus, shared core values for the denomination as an ideological and international whole may not exist.

Conclusion
This brings us to the end of the twelve factors identified by Jared Diamond as relevant to whether and how nations resolve crises. Assuming these factors have some validity for denominations as well as nations has allowed me to take stock of the UMC’s strengths and weaknesses as it attempts to resolve its current crisis of division over sexuality, declining US membership and giving, and difficult international decision-making.

Diamond does not intend his schema as mathematically predictive, and neither do I for my adaptation of his framework. It is impossible to say that if a nation or denomination has X number of factors in its favor or if it just has factors Y and Z, then it will certainly surmount its crisis. Thus, a review of the crisis-resolution factors in the UMC cannot lead to a definitive prediction of whether or nor the UMC will resolve its current crisis, let alone how.

Nonetheless, it is possible to briefly summarize some findings. While my survey of the twelve factors did identify some assets that the UMC has as it tries to resolve its crisis, the UMC also faces challenges in almost every one of these twelve factors. This should give us pause about the prospects of the UMC successfully resolving its current crisis.

In acknowledging that the UMC may not successfully resolve its current crisis, it is important to keep in mind what the opposite of resolving that crisis means. The opposite of resolving the crisis is not schism or the expulsion of one party. These scenarios resolve the crisis in one fashion or another.

No, the opposite of resolving the crisis is for the crisis to continue. That is the real danger for the UMC.

The UMC and Jared Diamond’s Upheaval, Part 4: Ability to Learn from Crisis

Having laid out an assessment of the crisis that the UMC is facing, and having laid out the framework that Jared Diamond used in his book Upheaval to assess nation’s abilities to effectively resolve national crisis, I will now examine those factors (adapted for denominations instead of nations) as they apply to The United Methodist Church. I will look at the factors in a different order that Diamond listed them, grouping them instead into four related categories. This post will look at the third category:

Denominational Factors Related to Ability to Learn
As Peter Senge and other leadership and organizational theorists have shown, an organization’s ability to successfully adapt and respond to change depends upon its ability not only to act, but to learn from its actions, current and past. Organizations that can learn are better able to adapt and respond to change and thus more likely to survive. Three of the factors identified by Diamond have to do with organizational learning – from previous crises, from failures, and from other organizations.

8. Historical experience of previous denominational crises
This factor asks whether there are previous crises that The United Methodist Church (or its predecessor denominations) has successfully faced from which it can collectively learn lessons and develop a sense of resiliency. There are certainly previous crises in the predecessors of the UMC from which lessons might be learned or resiliency be obtained.

The previous crisis that is most frequently invoked in discussions of the UMC’s current crisis is the split between the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1844 over the issue of slavery. Commentators draw a range of lessons from this division, and it is not clear that there is a consensus on what the lesson of that split was for our current situation. Moreover, that the two denominations did not merge again until 75 years later, and that there were problems with that merger related to underlying issues of race and regionalism indicate that this split is perhaps not the sort of model all hope applies to the current situation.

Changes in church teaching and practices on divorce or clergy smoking tobacco are also sometimes held up as historical examples that the church can successfully resolve dissent over practices related to sexuality, marriage, and ordination. That is true, and the denomination should take some consolation from that, though these issues did not become crises at the same level as our current crisis.

The church could also perhaps learn from the fundamentalist/modernist controversy, which strained most of American Protestantism, but affected Methodists less than other denominations. Some scholars have undertaken to do so, but those lessons are not ones widely discussed.

Other previous crises in the church – especially those leading to splits in the church, such as the variety of holiness departures from the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Association/United Evangelical Church split, or the United Brethren in Christ/United Brethren in Christ (Old Constitution) split – have faded significantly from collective memory and do not seem to be a source of lessons for the present.

It is worth noting that all the examples cited above are from the United States. These examples will not have the same resonance with United Methodists outside the US. Instead, local and regional experiences will lead to other lessons drawn about how to resolve crises, as I have shown for the recent Filipino schism. Knowledge of these crises and the lessons drawn from them are not likely to be shared beyond a particular region.

9. Dealing with denominational failure
According to Diamond, dealing with failure involves the patience to try possible ways to resolve a crisis and the ability to tolerate failure in the process. One could include in this factor the ability to learn from failure, both failures in resolving the present crisis and past collective failures.

However, in the present UMC, failure to resolve the current crisis has seemed to increase emotional tensions within the denomination. General Conference 2016, the Commission on a Way Forward, and General Conference 2019 all failed in their own ways to resolve the denomination’s current crisis, especially as it manifests in the debate about the status of LGBTQ persons in the church.

Rather than the church seeing these failures as teachable moments from which it could learn, the failures have left United Methodists, especially in the United States, with limited remaining patience to try additional solutions to the current crisis to see if they work. Many US United Methodists now want a resolution to the crisis in the next year or two, or else they intend to leave.

The denomination’s attitude towards its current failures can be seen as part of a larger pattern of ignoring or minimizing failures rather than learning from them. Failures are either recast as successes or are edited out of our collective history.

Most United Methodists do recognize the failures inherent in the way that the denomination and its predecessors treated women and people of color, especially in the creation of the segregated Central Jurisdiction. And United Methodists do draw lessons from the movements for ordination of women and the abolition of the Central Jurisdiction. Yet, the focus on these pieces of United Methodist history is often on successfully getting past these failures, e.g., by talking much more about the events that led up to the dissolution of the Central Jurisdiction rather than those that led up to its creation.

