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.
Dedicated to fostering conversations about the global nature of The United Methodist Church
Showing posts with label geography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geography. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2021
Monday, July 27, 2020
Resource: Map of the UMC and affiliated denominations
Anyone looking at a map of the global presence of The United Methodist Church will notice some significant grey areas, especially in Latin America and Asia. The UMC does not have annual conferences in these areas. Instead, it has connections to affiliated Methodist denominations here and elsewhere throughout the world. The UMC maintains ongoing relationships with these other
denominations, especially through Global Ministries and the Council of
Bishops.
In most cases, these denominations have historical ties to the UMC and its predecessors but became autonomous, mostly in the 1960s. In some instances, formerly Methodist or EUB churches have merged with other denominations to form united or uniting churches. Four of these affiliated Methodist denominations have a special status as concordat churches. There are also many Methodist churches who are members of the World Methodist Council but are not affiliated denominations of the UMC.
What follows is a map of the UMC presence (including current mission initiatives), concordat denominations, other affiliated Methodist denominations, and affiliated united denominations. It offers another perspective on the global extent of the UMC.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Robert Harman: Response to “When It Comes to Geography, Mission Trumps Polity”
Today's post is by Robert J. Harman. Rev. Harman is a mission executive retired from the General Board of Global Ministries.
David Scott’s post earlier this week discussed the spread of Zimbabwean United Methodist congregations outside of Zimbabwe. The phenomenon of emerging churches sharing the gospel across cultural, ecclesiastical and national boundaries has been well established in recent years.
But questions persist. Just how secure is this venture in extending the global witness of the church? Will the forces of globalization that drive this trend survive the current resurgence of nationalism? How will the adoption of the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation impact the structural configuration and support systems needed to nurture this pattern of United Methodist witness? Can the UMC learn from mistakes of the past how to gracefully appropriate this trend?
The time has long passed since the Methodist Church charged its mission board with authorizing the origins of this kind of missionary activity by certifying the credentials of ministers sent from conferences beyond the US to serve appointments within the US conferences of the denomination.
Soon the migration of people called Methodist from churches beyond the jurisdiction of the missionaries of the board of missions began populating neighborhoods beyond the reach of existing Methodist congregations and presented a whole new reality for which disciplinary provisions were never written. But the notion that this activity could be regulated by recognizing clergy credentials of those sent by Methodist bodies beyond the US is what receiving conferences in the US-based UMC held onto for dear life.
The first serious challenge came from the Korean Methodist Church, whose pastors accompanied their migrating members to the US and established congregations with or without the blessing of either the KMC or UMC. Fearing ultimate financial liability for supporting the arriving KMC pastors, conferences established strict membership criteria for expat clergy including educational achievement that matched standards in place for existing clergy members, English language skills, and for their churches, an arbitrary sustainable congregational size and organizational structure that complied with the UMC discipline, not the KMC discipline.
Some of the Korean ministers played by these rules and brought their churches into UMC annual conference membership. Only when superintendents made their charge conference rounds did they discover that the first-generation Korean United Methodist Churches were United Methodist in name only. Their strong ties to the KMC were evident in their parish organizational structure and cultural support, while their linkage to other churches in their districts were non-existent.
Moreover, many immigrant Methodist pastors and congregations chose to remain independent of the UMC and establish a mission relationship to their homeland sending church bodies. This was true for fledgling groups from Korea, Japan, China, the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America. A similar pattern prevailed in European conferences, which generally promoted a fraternal relationship that respected mutual independence before cultivating direct connectional ties.
In most major urban population centers this pattern prevails. Immigrant congregations have distinct cultural needs that require nurturing by leadership from within the culture and connected to the denominational support systems that will maintain their identity and keep them viable throughout a first generational transition. Not until a second generation of members and clergy begin to influence congregational life will consideration of external affairs / relationships become evident. Still, the threat from outside the established community, whether from geographically based-judicatory appeals or adherents attracted by virtual forms of communication, will be controlled from within.
That admonition is especially directed toward factions within the UMC that will soon be faced with the challenge of sorting out which branches will claim each other going forward from the proposed separation protocol. I pray that a new global vision of church will prevail and a threatened Balkanization of the emerging expressions of Methodism can be avoided.
David Scott’s post earlier this week discussed the spread of Zimbabwean United Methodist congregations outside of Zimbabwe. The phenomenon of emerging churches sharing the gospel across cultural, ecclesiastical and national boundaries has been well established in recent years.
But questions persist. Just how secure is this venture in extending the global witness of the church? Will the forces of globalization that drive this trend survive the current resurgence of nationalism? How will the adoption of the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation impact the structural configuration and support systems needed to nurture this pattern of United Methodist witness? Can the UMC learn from mistakes of the past how to gracefully appropriate this trend?
The time has long passed since the Methodist Church charged its mission board with authorizing the origins of this kind of missionary activity by certifying the credentials of ministers sent from conferences beyond the US to serve appointments within the US conferences of the denomination.
Soon the migration of people called Methodist from churches beyond the jurisdiction of the missionaries of the board of missions began populating neighborhoods beyond the reach of existing Methodist congregations and presented a whole new reality for which disciplinary provisions were never written. But the notion that this activity could be regulated by recognizing clergy credentials of those sent by Methodist bodies beyond the US is what receiving conferences in the US-based UMC held onto for dear life.
The first serious challenge came from the Korean Methodist Church, whose pastors accompanied their migrating members to the US and established congregations with or without the blessing of either the KMC or UMC. Fearing ultimate financial liability for supporting the arriving KMC pastors, conferences established strict membership criteria for expat clergy including educational achievement that matched standards in place for existing clergy members, English language skills, and for their churches, an arbitrary sustainable congregational size and organizational structure that complied with the UMC discipline, not the KMC discipline.
Some of the Korean ministers played by these rules and brought their churches into UMC annual conference membership. Only when superintendents made their charge conference rounds did they discover that the first-generation Korean United Methodist Churches were United Methodist in name only. Their strong ties to the KMC were evident in their parish organizational structure and cultural support, while their linkage to other churches in their districts were non-existent.
Moreover, many immigrant Methodist pastors and congregations chose to remain independent of the UMC and establish a mission relationship to their homeland sending church bodies. This was true for fledgling groups from Korea, Japan, China, the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America. A similar pattern prevailed in European conferences, which generally promoted a fraternal relationship that respected mutual independence before cultivating direct connectional ties.
