Frank de Nully Brown: The Methodist Church: Institution for Mission or Mission for Institution?

Today's post is by retired Bishop Frank de Nully Brown. Bishop de Nully Brown is a retired bishop of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina. It originally appeared (in Spanish) on the website of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina (IEMA) as part of a series organized by the Centro Metodista de Estudios Wesleyanos (CMEW). It appears here in translation with the author's permission and with the assistance of CMEW.

The Methodist Church began as a movement based on an incipient network of local societies with the mission of proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ for all, with a spiritual and social commitment that challenged the personal transformation and the social reality of its time.

From its origins, the interpersonal connection and the connection with the social environment was something fundamental in the entire Methodist movement. That connection involved mutual support and growth in ministry. This connection was, through time, the foundation that constituted one of the largest and most well-organized denominations in its wide and diverse connections. This organization and structure were understood as a support that allowed the mission to expand throughout the world.

The Methodist churches in our Latin American continent are heirs to the mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which later became part of the current United Methodist Church.

The autonomy processes did not mean disconnection from the Methodist family, but a greater commitment at the local level. It occurred at the end of the '60s and beginning of the '70s and affirmed this missionary change in Latin American Methodism. For this reason, it generated the organization CIEMAL (Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches of Latin America and the Caribbean) as a space for connection and meaning for our evangelical mission.

Autonomy wanted to affirm our commitment to live and proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom of God in a different cultural and social context, in which we were challenged to give a Christian witness.

Autonomy confronted us with a reality where self-support was presented as a difficult path to follow, taking into account the very ambivalent socioeconomic trajectory in our Latin American countries.

We inherited an organizational structure with its virtues and defects. The organizational aspect always had an important weight for our churches because it had to do with our new way of being a connectional church.

The institutional presence was made concrete in the construction of churches and other buildings in the big cities and in places that were considered strategic, and many times autonomy showed that they could not be sustained or that mission with the people passed through other spaces that were not church buildings but were a symbol of a recognized and established church.

I share the goals of the organization of CIEMAL, written in its regulations, that reflect the dreams of being autonomous churches.

1. Participate in the Mission of God, giving a testimony of solidarity in preaching, education, and service through the member churches to the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, giving priority to the poor and excluded.
2. Stimulate the process of maintaining and perfecting the unity of the Church.
3. Maintain and proclaim Methodist connectionality among its members, cultivating brotherhood and mutual support.
4. Develop cooperative relationships with world Methodism and the ecumenical movement.
5. Stimulate and promote awareness and practice of biblical theology in the Latin American and Caribbean context.
6. Ensure a permanent analysis and evaluation of the political, economic, and religious reality of each country and of each member church at a continental level.
7. Develop different programs through studies, consultations, seminars, offices, and other means that favor the fulfillment of mission.

Autonomy had its costs for each national church because it meant taking charge of a structure that showed difficulties in being sustained not only financially but also in leadership for the ministry.

So, the churches went along doing what they could, sometimes with great successes and mistakes too. On more than one occasion, autonomy was not seen as an achievement, especially when resources and gifts were limited. Sometimes, even on many occasions, the organization weighed down a congregation when it was associated with a building with a determined structure.

All this led to the dilemma of thinking about the mission of the extended parish, which is always an invitation to look at the surrounding community, our neighborhood, or to support an organization in a pre-determined way: it was difficult to recover the sense of a spiritual and social movement.

Today, there are debates about possible fractures in United Methodism, from which we recognize our origins, fractures that not only affect the church in the United States but throughout the world through the mode of our relations. These fractures are related to differing visions of our pastoral action based on certain biblical and theological interpretations.

Being an autonomous church allows us an exercise in being different and creative, making our own missional decision, building new and old networks of support and growth. We need to reconvert ourselves based on our mission and not just to make our institutional life last a while longer.

I believe that autonomy, throughout our Methodist history in our continent, has a positive balance that we have to refresh in these times of searching for paths of unity, not only with the Methodist family but with the body of Christ as a broader and more ecumenical concept.

It is a constant challenge to recover a concept of community and connectional evangelism in the society in which we have to bear witness. A community evangelism that generates congregations of faith in solidarity that seek the Kingdom of God and its justice, remembering that what is connectional is not to isolate ourselves but to connect ourselves. From there comes an ecumenical attitude in the search for justice and peace for all. We must not recognize ecumenism only as something celebratory and eventually linked to institutional hierarchy, but to adapt the essence of ecumenism, which is to weave networks for transformative mission in the world.