Other failures that might be relevant to our current crisis have largely been edited out of our collective history. The financial and membership failures associated with the collapse of the $2 billion (in today’s money) fundraising campaign and the evangelistic campaign both associated with the Mission Centenary, and its long-lasting consequences for the world-wide nature of the church have been intentionally forgotten because the church was unwilling to grapple with this failure. The COSMOS (Commission on the Status of Methodism Overseas) process has also largely been forgotten (outside of this blog) after its failure to move the church to a new model of international decision-making.

5. Using other denominations as models of how to solve the problems
In some ways, The United Methodist Church is trying to do something no other denomination has done – resolve a debate on sexuality as an international denomination. In that regard, there is no model for the UMC. Yet, in looking at the components of the problem, there are models from which the church can draw.

Notably, other mainline US denominations have gone through crises over the status of LGBTQ persons within them, and those crises have been resolved, in one way or another. United Methodists frequently cite the examples of the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and UCC. Less well known is the similar Moravian crisis. United Methodists seem to be committed to learning from these other models.

None of these other denominations are international, though the Episcopalians and Moravians are part of world-wide communions, and the international structures of these two traditions have intersected with how these two denominations resolved their crises over the status of LGBTQ persons in the church.

There are also models from other denominations of how to structure international decision-making within an international Methodist/Wesleyan denomination. The AME Church, AME Zion Church, The Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church, and the Church of the Nazarene have all adopted different models for international decision-making. None of these models were adopted in the midst of debates over sexuality, however. Furthermore, most United Methodists are not familiar with these models and are thus not actively trying to learn from them.

There are no real models for successfully solving one component of the UMC’s crisis – the decline in US membership and giving. No other major US denomination has turned around long-term membership decline.

There are, however, perhaps still some models that are worth examining, both in other denominations and within the UMC. The Fresh Expressions movement in England and elsewhere is a model that many United Methodists are exploring as a means to counteract membership decline.

Moreover, as I have previously argued, examining the practices of racial and ethnic minority UMC churches in the US may yield models, as the total membership of these churches has continued to grow, even while white American membership has declined. Little work has yet been done, though, in trying to identify such models, and the mere suggestion of learning from racial and ethnic minorities has prompted resistance by some in the church.

The UMC and Jared Diamond’s Upheaval, Part 3: Ability to Act in Crisis

Having laid out an assessment of the crisis that the UMC is facing, and having laid out the framework that Jared Diamond used in his book Upheaval to assess nation’s abilities to effectively resolve national crisis, I will now examine those factors (adapted for denominations instead of nations) as they apply to The United Methodist Church. I will look at the factors in a different order that Diamond listed them, grouping them instead into four related categories. This post will look at the second category:

Denominational Factors Related to the Ability to Act
The next set of factors that Diamond identifies as relevant to successful crisis-resolution impact the range of actions that a nation or denomination may take. A denomination may be motivated to action by its identification of a crisis and its acceptance of responsibility for addressing that crisis, as in the first set of factors, but that motivation must play out by considering the range of actions that are or are not possible. Factors related to the ability to act either delineate restrictions on denominational action or assets that may allow a denomination to consider a wider array of actions. The three factors here are denominational flexibility, freedom from constraints, and help from other denominations.

10. Situation-specific denominational flexibility
Diamond questions whether it is really appropriate to speak of nations as having a general disposition towards flexibility or inflexibility. Perhaps it is more appropriate to speak of traditions of flexibility within organizations such as denominations; perhaps not. Nonetheless, I will attempt to do so.

In general, the structures of The United Methodist Church have been fairly stable since 1972. This includes international decision-making structures, financial structures, and structures of organization and leadership, including boards and agencies. Although there have been changes in the Book of Discipline related to sexuality since 1972, in many ways the contours of that debate were set in 1972 as well and have continued since then.

There have been a few significant changes in the UMC since 1972 – the autonomy of the Methodist Church in India, the replacement of the General Council on Ministries with the Connectional Table, and the merger with the Methodist Protestant Church of Cote d’Ivoire. Yet, as Darryl Stephens has shown for the Cote d’Ivoire merger, these changes have not caused wide-spread rethinking of the denomination.

Moreover, some major proposed changes to how the denomination functions that initially seemed possible have been shot down, including making the US a central conference (passed by General Conference and voted down at the annual conference level), reorganizing the boards and agencies as part of Plan UMC (passed by General Conference and overruled by Judicial Council), or ending guaranteed appointment (passed by consent of a General Conference committee and then voted down by the whole body).

Other significant changes, such as a revamp of the Social Principles (up for vote at General Conference 2020) or the development of a Global Book of Discipline (deferred to General Conference 2024) are still in process, and it is too early to know their fate.

Thus, the main contours of the denomination have been in place since 1972, and the denomination has not shown much flexibility since then.

12. Freedom from financial, legal, and cultural constraints
As laid out in my description of the crisis faced by the UMC, the denomination is facing demographic and financial pressures that result from the decline of membership in the US. These pressures result from larger cultural constraints on Christianity in the United States. In the US broadly, adherence to Christianity is declining in both percentage and absolute terms.

The resultant membership and financial pressures act as constraints on the range of option that the UMC considers for its future. Money is indeed an object, both in the US and elsewhere, and at most levels of the church, from the congregational to the general agency. Thus, most actors are weighing their options in the light of the financial implications for their specific organizations and rejecting those options they see as having deleterious financial effects.

A concern for the impact on membership and giving is perhaps most acute at the most local levels. Pastors leading congregations in the US are rightly concerned about whether the crisis in the UMC will trickle down to their congregation, costing them significant numbers of members in a way that would undermine the health of their congregations.