In most major urban population centers this pattern prevails. Immigrant congregations have distinct cultural needs that require nurturing by leadership from within the culture and connected to the denominational support systems that will maintain their identity and keep them viable throughout a first generational transition. Not until a second generation of members and clergy begin to influence congregational life will consideration of external affairs / relationships become evident. Still, the threat from outside the established community, whether from geographically based-judicatory appeals or adherents attracted by virtual forms of communication, will be controlled from within.
So, Methodism today has a multivariate formation within its global community that defies traditional analysis by ecclesiastical, national and cultural standards. We sometimes write off that which is unmanageable with the jargon “mission is messy.” But it is truly beautiful and a blessing when church bodies can cultivate rather than insist on capturing each expression of culturally distinct faith communities that surfaces in our respective domains.
Monday, May 18, 2020
When It Comes to Geography, Mission Trumps Polity
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.
Nearly two months ago, United Methodist News Service posted a story written before the pandemic about diaspora ministry for Zimbabwean United Methodists. I doubt the story got much traction, as it was published as the pandemic was really ramping up, but it is significant, and in ways that surprisingly end up being related to the pandemic.
Briefly, the UMNS piece describes how the Zimbabwe Episcopal Area provides spiritual and religious care for Zimbabwean United Methodists who have migrated. In many cases, this includes starting congregations with appointed pastors from Zimbabwe. The article mentions congregations of Zimbabwean United Methodists in England, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.
Moreover, while it's not discussed in the article, Zimbabweans are not alone in this trend. Filipinos, for instance, have United Methodist congregations in the United Arab Emirates as well. Other national branches of The United Methodist Church have organized and sometimes appointed clergy to congregations that lie outside the geographic boundaries of their nations. These congregations are primarily created to serve migrants, though occasionally others will join as well.
These modern migrants forming new congregations have long historical precedent. Methodist migrants (and migrants from many other religious traditions) have carried their faith and their religious identities with them and started new religious groups in their new homes. Indeed, the first Methodist small groups and worship services in many places in the world were organized not by missionaries but by migrants.
The one catch in this normal and wide-spread practice is that it is not provided for in our current United Methodist polity. UMC polity assumes a geographically-based system of organization with clear boundaries to those geographical units. Annual conferences, episcopal areas, and jurisdictional and central conferences are all presumed to cover designated geographic areas and to focus their ministries within those areas. There is no provision for officially-recognized congregations beyond those boundaries. Anything outside those areas is theoretically supposed to be organized as a mission of the church, not a part of the annual conference structure.
These restrictions don't come from nowhere. There are thorny ecclesiological, missional, polity, and ecumenical
questions involved in the spread of a denomination (or branch thereof)
to new areas, especially where other branches of that same or closely-related
denominations exist (as the World Methodist Council has addressed). Yet, geographic restrictions on ministry are just not how the church works, and probably not how it should.
One might argue that the BOD's current failure to recognize or account for the existence of migrant congregations outside of home episcopal areas is another instance of the US-centric nature of the document. The United States is used to being a country of in-migration, but United Methodists in many places live in countries of out-migration, and the BOD take on such migrant congregations would be very different written from their perspective.
Nevertheless, the coronavirus pandemic is giving some in the United States a taste of the tricky questions that come up with the blurring of geographic boundaries in the church. Previously, because of the physical nature of most worship services, most churches focused their ministries on geographically proximate persons. Now, with churches online because of the pandemic, that dramatically raises the possibility for people to "attend" churches that are not geographically proximate.
This raises a series of questions for pastors and other church leaders: What if parishioners from a pastor's former and church now want to switch from their home church to worship virtually at the pastor's new, geographically distant church? If new people start worshipping virtually with a congregation they do not live nearby, what should happen once meeting restrictions are relaxed? Should they be encouraged to find an in-person church near them, or should they continue to worship virtually with the distant church? Should a church organize small groups in another state? Does it make a difference if the geographically-distant followers come from the same denominational background, a different denominational background, or an unchurched background?
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Resource: More world Methodist maps
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.
A few weeks ago, I published links indicating the presence of various World Methodist Council member denominations in countries around the world. Now, with some additional research (using the World Christian Database, the World Methodist Council website, and denominational websites), I have been able to compile maps showing total Methodist/Wesleyan membership by country and Methodism/Wesleyanism as a percentage of each country's population. Those maps are below.
First, a couple of caveats: I did not include the membership of United/Uniting denominations that are part of the World Methodist Council. I did not think it was fair to include all members as "Methodist" when these churches were formed out of the mergers of many Protestant traditions. Also, data is never perfect, and the data these maps are based on may not be perfect, especially in the case of smaller countries or countries with small Methodist/Wesleyan presence. In particular, I was not able to get country-level data for The Wesleyan Church, the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, the Methodist Church of the Caribbean and Americas, and the Korean Methodist Church outside Korea directly from those denominations' websites, so I am relying on the less accurate WCD data for them.
Overall, these maps indicate that Methodism/Wesleyanism's areas of greatest strength are the United States, coastal West Africa, South Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, southern Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of the Pacific. Methodism/Wesleyanism has a moderate presence in Latin America, south Asia, and southeast Asia. It is weak in Europe and central Asia. It is mostly non-existent in the Muslim world.
Methodist/Wesleyan Membership Totals
Note that those countries with large Methodist populations have a large total population and/or a large percentage of the population that is Methodist.
The United States has by far the largest number of Methodists/Wesleyans. 6 of the top 10 countries with the most Methodists/Wesleyans are African.
The top 10 countries with the largest Methodist populations are as follows:
1. The United States of America (13,689,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
2. Nigeria (3,304,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
3. India (3,154,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
4. Democratic Republic of Congo (2,910,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
5. South Korea (2,214,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
6. South Africa (1,676,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
7. Ghana (900,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
8. Cote d'Ivoire (688,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
9. Kenya (631,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
10. Brazil (412,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
Methodism/Wesleyanism as a Percentage of the Population
Most of the countries with the highest percentage of Methodists/Wesleyans in the population are small island nations in the Caribbean or Pacific with low overall populations. Liberia is the non-island nation with the highest percentage of its population that are Methodist/Wesleyan (6.9%), and it does not make the top ten. 6 of the top 10 most Methodist non-island nations are African.