We need to remember that the church is only one instrument for God's mission. It can never be a burden but a tool that facilitates and speeds up the mission of God in the world.

I share some lines to rethink the life of our local congregations, recalling two concepts that appear in the previous writings about the need to rethink the mission from the margins of society and a gospel embodied in reality as Jesus did.

• Be loving, supportive, inclusive and healing congregations.
• Be congregations that make new disciples.
• Be congregations open to the changes and movements that occur in the extended parish where we are inserted.
• Be prophetic congregations, which join with other social spaces in the search for a more just and egalitarian society.

UM & Global Collections: The UMC & Institutional Decline

For the first time in quite some time, a new UM & Global collection is available. The collection pulls together posts from this fall about "The UMC and Institutional Decline." Most of the posts are by David W. Scott, with one response by Darryl W. Stephens. The posts examine the nature, causes, and possible solutions to the decline of denominational institutions in The United Methodist Church. As always, discussion questions help connect these writings to pressing contemporary questions for United Methodist leaders, General Conference delegates, and students.

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.

Darryl Stephens: The UMC and Institutional Decline: Commissions and Omissions

Today's post is by Rev. Dr. Darryl W. Stephens, responding to a recent series on UM & Global by Dr. David W. Scott. Rev. Dr. Stephens' post originally appeared on his personal blog, Ethics Considered, and is republished here with permission.

Why is The United Methodist Church in decline? And what can be done about it? These questions are the focus of a series of articles by David Scott, webmaster of UM & Global. The theme of the series, “The UMC and Institutional Decline,” is complicated. Scott presses his readers to consider the issue from many perspectives. The problem is not just a result of failed leadership, he argues, but also antiquated structures that no longer meet the needs of the institution.

Scott leverages his analysis to provide constructive ideas for moving forward. In a recent post, he suggested that the impending breakup of the UMC is an opportunity for denominational rebuilding. Boards, agencies, and the general way of doing things in United Methodism need to be overhauled. A breakup is an opportunity not only for cleaning house but also renovation.

“General Conference could create a series of commissions to work on denominational revamping,” suggested Scott. For this approach to be effective, I argue, we must learn from past and current efforts. We must examine the institutional history of United Methodist commissions and omissions.

Omissions
Not so long ago, General Conference approved a major piece of overhaul legislation. “Plan UMC,” as it was called, was celebrated wildly on Wednesday, May 2, 2012 in Tampa, Florida. “Finally,” thought many Methodist leaders, “General Conference has broken its pattern of gridlock.” Plan UMC was a bold blueprint for renovating the structures of the general church. The next day, the Daily Christian Advocate headline read, “Delegates approve a new structure.” One delegate from Susquehanna Annual Conference was quoted prominently: “The time is now. The world is waiting to see what we are going to do.” The article was accompanied by a confident picture of Bishop Janice Riggle Huie presiding over the previous day’s session.

Bishops, general agency executives, and delegates from across the connection immediately busied themselves. The full ramifications of the new restructuring plan were still being discovered. Power brokers filled the hallways and conference rooms. Who would occupy the seats of influence on the newly created “General Council for Strategy and Oversight”? General agency staff (I among them) scurried to learn what was left of program offices and mandates. Meanwhile, in other meeting rooms, the legality of the plan was under intense scrutiny (by me and others).

The bottom fell out of this botched renovation job within 48 hours. In a decision announced in the afternoon of Friday, May 4, Judicial Council ruled the entire plan unconstitutional.

We have reviewed the plan to determine whether any part, portion, or all of Plan UMC can be saved and conclude that it cannot. The broad delegation of legislative authority and the commingling of the role of oversight so inextricably permeate the Plan as to render it constitutionally unsalvageable.

UM Judicial Council Decision 1210

General Conference’s attempt to innovate outside of normal legislative processes backfired. Backroom dealing and high stakes compromises had resulted in fundamentally flawed legislation. In an aside, Judicial Council noted that “the adoption of Plan UMC by the General Conference came through a tortured course, and outside of the established legislative processes.”

There was a clear precedent for ruling Plan UMC unconstitutional. In a sad situational irony, the crux of the Council’s ruling echoed a very similar judicial decision rendered forty years earlier (Decision 364). Why did this flawed renovation plan captivate and entrance so many church leaders? And why were so many General Conference delegates so unfamiliar with denominational polity that they failed to notice this legislation’s inherent incompatibility with the UMC’s constitution? Perhaps the delegates’ desperation for renovation was fueled by a mounting sense that the denomination was veering out of anyone’s control.