In Europe, where membership is already quite small, there is also a significant concern for how the UMC’s current crisis will impact future membership and the viability of various forms of church organization, from the congregational through to the central conference.

Still, despite the legitimate financial and membership concerns felt by many United Methodists in the face of the present crisis, it is worth noting that the UMC has a wider latitude to operate relative to other denominations. While the departure of, say, 20% of its American membership would no doubt have significant and in some cases severe consequences, it would still leave the UMC the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the United States.

In addition to the financial and membership constraints on the UMC, there are also significant legal and cultural constraints on the denomination related to its stance on homosexuality. As I have detailed for Africa, the Philippines, and Europe, the laws about homosexuality and predominant views of homosexuality in the surrounding culture differ significantly across the United Methodist globe. In some places, the church faces fairly significant legal and cultural opposition to anything that could be construed as acceptance of homosexuality. Especially for places like Russia where the church is small and fragile and there is significant disapproval of homosexuality, the church is quite limited in the range of options it can consider for a viable future.

In general, I think this is one of the things that US American United Methodists most fail to understand about their coreligionists elsewhere. US Americans are used to having fairly few constraints on their actions, both as individuals, as a nation, and as a church in a nation with a strong tradition of separation of church and state. It is difficult for US Americans to understand the sorts of legal and social constraints on the UMC elsewhere, especially in settings where the UMC is a small and barely tolerated minority.

4. Getting material and financial help from other nations
This is the factor for which the comparison between nations and denominations seems the least apt. Nations give and receive a variety of material and financial aid between each other all the time. It is rare for denominations to directly aid one another. Instead, denominations more often behave like competitors than allies.

Nevertheless, one might imagine related denominations in the United States taking steps to aid ideologically similar fellow Christians in The United Methodist Church.

Perhaps this could take the form of full-communion mainline Protestant partners preparing to welcome progressive clergy and/or congregations leaving the UMC.

Perhaps this could take the form of Wesleyan/Holiness churches arranging to support departing traditionalist congregations or to use traditionalist para-denominational services (publishing, conferences, etc.) in a way that allows them to transition into services for a new traditionalist denomination.

Such forms of assistance seem to happen on an ad-hoc basis already, though no wide-spread initiatives currently exist. Thus, this form of assistance is not likely to significantly impact how the UMC addresses its current crisis.

The UMC and Jared Diamond’s Upheaval, Part 2: Recognizing the Crisis

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.

Having laid out an assessment of the crisis that the UMC is facing, and having laid out the framework that Jared Diamond used in his book Upheaval to assess nation’s abilities to effectively resolve national crisis, I will now examine those factors (adapted for denominations instead of nations) as they apply to The United Methodist Church. I will look at the factors in a different order that Diamond listed them, grouping them instead into four related categories. This post will look at the first category:

Denominational Factors Related to Recognizing and Responding to the Crisis
First are a set of factors that relate to recognizing and responding to the crisis, answering the following questions: Is there a crisis? Why? Should the church respond? How extensive should that response be? Unless a denomination agrees that there is a crisis and that it should respond in some way, a crisis cannot be resolved. The identified reason and extent of a crisis are also key in shaping the resolution.

1. Denominational consensus that one’s denomination is in crisis
It might seem that the UMC does indeed have a consensus that the denomination is in crisis. Traditionalists, centrists, progressives, and liberationists in the United States all agree that there is a crisis and that the current state of the church cannot continue. Something must give.

Most Europeans, I think, would also agree that questions about the status of LGBTQ persons in the church and related questions about international polity and financing must be addressed, though perhaps with less of a sense that the future of the denomination depends upon this issue.

Yet it is not clear to me that United Methodists in the Philippines or especially Africa have the same sense of crisis in the UMC as United Methodists in the US and Europe do. Most African United Methodists have limited information about the UMC in the US and only experience debates about sexuality at the occasional general church meetings they may attend. Moreover, in many places in Africa, the church is growing rather than declining.

Thus, while top-level African leaders certainly are aware of the scope and magnitude of the crisis in the UMC, I do not think that sense of crisis goes much beyond the top level. For most African United Methodists, the crisis the UMC faces is actually about local political and economic conditions or competition with pentecostals.

Since Africans represent 30% of the votes at General Conference, this difference between Africans on the one hand and US Americans on the other over the extent and nature of a crisis in the UMC may significantly hinder the denomination’s ability to resolve the UMC’s crisis as I (as a US American) have defined it.

7. Honest denominational self-appraisal
Understandings of some aspects of the current crisis of the UMC are widely shared – there is little debate over the specifics of demographic trends in the US, financial trends globally, or specifics of what church polity says and how it is practiced (which are not the same). Most of this understanding is at the level of facts.

On a deeper level, there is little agreement amongst various factions within the United Methodist church about the underlying explanations for those facts, limiting the extent of honest denominational self-appraisal.

In particular, most of the narratives that the various parties (US traditionalists, US progressives, US centrists, Africans, etc.) attribute the crisis to the actions of other parties and downplay the actions of that group. Each group blames the other(s) for the crisis and is unwilling to honestly admit the role that they have had in creating or sustaining the crisis.

Furthermore, it seems to me that partisans on both sides of the US ideological spectrum tend to scapegoat the debate over LGBTQ persons in the church, making a successful solution to this conflict the key to addressing all other issues related to US membership and financial decline and to international decision making. This assumption seems unrealistic to me.