Top 10 countries with the highest Methodist percentage of the population
1. Tonga (46.1% Methodist/Wesleyan)
2. Fiji (30.5% Methodist/Wesleyan)
3. Samoa (24.4% Methodist/Wesleyan)
4. St. Kitts and Nevis (22.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
5. St. Vincent and the Grenadines (17.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
6. Anguilla (16.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
7. Bermuda (15.4% Methodist/Wesleyan)
8. American Samoa (14.9% Methodist/Wesleyan)
9. Turks and Caicos (14.7% Methodist/Wesleyan)
10. Antigua and Barbuda (9.7% Methodist/Wesleyan)
Top 10 non-island countries with the highest Methodist percentage of the population
1. Liberia (6.9% Methodist/Wesleyan)
2. Sierra Leone (5.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
3. South Korea (4.3% Methodist/Wesleyan)
4. The United States of America (4.2% Methodist/Wesleyan)
5. Belize (3.5 % Methodist/Wesleyan)
6. Democratic Republic of Congo (3.5% Methodist/Wesleyan)
7. Ghana (3.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
8. South Africa (2.9% Methodist/Wesleyan)
9. Guyana (2.8% Methodist/Wesleyan)
10. Cote d'Ivoire (2.8% Methodist/Wesleyan)
Continental totals
Finally, for those who are interested in the total membership, including United/Uniting churches, of World Methodist Council bodies broken out by continent, here's a map of that:
A few weeks ago, I published links indicating the presence of various World Methodist Council member denominations in countries around the world. Now, with some additional research (using the World Christian Database, the World Methodist Council website, and denominational websites), I have been able to compile maps showing total Methodist/Wesleyan membership by country and Methodism/Wesleyanism as a percentage of each country's population. Those maps are below.
First, a couple of caveats: I did not include the membership of United/Uniting denominations that are part of the World Methodist Council. I did not think it was fair to include all members as "Methodist" when these churches were formed out of the mergers of many Protestant traditions. Also, data is never perfect, and the data these maps are based on may not be perfect, especially in the case of smaller countries or countries with small Methodist/Wesleyan presence. In particular, I was not able to get country-level data for The Wesleyan Church, the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, the Methodist Church of the Caribbean and Americas, and the Korean Methodist Church outside Korea directly from those denominations' websites, so I am relying on the less accurate WCD data for them.
Overall, these maps indicate that Methodism/Wesleyanism's areas of greatest strength are the United States, coastal West Africa, South Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, southern Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of the Pacific. Methodism/Wesleyanism has a moderate presence in Latin America, south Asia, and southeast Asia. It is weak in Europe and central Asia. It is mostly non-existent in the Muslim world.
Methodist/Wesleyan Membership Totals
Note that those countries with large Methodist populations have a large total population and/or a large percentage of the population that is Methodist.
The United States has by far the largest number of Methodists/Wesleyans. 6 of the top 10 countries with the most Methodists/Wesleyans are African.
The top 10 countries with the largest Methodist populations are as follows:
1. The United States of America (13,689,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
2. Nigeria (3,304,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
3. India (3,154,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
4. Democratic Republic of Congo (2,910,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
5. South Korea (2,214,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
6. South Africa (1,676,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
7. Ghana (900,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
8. Cote d'Ivoire (688,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
9. Kenya (631,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
10. Brazil (412,000 Methodists/Wesleyans)
Methodism/Wesleyanism as a Percentage of the Population
Most of the countries with the highest percentage of Methodists/Wesleyans in the population are small island nations in the Caribbean or Pacific with low overall populations. Liberia is the non-island nation with the highest percentage of its population that are Methodist/Wesleyan (6.9%), and it does not make the top ten. 6 of the top 10 most Methodist non-island nations are African.
Top 10 countries with the highest Methodist percentage of the population
1. Tonga (46.1% Methodist/Wesleyan)
2. Fiji (30.5% Methodist/Wesleyan)
3. Samoa (24.4% Methodist/Wesleyan)
4. St. Kitts and Nevis (22.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
5. St. Vincent and the Grenadines (17.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
6. Anguilla (16.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
7. Bermuda (15.4% Methodist/Wesleyan)
8. American Samoa (14.9% Methodist/Wesleyan)
9. Turks and Caicos (14.7% Methodist/Wesleyan)
10. Antigua and Barbuda (9.7% Methodist/Wesleyan)
Top 10 non-island countries with the highest Methodist percentage of the population
1. Liberia (6.9% Methodist/Wesleyan)
2. Sierra Leone (5.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
3. South Korea (4.3% Methodist/Wesleyan)
4. The United States of America (4.2% Methodist/Wesleyan)
5. Belize (3.5 % Methodist/Wesleyan)
6. Democratic Republic of Congo (3.5% Methodist/Wesleyan)
7. Ghana (3.0% Methodist/Wesleyan)
8. South Africa (2.9% Methodist/Wesleyan)
9. Guyana (2.8% Methodist/Wesleyan)
10. Cote d'Ivoire (2.8% Methodist/Wesleyan)
Continental totals
Finally, for those who are interested in the total membership, including United/Uniting churches, of World Methodist Council bodies broken out by continent, here's a map of that:
Friday, February 23, 2018
Analysis of the locations of World Methodist Council denominations
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.
Earlier this week, I posted a series of maps indicating which World Methodist Council (WMC) member denominations have churches in which countries or territories. As indicated in that post, there are a few disclaimers: the data’s not perfect; it neglects Korean Methodist Church mission; it only shows presence, not relative membership; and it’s hard to decide whether to classify some territories separately from their ruling country. Nevertheless, it’s still possible to draw several conclusions about WMC member denominations and thus the Wesleyan/Methodist movement as a whole from this data.
First, a word on the types of denominations that are part of the WMC may be useful. I have separated WMC member denominations into either national and international bodies.
National bodies are of three types:
1. Autonomous churches formerly affiliated with either British or American Methodism (located in Oceania, Asia, Africa, and especially Latin America)
2. A few autonomous churches recently started in Latin American independently of British or American Methodists
3. United/Uniting denominations incorporating Methodist churches at one point affiliated with British Methodists or the Evangelical United Brethren (in Oceania, Asia, Africa, and Europe)
International bodies are of four types:
1. The Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) and the Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas (MCCA) are regional denominations, as indicated in their names.
2. There are three historically African-American churches that now including branches in Africa, the Caribbean, South America, India, and Europe (mostly the UK). These are the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (A.M.E. Zion) Church, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church.
3. The United Methodist Church is a semi-global denomination present in some but not all areas of the world, whose presence/absence was shaped by a series of autonomy departures, mostly in the 60s and 70s.
4. There are three global holiness denominations, located on all continents with no or little history of autonomous separations; therefore, these three are the most widely spread. These are the Church of the Nazarene, The Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church.
The Korean Methodist Church may deserve to be a fifth type of international church. I know they have member congregations in the United States that are fully integrated into their system of governance. I do not know what the relationships between the parent denomination and newly planted mission churches in other countries are like.