It also seems to me that some US United Methodists make unrealistic assumptions about their ability to continue to determine the terms of discussion in the UMC long-term, whereas some African United Methodists make unrealistic assumptions about the US ability to continue to subsidize ministry elsewhere long-term.

Thus, in some important ways, United Methodists are not honest with themselves about the reasons for their current crisis.

2. Acceptance of denominational responsibility to do something
Among those United Methodists who agree that the denomination is in crisis, it seems that all of them have accepted responsibility to resolve that crisis in some way, even if they are unwilling to accept responsibility for having caused it. American caucus groups such as Good News, UMC Next, the WCA, and UMForward; European annual and central conferences; and African and Filipino bishops have all made statements, put forth plans, or initiated processes to respond to the crisis of the church.

Yet to assume responsibility to do something without accepting responsibility for having had a role in causing the crisis is to set up one’s own group as the savior and all others, therefore, as the ones in need of saving. This undercuts the possibility of cooperation with others.

If anything is missing in terms of denominational responsibility to do something, it is a sense that for the denomination to do something, various groups must work together rather than independently. Much of the action that has happened to address the UMC’s crisis is action taken by specific groups by themselves and not in concert with others.

3. Building a fence, to delineate the denominational problems needing to be solved
At times, at least for US American United Methodists, the debate over the status of LGBTQ persons in the church can feel all-consuming. This debate, while primarily focused on the two questions of gay ordination and gay weddings, can seem to impact almost all other areas of the church. Indeed, if the church splits, most other areas of polity may be impacted.

Moreover, to the extent that US membership and financial decline impact all United Methodist institutions beyond the local church level, and many local churches themselves, it can also feel like there are no fences around this aspect of the crisis.

To the extent that these perceptions are true, this represents a failure to build a fence around the issues needing to be addressed.

Yet, it should be remembered that this sense of the all-pervasiveness of the crisis is primarily a US sense. United Methodists elsewhere have less of a sense that this crisis is all-consuming, requiring changes in all aspects of what it means to be a United Methodist. This is true even when they acknowledge that the crisis exists.

Moreover, looked at another way, there are key United Methodist practices and characteristics that are not impacted by our current crisis of the sexuality debate, global decision-making, and US membership and financial decline, even in the United States. While the long-term fate of some of these facets depends on what shape possible new denominations might take, things like a belief in connectionalism, an emphasis on free will and personal responsibility, and the practice of itineration are core features of United Methodism that are by and large not presently affected by the crisis.

The UMC and Jared Diamond’s Upheaval, Part 1: Defining the Crisis

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.

I recently read Jared Diamond’s book Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis. In it, Diamond examines a variety of national crises, historical and contemporary, and assesses those nations on twelve factors impacting a nation’s ability to resolve a crisis. Diamond has adapted these twelve national factors from individual factors identified by crisis therapists as relevant to whether or not individuals can successfully resolve personal crises.

This got me thinking: If Diamond could adapt these individual factors to examine how nations respond to their crises, could this set of factors be further adapted to examine how organizations respond to their crises? More specifically, what might these twelve factors tell us about The United Methodist Church as an organization and its ability to successfully resolve the crisis in which it finds itself?

The factors that Diamond identifies for nations are as follows (see Table 1.2 on p. 62), with notation on how I intended to adapt these factors to examine the UMC as a denomination, mostly by a simple substitution of denomination for nation:
1. National [denominational] consensus that one’s nation [denomination] is in crisis
2. Acceptance of national [denominational] responsibility to do something
3. Building a fence, to delineate the national [denominational] problems needing to be solved
4. Getting material and financial help from other nations [denominations or organizations]
5. Using other nations [denominations] as models of how to solve the problems
6. National [denominational] identity
7. Honest national [denominational] self-appraisal
8. Historical experience of previous national [denominational] crises
9. Dealing with national [denominational] failure
10. Situation-specific national [denominational] flexibility
11. National [denominational] core values
12. Freedom from geopolitical [financial, legal, and cultural] constraints

Diamond also raises several other questions regarding nation’s abilities to resolve crises (p. 66-7), which are worth quoting here:
•    "the crucial role of political and economic institutions
•    "questions about the role of a nation’s leader or leaders in resolving a crisis
•    "questions more generally about group decision-making
•    "the question of whether a national crisis leads to selective changes through peaceful resolution or through violent revolution
•    "the question of whether different types of national changes are introduced simultaneously as part of a unified program, or else separately and at different times
•    "the issue of whether a national crisis was triggered by internal developments within the nation, or else by an external shock from another country
•    "the problem of achieving reconciliation (especially after a crisis involving a war or mass killings) between parties that were in conflict – reconciliation either between groups within a country, or else between a country and its neighbors."
While I am not going to address each of these questions individually for the UMC, issues of leadership, decision-making, and conflict are relevant to my assessment of the factors for crisis-resolution.

Before turning to an analysis of how the UMC rates on the various factors for crisis-resolution, it is worth saying a bit more about what exactly the crisis in the UMC is, or at least how I am understanding it for the sake of this thought exercise.

It might seem obvious to many that the crisis in The United Methodist Church is the long-standing debate over the role of LGBTQ persons in the church, which has come to a head following the special called General Conference in 2019. Specifically, the questions at the heart of this debate are whether the church should ordain non-celibate LGBTQ persons and whether UMC ministers should perform gay weddings. Disagreement over these two questions reflects a larger set of diverging theological, cultural, and ecclesiological understandings. Yet it is debate over these two questions specifically that has led to the threat of a denominational schism.

While this issue is certainly the central issue in the crisis that the UMC is facing, it is not the only one. There are two other issues that I believe form important parts of the crisis that the UMC is experiencing and affect how the UMC responds to its debates over the role of LGBTQ persons in the church.

The first of these additional issues is the issue of the world-wide or global nature of the church. The UMC has members in four continents, several dozen countries, and many cultures and languages. Moreover, the number of members from outside the United States and their representation at General Conference has increased significantly in recent decades.

Members from outside the United States should by no means be blamed for the present debate over the status of LGBTQ persons, but it is fair to say that the process of resolving questions about the status of LGBTQ persons in the church, possible futures for the church, or any other issue is significantly complicated when people from multiple cultural, national, and linguistic backgrounds are involved in the decision-making process. Thus, another important aspect of the UMC’s present crisis is reflected in the questions: When shall we make decisions together across cultural, national, and linguistic boundaries, and when should decisions be made more locally? When we do make joint decisions, how should those decisions be made? The UMC’s current answers to these questions seem to many to be inadequate.

The final issue in the UMC’s crisis is the long-term decline in membership in the United States and associated impending decline in funding for the activities of the church. The United Methodist Church has famously been declining in its US membership, which is the largest bloc of its membership, since its formation in 1968. This long-term decline has heightened the stakes in the debate over the place of LGBTQ persons in the church for many Americans. For many, the debate is not just about justice, holiness, or ethics, but rather feels like it is about the very survival of the church.

Until recently, an increase in affluence among US members allowed the church to continue to expand its budget for joint denominational ministries, which is 99% funded by the US. Yet even prior to US churches and members withholding apportionments in protest of General Conference 2019, it was clear to observers that the UMC had reached peak apportionments, and the amount for joint mission and ministry would decline in the future. This factor of money also makes the debate over the role of LGBTQ persons much more complicated than it would be if the UMC were composed entirely of financially self-sufficient annual conferences, central conferences, and other bodies.

Thus, the UMC is facing a crisis over its future that is fueled by debates over the status of LGBTQ persons in the church, questions about cross-cultural and international decision-making, and fear and anxieties about declines in US membership and financial giving. It is perhaps worth noticing that all three components of this crisis are long-standing, even though the crisis seems to have come to a head following the special called General Conference earlier this year.

Having set forth the scope of the crisis that the UMC is facing, I will turn in subsequent posts to an assessment of how the UMC does on the factors impacting its ability to resolve the crisis.

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: The United Methodist Representational Problem, Part III

Today's piece is the second in a three-part series by Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Dean of Wesley Theological Seminary.

The previous part of this blog series discussed whether the UMC’s polity and election formulas are consistent with the UMC’s mission statement, which emphasizes making disciples.

This leads us to another problem with the representative system that only counts current members, but does not take into account potential. What about underrepresented people groups? The voices of the potential mission opportunities are largely absent at General Conference, which gives a disproportionate power to the status quo.

The Hispanic population in the United States is about 17% of the population (52 million) but comprises less than 1% of UM members. Asians-Americans are 6% of the U.S. population (about 21 million) and comprises only 1% of UM members, and both groups are large potential mission fields in the U.S. Yet there were only a handful of Hispanic and Asian-American delegates to General Conference. The same could be said for other underrepresented groups.

Every four years annual conferences elect delegates to General Conference. Usually mindful of the desire for racial and gender diversity, some annual conferences are more successful than others at achieving this aim. In the United States, the UMC is approximately 90% Caucasian at a time when ethnic minority populations are growing. The U.S. Census predicts that the U.S. will become majority minority by 2044. Generally speaking, Caucasians in the U.S. tend to be older, while people of color are younger.

We are already seeing this shift in the U.S. where African American, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American membership is growing in the UMC, while Caucasian membership is in decline.

There are many local churches that are islands of older Caucasians in the middle of black and brown neighborhoods. This reality is reflected in the power structure, where the majority of U.S. delegates to General Conference delegates are older and white, yet their churches are located in communities that are younger and ethnically diverse.

Although the United Methodist Church prides itself on being a global church, there is very little representation at General Conference from Asia and none from Latin America.

The Philippines had 50 delegates representing 5.8% of the total delegates. Sixty percent of the world’s population lives in Asia. The three most populated countries in the world, China, India and Indonesia (who together comprise 1/3 of the world’s population--approximately 2.7 billion people) have no voting delegates at General Conference.

Mexico, Central and South America, a region that is extremely important geopolitically to the United States and has a population of 625 million people, have no voting delegates. Can we call ourselves a global church when such large sectors of the world’s population are not represented in the United Methodist Church?

Within the United States, the Western Jurisdiction only comprises 3% of membership, and thus has 3% of the delegates to General Conference. However, the jurisdiction covers one-third of U.S. territory with vast natural and economic resources. Historically, Methodism arrived in the Eastern United States and slowly moved to the West. The Western Jurisdiction began as missionary annual conferences, and Alaska is still a missionary conference today.

Although the jurisdiction has proportionally small membership, the states of California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah have some of the highest populations of unchurched people among their collective 65 million inhabitants—many of them younger and ethnically diverse. The populations in these states are growing.

Losing this growth potential and mission field would be a huge loss to the United Methodist Church, but our current formula for representative democracy takes no account of the needs and potential of this population.

Our system favors conferences that have more current members, even though they are generally older, of a dominant ethnic group and male. These voices have disproportionate power and are not representative of the potential mission and future growth of the church.