Now, some conclusions drawn by looking at the country-level data:
1. There is a wide range in terms of Wesleyan/Methodist denominational presence in particular countries, from a hundred or fewer members to a million or more members in one denomination in one particular country.
2. Countries with no Wesleyan Methodist presence are mostly Muslim and/or have a small population. This finding is not particularly surprising, as the difficulties in prompting Muslim conversions and the restrictions on religion in Muslim-majority countries are well-documented, and one might reasonably expect small population countries to be less able to support a variety of denominations.
3. Countries with a lot of Wesleyan/Methodist denominations are mostly former parts of the British or US empires. 80% of those countries with 5+ denominations present and all of those countries with 7-8 denominations present are former parts of the British or US empires. (The US empire was less extensive and less formal than the British Empire, but I’m including here the US Virgin Islands, Haiti, the Philippines, and Liberia, all of which were controlled at times by Americans or American settlers.) Again, given the extensive literature on the relationship between mission and empire, especially Protestant mission and the British Empire, this finding is not particularly surprising.
4. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo, and Mozambique stand out as particularly receptive to Wesleyan/Methodist denominations, despite lacking an Anglo-American colonial past. All three countries have 6 WMC member denominations. Cote d’Ivoire has 5 WMC member denominations and no Anglo-American colonialism, which is also notable. While all four countries have neighbors with British colonial pasts, more research into why these countries in particular have been receptive to Wesleyan/Methodist traditions would be welcome.
5. Despite the Wesleyan/Methodist movement’s roots in European Pietism and European Enlightenment thought, Europe is not terribly receptive to Wesleyan/Methodist denominations. Most European countries (other than the United Kingdom) have 1-3 WMC member denominations, and their memberships are small. Strong state churches, historic restrictions on religious freedom, and current secularization are all part of this story, but it is worth asking whether there are any other factors at play here.
6. The Wesleyan/Methodist movement is stronger in Latin America than Europe. In most Latin American countries, autonomous Methodist churches and the three holiness churches all have a presence. While many are small, membership is often higher than that in similarly-sized European countries. Latin America shares some cultural history with Europe. It, too, has had dominant state (Catholic) churches and historic religious restrictions. Given these similarities, the question then becomes, why has Wesleyanism/Methodism done better in Latin American than Europe?
7. Southeast Asia is one of the hot new mission fields for Wesleyan/Methodist work, attracting both UMC and holiness mission work. Thailand and Cambodia have new mission work from four denominations, Myanmar has new mission work from three denominations, and Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia have all attracted two denominations in recent years. All of these new branches of Wesleyanism/Methodism are currently small but growing. More work needs to be done on why Southeast Asia has been such a focus for Wesleyan/Methodist growth in recent years.
Finally, it is worth noting that competition may or may not be good for Wesleyans/Methodists. According to Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, the presence of large numbers of denominations may provide options for religious consumers and/or indicate a de-regulated religious market. They argue that both these factors generally promote high levels of religious affiliation. Thus, competition may be good for membership. Nevertheless, competition also involves duplication of effort, confusion among members and potential converts, conflicts over access to resources, and a potential failure to embody the unity of Christ. Thus, while data shows where WMC member denominations are and are not located, it cannot determine whether these patterns of presence are ultimately good or bad.
Earlier this week, I posted a series of maps indicating which World Methodist Council (WMC) member denominations have churches in which countries or territories. As indicated in that post, there are a few disclaimers: the data’s not perfect; it neglects Korean Methodist Church mission; it only shows presence, not relative membership; and it’s hard to decide whether to classify some territories separately from their ruling country. Nevertheless, it’s still possible to draw several conclusions about WMC member denominations and thus the Wesleyan/Methodist movement as a whole from this data.
First, a word on the types of denominations that are part of the WMC may be useful. I have separated WMC member denominations into either national and international bodies.
National bodies are of three types:
1. Autonomous churches formerly affiliated with either British or American Methodism (located in Oceania, Asia, Africa, and especially Latin America)
2. A few autonomous churches recently started in Latin American independently of British or American Methodists
3. United/Uniting denominations incorporating Methodist churches at one point affiliated with British Methodists or the Evangelical United Brethren (in Oceania, Asia, Africa, and Europe)
International bodies are of four types:
1. The Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) and the Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas (MCCA) are regional denominations, as indicated in their names.
2. There are three historically African-American churches that now including branches in Africa, the Caribbean, South America, India, and Europe (mostly the UK). These are the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (A.M.E. Zion) Church, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church.
3. The United Methodist Church is a semi-global denomination present in some but not all areas of the world, whose presence/absence was shaped by a series of autonomy departures, mostly in the 60s and 70s.
4. There are three global holiness denominations, located on all continents with no or little history of autonomous separations; therefore, these three are the most widely spread. These are the Church of the Nazarene, The Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church.
The Korean Methodist Church may deserve to be a fifth type of international church. I know they have member congregations in the United States that are fully integrated into their system of governance. I do not know what the relationships between the parent denomination and newly planted mission churches in other countries are like.
Now, some conclusions drawn by looking at the country-level data:
1. There is a wide range in terms of Wesleyan/Methodist denominational presence in particular countries, from a hundred or fewer members to a million or more members in one denomination in one particular country.
2. Countries with no Wesleyan Methodist presence are mostly Muslim and/or have a small population. This finding is not particularly surprising, as the difficulties in prompting Muslim conversions and the restrictions on religion in Muslim-majority countries are well-documented, and one might reasonably expect small population countries to be less able to support a variety of denominations.
3. Countries with a lot of Wesleyan/Methodist denominations are mostly former parts of the British or US empires. 80% of those countries with 5+ denominations present and all of those countries with 7-8 denominations present are former parts of the British or US empires. (The US empire was less extensive and less formal than the British Empire, but I’m including here the US Virgin Islands, Haiti, the Philippines, and Liberia, all of which were controlled at times by Americans or American settlers.) Again, given the extensive literature on the relationship between mission and empire, especially Protestant mission and the British Empire, this finding is not particularly surprising.
4. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo, and Mozambique stand out as particularly receptive to Wesleyan/Methodist denominations, despite lacking an Anglo-American colonial past. All three countries have 6 WMC member denominations. Cote d’Ivoire has 5 WMC member denominations and no Anglo-American colonialism, which is also notable. While all four countries have neighbors with British colonial pasts, more research into why these countries in particular have been receptive to Wesleyan/Methodist traditions would be welcome.