The General Conference election formula is inconsistent with the mission statement of the UMC. A balanced and healthy church polity would have proportionate representation of those who are living out the mission statement with their prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness.

Here are five practical recommendations that could make the process for electing delegates more representational of the reality of the UMC constituency:

1.    Move the dates of the General Conference to a time when more young people are available to attend (i.e. taking into account the academic calendar).

2.    Support the young people’s call to mentor and encourage young people to become delegates to General Conference.

3.    Require an equal number of men and women from each annual conference as delegates to General Conference.

4.    Ask each annual conference to be accountable for financial commitments of the general church proportionate to the number of its General Conference delegates.

5.    Give greater voice to those leaders from vibrant ministries making new disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: The United Methodist Representational Problem, Part II

Today's piece is the second in a three-part series by Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Dean of Wesley Theological Seminary.

The first part of this blog discussed ways that the representation to annual and general conferences is not proportionate or representational of the body of United Methodists. This second part will discuss whether the polity and election formulas are consistent with the UMC’s mission statement.

The mission of The United Methodist Church is to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” The mission statement calls us to make disciples, yet representation to General Conference is awarded to those who make members. Are making a disciple and making a member the same?

In some cases, the process of making a disciple and making a member overlap, and becoming a member of a local church is a logical outcome of becoming a disciple. However, they are not always synonymous. In our churches there are disciples of Jesus Christ who are not members, and there are church members who may not be committed disciples.[1]

For example, in the church I attend there is a young man who is active, attends worship regularly, gives generously, participates in mission and outreach, yet has not joined the church. After General Conference in February he commented to me that: “it would be a hard sell to invite any of my friends to the United Methodist Church right now.” Recently there was a whole confirmation class in Omaha, Nebraska who decided to not join the church.

There are countless others in our churches who attend worship regularly, volunteer, give financially, yet are not members. I would call them disciples, but not members.

Inversely, there are other churches that focus on maintenance of current membership. Some members have been on the rolls for decades with very little involvement. Some are “Christmas and Easter Christians.” Unless there are extenuating circumstances that prevent them from attending (such as illness, physical mobility or proximity to church), I would say that they are members, but not necessarily disciples.

A church may invest in ministries that make disciples for the transformation of the world without making members. I would argue that these are actually some of our most fruitful investments. I point to the example of our denominationally-supported campus ministries that disciple college students who will be the future leaders of society. They may or may not choose to join a United Methodist Church, but will participate in a lifetime of Christian witness (whether in the UMC or not) and the transformation of the world through their professional vocations.

Other examples are our new church starts and Fresh Expressions that de-emphasize denominational connections. Studies have shown that young people today are less interested in supporting an institution, and so these ministries often do not use the cross and flame logo in their publicity. These ministries emphasize making disciples but not necessarily members.

Ministry is contextual, and each local church decides its own budget based on its own priorities. Some churches see themselves as the salt of the earth and place major emphasis on social ministries. Many have outreach programs to serve their community. Others are very missional and support international missionaries and VIM teams.

All churches would like to grow, but this depends on how one defines growth. Is numerical growth the best metric for measuring a healthy and effective church? Is it not possible to be engaged in healthy, effective ministry that transforms the world (or a least the surrounding community) and yet be a small membership church?

In his book, Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church, Reggie McNeal makes the case for using such metrics of church vitality as volunteer service hours. Conversely, there are many cases of members who do not uphold their vows to support the church with their prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.

Should the voice and vote of the member be valued more than the active seeker? Should the voice of the elderly be valued more than that of the young? An 80 year-old lifelong member has representation, but a young person in the youth group or a new disciple who is not a member cannot vote.

Inviting new people to participate in decision-making and have ownership is part of discipleship and one of the best way to retain young people and their needs and opinions should be given serious consideration.

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[1] For further discussion on the United Methodist mission statement see Dana Robert and Doug Tzan’s article “Is the UMC’s mission statement really Methodist?” https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/6818/is-the-united-methodist-churchs-mission-statement-really-methodist

Recommended Reading: Inter-Ethnic Strategy & Development Group Statement at Special Called General Conference 2019

Last week, Dana Robert raised the issue of women leaders as "collateral damage" in the current fights over LGBTQ ministry and marriage in The United Methodist Church. Yet women leaders are not the only potential collateral damage in this fight.

The Inter-Ethnic Strategy & Development Group, which represents the five racial ethnic caucuses in the United States, including over twenty distinct racial ethnic groups, issued a statement on the last day of General Conference. While the statement is worth reading in its entirety, one of the last points speaks directly to the issue of collateral damage in this fight:

"We celebrate a narrative of church growth within The UMC in the United States. As you deliberate, please remember that your decisions will have lasting fiscal ramifications for racial ethnic ministries, where membership is growing. Despite our struggle to overcome racism, nationalism, and effects of unjust systems such as immigration, poverty, and other social issue, racial ethnic membership has grown during the decades from 1996 to 2016." The statement then cites statistics first published on this blog.

The statement is clear: racial ethnic congregations in the US are growing, but church-dividing debates that drain necessary support money away from new ministries will hurt that growth. Many of the racial ethnic groups did not take positions on the plans before General Conference because of the diversity of opinion among their membership and because they recognized that unity was important for fashioning their shared future. While it should not detract from the primary damage done to LGBTQ+ people, people of color also stand to lose in this coming Methodist civil war.

Recommended Reading: Tom Lambrecht on Big Picture Status of United Methodism

Rev. Tom Lambrecht has written a three-piece series for Good News Magazine, explaining what recently released membership numbers from GCFA reveal about the "Big Picture Status of United Methodism." It this series, he examines trendlines for United Methodism around the world. Rev. Lambrecht's interpretations parallel and extend the interpretations of these numbers previously published on this blog. Here are the three pieces of his series:

Africa

United States

Europe and Asia

Making Sense of UMC Membership Numbers

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.

GCFA recently released delegate counts for the 2020 General Conference along with the membership and clergy numbers on which these delegate counts are based. UMNS put out a news story based on this membership data, and I’m sure many others will be combing through it. I wanted to share several observations not highlighted in the UMNS article.

1. The Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to be the great driver of membership growth in the UMC. The Congo Central Conference added nearly half a million members in the last four years, and total membership in the Congo Central Conference now stands at 3 million. This is further evidence that we need to be more specific when we talk about “African” church growth. Even more so than becoming a US-African denomination, the UMC is becoming a US-Congolese denomination.

2. The Congo Central Conference and West Africa Central Conference were the only two central conferences/jurisdictions showing numeric growth in the last four years. West Africa’s growth was driven by very strong membership growth in Liberia and good growth in Sierra Leone. Both countries are seeing the fruits of rebuilding after long civil wars. It’s significant that, although there were individual annual conferences here and there in other central conferences/jurisdictions that grew, overall the trend lines for the UMC were down around the world. Some of that may have been due to new reporting standards (see below), but it complicates the simplistic narrative of “the US and Europe are declining, and Africa and the Philippines are growing” and thus should lead United Methodist leaders to pay more attention to specific dynamics on the ground in various places around the world.

3. This was the first time that membership numbers (and therefore delegates) outside the US were based off of local congregation records instead of numbers provided by annual conference as a whole. Though not without problems, this approach is a more accurate reporting fashion. There was a lot of curiosity as to how this new approach would affect the overall membership numbers, especially in Africa. There were places where the numbers seem to have declined because of this new procedure (East Africa, South Mozambique), but overall the African numbers proved fairly consistent with past figures. Interestingly, there was a much larger drop in the numbers from the Philippines. The membership figures under the new system were 1/3 lower than under the old. My sources tell me this is more reflective of the change in reporting rather than any large defections from the Filipino UMC, but more research could be done.

4. According to these figures, the denomination has 12.5 million members and 66 active bishops serving 66 episcopal areas. Still, not all episcopal areas are the same. The four largest episcopal areas are all in Africa (North Katanga with 1.23 million members, South Katanga with 985,000, Cote d’Ivoire with 677,000, and East Congo with 447,000). Over 1/3 of United Methodists live in just these four episcopal areas. Over 1 in 12 United Methodists worldwide lives in the North Katanga episcopal area alone.

5. The second smallest episcopal area membership-wise is also in Africa. The Eastern Angola episcopal area has a mere 7500 members in it. It is the only one of the five smallest episcopal areas not in Europe. I’m sure there are political/ethnic/historical reasons why the Eastern Angola episcopal area exists, and I don’t expect it to be eliminated. Nevertheless, the discrepancies between it and the largest episcopal areas in Africa indicate some of the challenges the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters faces as it tries to decide where to put four new African bishops. These most recent membership figures will surely feed into that process. It will be interesting to see what comes out.

American UMC decline is a white people problem

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 if I told you that United Methodist membership in the US was growing?

You'd tell me that I was crazy. The narrative of decline is and has been for years one of the strongest narratives in The United Methodist Church in the US. Many words have been spent on trying to make theological and organizational sense of this trend and/or coming up with ways to reverse it.

Yet the UMC has been growing in members in the US over the past two decades, just not among white people. As the table below shows, since 1996, the number of Asian-American and Pacific Islanders has doubled, the number of Hispanics has grown by two-thirds, the number of African-Americans has grown by a third, and the number of Native Americans by a quarter.

Black membership:
1996 - 319,165; 2000 - 382,243; 2004 - 423,456; 2008 - 432,354; 2016 - 438,343
Percent change between 1996 and 2016: +37%

Hispanic membership:
1996 - 42,797; 2000 - 40,652; 2004 - 55,143; 2008 - 61,573; 2016 - 76,332
Percent change between 1996 and 2016: +78%

Asian-American membership:
1996 - 45,271; 2000 - 56,143; 2004 - 73,557; 2008 - 81,382; 2016 - 93,211
Percent change between 1996 and 2016: +106%

Pacific Islander membership:
1996 - 7,220; 2000 - 8,245; 2004 - 12,489; 2008 - 11,378; 2016 - 14,520
Percent change between 1996 and 2016: +101%

Native American membership:
1996 - 17,457; 2000 - 18,766; 2004 - 21,760; 2008 - 22,665; 2016 - 21,440
Percent change between 1996 and 2016: +23%

White membership:
1996 - 8,611,902; 2000 - 7,902,305; 2004 - 7,667,201; 2008 - 7,386,067; 2016 - 6,460,538
Percent change between 1996 and 2016: -21%

The UMC has experienced significant overall membership declines over the past two decades, but these have come entirely from the net loss of white members. Thus, it is fair to say that the UMC in the US does not have a problem with numeric decline. It has a problem with white numeric decline.

Of course, since the UMC is one of the whitest denominations in America, this loss of white membership has meant that overall American United Methodist numbers have gone down. While the UMC has added non-white members, it has not been at a sufficient rate to make up for the loss of white members. This is perhaps not surprising, given the UMC's difficulties as a predominantly white institution in reaching out to people of color (as described here, here, and here).