5. Despite the Wesleyan/Methodist movement’s roots in European Pietism and European Enlightenment thought, Europe is not terribly receptive to Wesleyan/Methodist denominations. Most European countries (other than the United Kingdom) have 1-3 WMC member denominations, and their memberships are small. Strong state churches, historic restrictions on religious freedom, and current secularization are all part of this story, but it is worth asking whether there are any other factors at play here.
6. The Wesleyan/Methodist movement is stronger in Latin America than Europe. In most Latin American countries, autonomous Methodist churches and the three holiness churches all have a presence. While many are small, membership is often higher than that in similarly-sized European countries. Latin America shares some cultural history with Europe. It, too, has had dominant state (Catholic) churches and historic religious restrictions. Given these similarities, the question then becomes, why has Wesleyanism/Methodism done better in Latin American than Europe?
7. Southeast Asia is one of the hot new mission fields for Wesleyan/Methodist work, attracting both UMC and holiness mission work. Thailand and Cambodia have new mission work from four denominations, Myanmar has new mission work from three denominations, and Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia have all attracted two denominations in recent years. All of these new branches of Wesleyanism/Methodism are currently small but growing. More work needs to be done on why Southeast Asia has been such a focus for Wesleyan/Methodist growth in recent years.
Finally, it is worth noting that competition may or may not be good for Wesleyans/Methodists. According to Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, the presence of large numbers of denominations may provide options for religious consumers and/or indicate a de-regulated religious market. They argue that both these factors generally promote high levels of religious affiliation. Thus, competition may be good for membership. Nevertheless, competition also involves duplication of effort, confusion among members and potential converts, conflicts over access to resources, and a potential failure to embody the unity of Christ. Thus, while data shows where WMC member denominations are and are not located, it cannot determine whether these patterns of presence are ultimately good or bad.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Resource: Maps of locations of World Methodist Council denominations
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.
As a research aid and an aid to thinking about the shape of the global Wesleyan/Methodist movement, I have compiled maps indicating the presence of member denominations of the World Methodist Council, the ecumenical body bringing together over 70 Methodist, Wesleyan, and related United/Uniting denominations. The WMC does not include all Methodist/Wesleyan denominations everywhere, but its members include the vast majority of Methodist/Wesleyan Christians.
Using information found on the WMC site, information on the sites of member denominations, and data from the World Christian Database, I compiled a list of all countries where one or more member denominations of the WMC have congregations. I also made a distinction between national denominations (those denominations with members and churches primarily in a single country) and international denominations (those denominations with members and churches in multiple countries, often on multiple continents).
Using that list, I generated a global map highlighting those countries with at least one WMC member denomination.
Here is a static version of that map.
Here is an interactive version of that map.
I also then generated a series of regional maps indicating which specific international denominations operated in particular countries, along with the presence of national autonomous and/or united/uniting denominations in each country.
Here is a .png file of the map for Africa.
Here is a .png file of the map for Asia.
Here is a .png file of the map for Central America and the Caribbean.
Here is a .png file of the map for Europe.
Here is a .png file of the map for North America.
Here is a .png file of the map for Oceania.
Here is a .png file of the map for South America.
Here is a PDF file with all seven regional maps.
There are a couple of caveats to the data and therefore the maps:
1. The data are not perfect. There’s no assurance these maps are 100% accurate or will stay that way for long. Denominations start work in new countries occasionally or have unofficial or unlicensed congregations that may not appear on the public lists.
2. It neglects Korean Methodist Church mission. I know the Korean Methodist Church conducts extensive mission work throughout the world, but I am unfamiliar with how this work is structured in terms of the ecclesial relationships between mission congregations and the Korean Methodist Church.
3. The maps only show presence, not relative membership levels in each country. These vary quite widely from the millions to the dozens. I know such data would be useful, and I may be able to produce it later, but to do so would require an extra challenge of data collection and map making.
4. It is surprisingly difficult to determine what should constitute a "country" for these maps. This difficulty arises not only because of instances of disputed sovereignty, but also because of a number of semi-autonomous relationships between territories and colonial governments. In the Caribbean, I have leaned toward a looser definition of country than elsewhere.
Readers are encouraged to draw their own insights and conclusions from these maps. I will present my insights and conclusions from these maps in a post later this week.
As a research aid and an aid to thinking about the shape of the global Wesleyan/Methodist movement, I have compiled maps indicating the presence of member denominations of the World Methodist Council, the ecumenical body bringing together over 70 Methodist, Wesleyan, and related United/Uniting denominations. The WMC does not include all Methodist/Wesleyan denominations everywhere, but its members include the vast majority of Methodist/Wesleyan Christians.
Using information found on the WMC site, information on the sites of member denominations, and data from the World Christian Database, I compiled a list of all countries where one or more member denominations of the WMC have congregations. I also made a distinction between national denominations (those denominations with members and churches primarily in a single country) and international denominations (those denominations with members and churches in multiple countries, often on multiple continents).
Using that list, I generated a global map highlighting those countries with at least one WMC member denomination.
Here is a static version of that map.
Here is an interactive version of that map.
I also then generated a series of regional maps indicating which specific international denominations operated in particular countries, along with the presence of national autonomous and/or united/uniting denominations in each country.
Here is a .png file of the map for Africa.
Here is a .png file of the map for Asia.
Here is a .png file of the map for Central America and the Caribbean.
Here is a .png file of the map for Europe.
Here is a .png file of the map for North America.
Here is a .png file of the map for Oceania.
Here is a .png file of the map for South America.
Here is a PDF file with all seven regional maps.
There are a couple of caveats to the data and therefore the maps:
1. The data are not perfect. There’s no assurance these maps are 100% accurate or will stay that way for long. Denominations start work in new countries occasionally or have unofficial or unlicensed congregations that may not appear on the public lists.
2. It neglects Korean Methodist Church mission. I know the Korean Methodist Church conducts extensive mission work throughout the world, but I am unfamiliar with how this work is structured in terms of the ecclesial relationships between mission congregations and the Korean Methodist Church.
3. The maps only show presence, not relative membership levels in each country. These vary quite widely from the millions to the dozens. I know such data would be useful, and I may be able to produce it later, but to do so would require an extra challenge of data collection and map making.
4. It is surprisingly difficult to determine what should constitute a "country" for these maps. This difficulty arises not only because of instances of disputed sovereignty, but also because of a number of semi-autonomous relationships between territories and colonial governments. In the Caribbean, I have leaned toward a looser definition of country than elsewhere.
Readers are encouraged to draw their own insights and conclusions from these maps. I will present my insights and conclusions from these maps in a post later this week.