While this finding does not perhaps change where the denomination is at in terms of membership, money, or trend lines, it should significantly alter how we think about and respond to membership loss in the UMC in the US. Many on both sides of the theological spectrum often cast numeric decline as a sign that the UMC has lost its way and no longer resonates with its context. This finding, however, shows that the UMC does have a message that resonates with at least some segments of its context. This finding should encourage United Methodists to ask questions such as the following:

How can we support, encourage, and expand the United Methodist growth that is already happening among people of color? What changes to the United Methodist system can empower leaders of color to even more effectively spread the gospel? This process will require white United Methodists to listen to and be led by their sisters and brothers of color.

What lessons can minority United Methodists teach their white brothers and sisters about United Methodism and how to be effective evangelists? How can people of color serve as examples for white United Methodists? This process will require white United Methodists to be willing to learn from their sisters and brothers of color.

How do white anxieties about the decline of white, American United Methodism serve to cloud and confuse denominational thinking about its future in the US? Robert P. Jones' recent book, The End of White Christian America, is certain to be relevant here as a resource for thinking about how white, Christian Americans in general have responded to their loss of cultural privilege. This process will require white United Methodists to acknowledge their whiteness and repent of the ways in which their thinking has been shaped by race and not the gospel.

If white American United Methodists are willing to do the difficult and humble work described above, perhaps they, too, could experience some of the growth their brothers and sisters of colors have been experiencing for decades.

Misunderstanding Our Mission, Part 1

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.

The denominational mission statement for The United Methodist Church is "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world." This mission statement, like most good mission statements, provides focus for a diverse organization while still allowing for a variety of interpretations.

Yet there's one common interpretation of this mission statement that is, I think, quite problematic despite being perhaps the default understanding of the mission statement (at least among Americans). I think when many United Methodists hear "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world," what they really hear is "recruiting church members to continue church programming." This understanding is problematic for two reasons.

First, there is the equation of being a disciple of Jesus Christ with holding church membership. The first is an active process of following Jesus and drawing nearer to him in love. The second is a static state generated by saying a couple of words one Sunday.

There are certainly many who are not members of The United Methodist Church (and perhaps not formal members of any church) who are still true disciples of Jesus Christ. Conversely, there are also certainly many who are members of United Methodist churches but who are not seeking with their whole heart to follow Jesus, who have the form of holiness, but not the power thereof.

This understanding of making disciples means, first of all, that we pay insufficient attention to discipleship and spiritual formation within our churches. As long as people come occasionally and perhaps donate some to the church’s budget, we are content and ask no questions about how it is with their souls. We lose the central Wesleyan conviction in sanctification if we do not see disciple-making as an on-going process that applies to all in the church.

If we are focused merely on whether people are coming to our churches rather than how they are growing because of their church membership, then we become focused on institutional maintenance, not spiritual vitality, an all-too-common malady especially in the United States. American United Methodists are very concerned about membership numbers as a way, not of drawing more people closer to God, but of preserving our prestige, our budgets, and our buildings.

Even worse, some churches brag about continued growth in members despite dramatic drop-offs in worship attendance. I don’t want to equate worship attendance with discipleship, either, because being a true disciple involves much more than showing up somewhere for an hour Sunday morning, but we can assume that most who are not showing up on Sunday are not engaged in United Methodist discipleship at other points in the week, either.

Not only does this understanding of making disciples distort how we think of church members, but it distorts how we think of evangelism, too. Evangelism from such a perspective is not about an encounter with the life-transforming power of Jesus Christ but about the deployment of new and more sophisticated marketing and business tools for recruiting organization members or, worse yet, customers.

Mission, too, is misunderstood from this perspective. Mission becomes not something we do because we are disciples of Jesus, seeking to pour ourselves out in love to the world as he did, but something we do just to attract new members. Our mission becomes clouded with ulterior motives and we are will to accept coercive strategies for distributing aid and assistance that aim to gain us members but fail to reflect our basic Wesleyan beliefs in free grace.

It might be sad but somewhat excusable if this sort of misunderstanding were common among the people in the pews. Yet, this misunderstanding reaches to the highest levels of the denomination and is reflected in some of our most important initiatives. As I have written elsewhere, the focus on Vital Congregations and dashboard indicators in the American United Methodist Church is largely a focus on membership numbers and not on discipleship measures.

There are some of the dashboard indicators that do correlate with discipleship, especially those focused on small group membership and mission trip participation, but even the best of the dashboard metrics count members rather than asking anything about the spiritual quality of those members’ relationships with Jesus. Admittedly, it is much easier to count members than to assess spiritual impact, but that’s not necessarily a sufficient excuse for focusing on numbers only. Moreover, to the main point of this article, when we count numbers rather than assess spiritual impact, we send a sign that the former is important and the latter is not.

An approach to our mission that conflates disciple-making with member-recruitment is not only deeply spiritually misguided, it’s also not terribly effective in the long haul. If The United Methodist Church is only a membership organization, then inevitably it must compete with other groups who can also offer community service, friendship, social prominence, political action, or any of the other non-religious benefits to church membership. The history of capitalism teaches us, too, that almost all organizations are eventually outcompeted. If we are a membership organization only, then we can expect our decline to continue.

If, however, The United Methodist Church is a place where people can be supported in the hard but life-changing work of following Jesus, a place for people to experience the affirming, transforming power of the Holy Spirit, a place where people can draw closer to the God that loves them, that is something people can’t get elsewhere and will always have staying power.