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Recommended reading: Mande Muyombo on regional approach to mission
This blog has previously reported on changes underway at Global Ministries. Those interested in the agency's transformation to a new model of organizing mission will undoubtedly want to read Rev. Dr. Mande Muyombo's recent piece, "No Periphery, No Center: A Regional Approach to Mission." The piece provides a theological and practical justification of the mission agency's shift to a system of regional (i.e., continental) offices along with a further description of how those offices will function. Central to the theological justification is the concept of mission "from everywhere to everywhere" in contrast to the traditional Western sending/non-Western receiving dichotomy of mission. The piece is written by Rev. Dr. Muyombo, the agency's new executive director of the Global Mission Connections unit, who will be overseeing the regional offices.
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Robert Hunt: Culture, Not Geography, Defines Global Church, Part I
Today's post is written by Dr. Robert Hunt, Director of Global Theological Education, Professor of Christian Mission and Interreligious Relations, and Director, Center for Evangelism and Missional Church Studies at Perkins School of Theology. It is the first of a three-part series.
A global church must engage seriously the reality of multiple cultures, not just geographical locations and languages.
Early in my time as a missionary in Malaysia I was invited to go into central Borneo Island, about 3 days by boat, to visit an Iban community that was considering becoming Christian. They had heard the gospel from Iban Christians, including one of my students, in a nearby longhouse. But they wanted to talk to someone from the seminary.
I won’t recount the entire adventure, only this: that many of the questions they asked were more pragmatic than theological and had to with maintaining local customs. Some questions were simply part of a kind of religious bidding war. The Bahai’s promised them an electrical generator. The Muslims promised them government jobs. Methodists didn’t make any such promises, but we did have a good record of serving people’s needs.
But the kind of bargaining that was going on was only part of a much larger set of cultural differences. Our discussions took place well after 10pm, and only after the women and children had gone to bed. Their local elder had slaughtered a chicken and waved it over our heads to invoke blessings on the coming discussion. We had sipped rice wine, and then for the thirsty cases of Carlsberg beer had been broken out. We finished talking at sunrise, when men went about their work and we returned to our village by boat.
The actual decision was made the next evening when, again late at night, there was a hours long discussion by the senior members of the longhouse. And the next day the eldest member of the community, having considered everything, and having noted carefully the flights of various bird species over the longhouse for the last several days, as well as his own dreams, announced that the entire community would be baptized and become Methodist Christians. My student and his father, both licensed pastors, carried out the baptisms (several dozens) a few weeks later.
Let’s travel halfway around the world to Vienna, Austria, where for seven years I served a dominantly West African congregation made of refugees and immigrants. Once a month the African choir sang in worship. And the day before they sang they met for rehearsal and lunch, which took all of Saturday. As pastor I was interested in knowing what songs I should put in the bulletin for Sunday. They never told me. Instead they informed me that over the course of the day they had sung many songs in different languages and in the end had chosen the song leader. And the song leader, led by the Spirit, would tell us all what to sing on Sunday.
Back in Malaysia. I’m attending one of the many committee meetings that make up academic life in even a small theological school. It looks like a meeting should look. People around the table. An agenda. Multiple comments made on each item. But on each action item the chair of the committee simply announces the decision. No “I move.” No “I second.” No vote. When I first arrived in Malaysia I would have found this bizarre and irritating. But a good friend, and relative of my Chinese wife, explained the way things work. “The purpose of the committee is to ratify the decision of the chair.”
I highlight these experiences because they indicate a much larger and more complex truth: All processes of decision making are bound to culture and cultural ideas about values, who the members of the community are, and how they come to a common mind.
A global church must engage seriously the reality of multiple cultures, not just geographical locations and languages.
Early in my time as a missionary in Malaysia I was invited to go into central Borneo Island, about 3 days by boat, to visit an Iban community that was considering becoming Christian. They had heard the gospel from Iban Christians, including one of my students, in a nearby longhouse. But they wanted to talk to someone from the seminary.
I won’t recount the entire adventure, only this: that many of the questions they asked were more pragmatic than theological and had to with maintaining local customs. Some questions were simply part of a kind of religious bidding war. The Bahai’s promised them an electrical generator. The Muslims promised them government jobs. Methodists didn’t make any such promises, but we did have a good record of serving people’s needs.
But the kind of bargaining that was going on was only part of a much larger set of cultural differences. Our discussions took place well after 10pm, and only after the women and children had gone to bed. Their local elder had slaughtered a chicken and waved it over our heads to invoke blessings on the coming discussion. We had sipped rice wine, and then for the thirsty cases of Carlsberg beer had been broken out. We finished talking at sunrise, when men went about their work and we returned to our village by boat.
The actual decision was made the next evening when, again late at night, there was a hours long discussion by the senior members of the longhouse. And the next day the eldest member of the community, having considered everything, and having noted carefully the flights of various bird species over the longhouse for the last several days, as well as his own dreams, announced that the entire community would be baptized and become Methodist Christians. My student and his father, both licensed pastors, carried out the baptisms (several dozens) a few weeks later.
Let’s travel halfway around the world to Vienna, Austria, where for seven years I served a dominantly West African congregation made of refugees and immigrants. Once a month the African choir sang in worship. And the day before they sang they met for rehearsal and lunch, which took all of Saturday. As pastor I was interested in knowing what songs I should put in the bulletin for Sunday. They never told me. Instead they informed me that over the course of the day they had sung many songs in different languages and in the end had chosen the song leader. And the song leader, led by the Spirit, would tell us all what to sing on Sunday.
Back in Malaysia. I’m attending one of the many committee meetings that make up academic life in even a small theological school. It looks like a meeting should look. People around the table. An agenda. Multiple comments made on each item. But on each action item the chair of the committee simply announces the decision. No “I move.” No “I second.” No vote. When I first arrived in Malaysia I would have found this bizarre and irritating. But a good friend, and relative of my Chinese wife, explained the way things work. “The purpose of the committee is to ratify the decision of the chair.”
I highlight these experiences because they indicate a much larger and more complex truth: All processes of decision making are bound to culture and cultural ideas about values, who the members of the community are, and how they come to a common mind.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Size, globality, and the ghost of empire
Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.
I came across an interesting tidbit in my research recently. I've been doing research on the missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC), one of the precursors of the UMC. In 1900, the MEC had churches in twenty-nine countries on five continents. When investigating some other aspects of that era, I was a bit surprised to realize that this made it one of the most widely distributed human organizations on the planet at that time.
While I have not run the comparative figures for all other possible contenders (such as banks and shipping lines), and there's some fuzziness as to what exactly "most widely distributed" means, thus far I have been able to find find four other institutions with comparable or greater geographic scope: the Catholic Church, the British Empire, the French Empire, and the Eastern Telegraph Company (which may have been the most widely distributed institution of its day).
While I relished that finding for its own particular historical curiosity, it also prompted me to think anew about the current discussion about how the UMC can be a global church. It suggested two questions that I think we in the UMC need to take serious as we seek to grapple with that question:
1. What does it mean for the UMC to claim to be a global church when we are less global that our predecessor bodies were 100 years ago, while many other organizations are more so? The MEC was in the top ten, if not top five institutions for geographic coverage 100 years ago, and that's without adding in the additional countries where the MECS, MPC, EA, or UBC has a presence where there was no MEC presence. Today, even with the impressive number of countries in which UMCOR works, I doubt the UMC would make the top 100 list of human organizations with the widest geographic reach. Through the creation of autonomous Methodist churches, we have gotten smaller while so many other organizations have gotten much bigger - businesses and UN bodies, as well as INGOs and other denominations.
2. How can the UMC be a global church in a way that distinguishes itself from the Ameri-centric, colonialist approach that characterized the church during its geographic apex? One of the implications of the above paragraph is that most global = most widely distributed geographically, which may or may not be true. Still, if we do make that assumption, can we do so in ways that don't reiterate the sort of "conquering the world for Christ" ideology that too often meant "conquering the world by Americans" that characterized even the best Methodist mission thinkers of a century ago? Can we value geographic distance without feeling the need to overcome the difference entailed therein by imposing some sort of American-derived sameness?
These may not be easy questions to answer, but if we are to plot a successful path into the future, we need to take seriously the perspective provided by the past.
I came across an interesting tidbit in my research recently. I've been doing research on the missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC), one of the precursors of the UMC. In 1900, the MEC had churches in twenty-nine countries on five continents. When investigating some other aspects of that era, I was a bit surprised to realize that this made it one of the most widely distributed human organizations on the planet at that time.
While I have not run the comparative figures for all other possible contenders (such as banks and shipping lines), and there's some fuzziness as to what exactly "most widely distributed" means, thus far I have been able to find find four other institutions with comparable or greater geographic scope: the Catholic Church, the British Empire, the French Empire, and the Eastern Telegraph Company (which may have been the most widely distributed institution of its day).
While I relished that finding for its own particular historical curiosity, it also prompted me to think anew about the current discussion about how the UMC can be a global church. It suggested two questions that I think we in the UMC need to take serious as we seek to grapple with that question:
1. What does it mean for the UMC to claim to be a global church when we are less global that our predecessor bodies were 100 years ago, while many other organizations are more so? The MEC was in the top ten, if not top five institutions for geographic coverage 100 years ago, and that's without adding in the additional countries where the MECS, MPC, EA, or UBC has a presence where there was no MEC presence. Today, even with the impressive number of countries in which UMCOR works, I doubt the UMC would make the top 100 list of human organizations with the widest geographic reach. Through the creation of autonomous Methodist churches, we have gotten smaller while so many other organizations have gotten much bigger - businesses and UN bodies, as well as INGOs and other denominations.
2. How can the UMC be a global church in a way that distinguishes itself from the Ameri-centric, colonialist approach that characterized the church during its geographic apex? One of the implications of the above paragraph is that most global = most widely distributed geographically, which may or may not be true. Still, if we do make that assumption, can we do so in ways that don't reiterate the sort of "conquering the world for Christ" ideology that too often meant "conquering the world by Americans" that characterized even the best Methodist mission thinkers of a century ago? Can we value geographic distance without feeling the need to overcome the difference entailed therein by imposing some sort of American-derived sameness?
These may not be easy questions to answer, but if we are to plot a successful path into the future, we need to take seriously the perspective provided by the past.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
UMCOR, Armenia and Global UMC Ecclesiology
Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) recently published this story about a scholarship program that they administer in Armenia. Many United Methodists probably didn't realize that UMCOR was working in Armenia. Perhaps some of them couldn't even say where Armenia is. (It's in the Caucus mountains north of Turkey and south of Russia.) Few probably realize that Armenia is actually one of the oldest Christian countries in the world, Christianity having become the official religion in 301AD by decree of King Tridates III. UMCOR has been there for the last twenty years after Armenia became independent of the Soviet Union.
So UMCOR is operating in what may seem like a surprising place. What makes UMCOR's presence perhaps more surprising is that there are no United Methodist congregations in Armenia. UMCOR is not there as part of a proselytizing mission. Really, Armenia doesn't need that sort of mission, having had Christianity for a millennia and a half longer than the United States. What Armenia does need, though, is the health, agricultural, anti-human trafficking, nutrition/food security, small reconstruction, education, microfinance, and disaster risk reduction work carried on by UMCOR Armenia. And because Armenia has these needs, UMCOR is there, carrying out the mission of God.
It is interesting to reflect on the work of The United Methodist Church through UMCOR in Armenia not just for the sake of geographical curiosity but also for the insights this work can give us into United Methodist ecclesiology and in particular the connection and distinction between the church as a membership group and the church as a mission.
In the United States, we tend to think of the church as a organization composed of members along with the associated institutions. We might think of the UMC mainly in terms of the local church, the annual conference, or the denomination as a whole, but whatever the level of focus, we think of it as an organization made up of members. As many of the posts in the Grace Upon Grace series on this blog have pointed out, though, it is possible to think of the church in another way: as a group defined not my membership or institutional structures but by its mission, or rather, by its role in carrying out God's mission (the missio Dei) in the world.
As the Grace Upon Grace series has contented, there is a connection between the membership of the church and the mission of the church. Ideally, the membership of the church and the structures they create are what allow the church to carry out God's mission. Yet Armenia is interesting because it points out that while membership and mission are connected at a theological level, they are not always at a geographical level. The United Methodist Church has members in about 50 countries worldwide. Yet The United Methodist Church is in mission in over 120 countries. The church is in mission far beyond where it has members.
This points out an important difference in two ways in which the UMC is a global church. First, we are a global church because we have membership in countries around the globe. Second, we are a global church because we are in mission around the globe. Historically, our global membership stemmed from the global mission of American Methodists. Yet today, our global membership is not synonymous with global mission. Members outside the US are not missions. They are parters in mission. Nor do missions imply the presence of members, at least in local worshipping communities. Mission overlaps geographically with membership (including mission in the US), but it extends beyond as well. Being able to separate between these two meanings of the global UMC is important to formulating a global ecclesiology for the church.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) recently published this story about a scholarship program that they administer in Armenia. Many United Methodists probably didn't realize that UMCOR was working in Armenia. Perhaps some of them couldn't even say where Armenia is. (It's in the Caucus mountains north of Turkey and south of Russia.) Few probably realize that Armenia is actually one of the oldest Christian countries in the world, Christianity having become the official religion in 301AD by decree of King Tridates III. UMCOR has been there for the last twenty years after Armenia became independent of the Soviet Union.
So UMCOR is operating in what may seem like a surprising place. What makes UMCOR's presence perhaps more surprising is that there are no United Methodist congregations in Armenia. UMCOR is not there as part of a proselytizing mission. Really, Armenia doesn't need that sort of mission, having had Christianity for a millennia and a half longer than the United States. What Armenia does need, though, is the health, agricultural, anti-human trafficking, nutrition/food security, small reconstruction, education, microfinance, and disaster risk reduction work carried on by UMCOR Armenia. And because Armenia has these needs, UMCOR is there, carrying out the mission of God.
It is interesting to reflect on the work of The United Methodist Church through UMCOR in Armenia not just for the sake of geographical curiosity but also for the insights this work can give us into United Methodist ecclesiology and in particular the connection and distinction between the church as a membership group and the church as a mission.
In the United States, we tend to think of the church as a organization composed of members along with the associated institutions. We might think of the UMC mainly in terms of the local church, the annual conference, or the denomination as a whole, but whatever the level of focus, we think of it as an organization made up of members. As many of the posts in the Grace Upon Grace series on this blog have pointed out, though, it is possible to think of the church in another way: as a group defined not my membership or institutional structures but by its mission, or rather, by its role in carrying out God's mission (the missio Dei) in the world.
As the Grace Upon Grace series has contented, there is a connection between the membership of the church and the mission of the church. Ideally, the membership of the church and the structures they create are what allow the church to carry out God's mission. Yet Armenia is interesting because it points out that while membership and mission are connected at a theological level, they are not always at a geographical level. The United Methodist Church has members in about 50 countries worldwide. Yet The United Methodist Church is in mission in over 120 countries. The church is in mission far beyond where it has members.
This points out an important difference in two ways in which the UMC is a global church. First, we are a global church because we have membership in countries around the globe. Second, we are a global church because we are in mission around the globe. Historically, our global membership stemmed from the global mission of American Methodists. Yet today, our global membership is not synonymous with global mission. Members outside the US are not missions. They are parters in mission. Nor do missions imply the presence of members, at least in local worshipping communities. Mission overlaps geographically with membership (including mission in the US), but it extends beyond as well. Being able to separate between these two meanings of the global UMC is important to formulating a global ecclesiology for the church.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Find-A-Church, Advent, and the global-local tension
Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Assistant Professor of Religion and Pieper Chair of Servant Leadership at Ripon College.
Contemporary Americans often like to pretend that the Internet has ushered in some sort of utopic, post-geographic future. While technology does substantially reshape how we connect across distance (this blog being just one example), it is far from erasing the relevance of geography. Location still matters, sometimes despite technology and sometimes because it shapes how we can access technology. That's why it's interesting to reflect on a recent news story about efforts to expand the UMC's Find-A-Church online directory beyond the United States.
On the one hand, the expansion of Find-A-Church beyond US borders seems to be a triumph of technology over geography. By incorporating all of the United Methodist world into this online portal, the website seems to be erasing the geographic distinctions that so often plague our denominations. Find-A-Church will no longer will be limited to the US center and marginalize the rest of the world. That's a good development and represents an appropriate extension of church resources to serve the entire connection and not just the US.
Yet a global Find-A-Church does not end geography within the UMC. Beyond issues of access or participation, even a perfectly comprehensive and universally accessible list of UMC churches would not end geography. That's because the entire point of Find-A-Church is to find local congregations, which are what make up the UMC. The connection may be a global thing that transcends geography, but we experience in most in local ways. Efforts to institute online communion or other forms of internet church aside, there is no "global church" in the sense of a corporate worshiping fellowship. The global church only exists in and through its local congregations.
Perhaps that's a good thing to reflect on in this Advent seasons when we remember the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God does exist beyond any local instance, but God still recognized the importance of taking on a local body in the form of a baby born in a manager. Moreover, God becoming local was not a problem for our view of God; it solved the problem of our sin and alienation from God. Local churches can sometimes be frustrating places because they're where we come face to face with other pressing-on-to-perfection-but-by-no-means-there-yet Christians. It can be tempting to retreat to platitudes about the world-wide fellowship of believers as an alternative to doing the hard work of getting along with fellow congregants. Yet Advent and Find-A-Church both remind us that the local is where we meet God. May you meet God anew in your local church this Christmas time.
Contemporary Americans often like to pretend that the Internet has ushered in some sort of utopic, post-geographic future. While technology does substantially reshape how we connect across distance (this blog being just one example), it is far from erasing the relevance of geography. Location still matters, sometimes despite technology and sometimes because it shapes how we can access technology. That's why it's interesting to reflect on a recent news story about efforts to expand the UMC's Find-A-Church online directory beyond the United States.
On the one hand, the expansion of Find-A-Church beyond US borders seems to be a triumph of technology over geography. By incorporating all of the United Methodist world into this online portal, the website seems to be erasing the geographic distinctions that so often plague our denominations. Find-A-Church will no longer will be limited to the US center and marginalize the rest of the world. That's a good development and represents an appropriate extension of church resources to serve the entire connection and not just the US.
Yet a global Find-A-Church does not end geography within the UMC. Beyond issues of access or participation, even a perfectly comprehensive and universally accessible list of UMC churches would not end geography. That's because the entire point of Find-A-Church is to find local congregations, which are what make up the UMC. The connection may be a global thing that transcends geography, but we experience in most in local ways. Efforts to institute online communion or other forms of internet church aside, there is no "global church" in the sense of a corporate worshiping fellowship. The global church only exists in and through its local congregations.
Perhaps that's a good thing to reflect on in this Advent seasons when we remember the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God does exist beyond any local instance, but God still recognized the importance of taking on a local body in the form of a baby born in a manager. Moreover, God becoming local was not a problem for our view of God; it solved the problem of our sin and alienation from God. Local churches can sometimes be frustrating places because they're where we come face to face with other pressing-on-to-perfection-but-by-no-means-there-yet Christians. It can be tempting to retreat to platitudes about the world-wide fellowship of believers as an alternative to doing the hard work of getting along with fellow congregants. Yet Advent and Find-A-Church both remind us that the local is where we meet God. May you meet God anew in your local church this Christmas time.
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