Commissions
General Conference 2016 picked up where the previous legislative session had left off: amid chaos and division. Within days, the plenary ground to a halt on the issue of human sexuality. An immediate meltdown was narrowly avoided through an appeal to the Council of Bishops to establish a study commission and to call a special session of General Conference.

From an institutional renovation standpoint, however, this was not the only item of business referred. General Conference referred no less than nine major legislative initiatives to various commissions and other entities.

Issue (petition no.)	Referred to:	Working Entity
Human sexuality (“A Way Forward”)	Council of Bishops	new “Commission on the Way Forward”
Ministry for the worldwide Church (60509)	General Board of Higher Education and Ministry	new “2017-2020 Study of Ministry Commission”
Revision of Our Theological Task (60676)	Committee on Faith and Order	Committee on Faith and Order
World-wide Social Principles (60062)	General Board of Church and Society	General Board of Church and Society
General Book of Discipline (60276, 60277)	Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters, in collaboration with others	Committee on Faith and Order, Study of Ministry Commission, and Connectional Table
General Church Council (60815)	Connectional Table and Council of Bishops	new “Missional Collaboration Group”
Restructuring General Agencies (former “Plan UMC Revised,” 60945-47, 60950)	Connectional Table, Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters, General Council on Finance and Admin.	Connectional Table, Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters, General Council on Finance and Admin.
U.S. bishops (60932)	Council of Bishops, in consultation with Inter-Jurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy	new “Jurisdictional Study Committee”
Study of Ecclesiology Document – Wonder, Love, and Praise (60033)	Entire denomination, as well as ecumenical partners	Committee on Faith and Order

Nine Referrals by UM General Conference 2016

These items were referred to seven existing and four newly created entities of the UMC for the 2017–2020 quadrennium. New commissions included the Commission on the Way Forward, a Jurisdictional Study Committee, Missional Collaboration Group, and Study of Ministry Commission. The creation and work of the new commissions were overseen variously by the Council of Bishops, Connectional Table, and General Board of Higher Education and Ministry—the Inter-Jurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy was also a consultative partner. The other five referred items were the responsibility of the following additional entities: Committee on Faith and Order, Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters, General Council on Finance and Administration, and the General Board of Church and Society.

Thus, the UMC already has plenty of commissions to test Scott’s theory that “a series of commissions” will help the UMC “to work on denominational revamping.” Will these commissions succeed in renovating United Methodist denominational structures?

Renovation or Renewal? General Conference offered little guidance as to how the diverse work of these eleven different commissions, councils, boards, and committees would be coordinated. What is the likelihood that these pieces of legislation will be developed in concert? The debacle of reports and results from the Commission on a Way Forward at the special session of General Conference in 2019 has shaken my confidence in “a series of commissions”—or even one commission—as a viable means of renovating this denomination.

For a church desiring unity, the work of revisioning and restructure requires a comprehensive plan. The Plan of Union prepared for the creation of The United Methodist Church in 1968 was years in the making, involving much more than hurried power plays scribbled in the hallways during a contentious legislative assembly. Supermajorities of delegates from both churches approved a new constitution guaranteeing rights and responsibilities. It was not a perfect structure, but it lasted for more than a generation. Scott is right in asserting that United Methodism has outlived the usefulness of that structure. But where do we go from here? Renovation or renewal?

As a church, we should repent of our previous commissions and omissions, seeking not renovation but renewal. Perhaps this denominational edifice, this structure-become-stricture, needs to be left behind in order to grow into the church God would have us become.

The UMC and Institutional Decline: A Call for Denominational Renovation

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 a series of previous posts, I have depicted United Methodist denominational institutions as declining, crumbling even, beset by a host of long-term pressures from both within and beyond the denomination, all of which have been compounded in recent years by crises of denominational division and the COVID-19 pandemic. I have argued that these pressures towards decline are far beyond the ability of these institutions to manage through an approach of incremental and inward-focused maintenance.

Instead, the time has come for major denominational renovation. Renovation is a process in which an organization undertakes extensive rethinking of its institutions, their purposes, and how they go about achieving their purposes by trying to produce certain types of regular behavior. The last time the UMC substantially renovated its institutions was in 1972, in the wake of the merger of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church. Nearly 50 years later, it is far past time to do so again.

The need for institutional renovation stems from the nature of the forces producing institutional decline in the UMC. I have argued that the decline of institutions in the UMC is a result of decreased institutional relevance, the delegitimization of institutions by special interests in the denomination, a decreased ability of members to pay the time and effort costs associated with denominational institutions, and the failure of denominational institutions to respond adequately to moments of crisis.

Maintenance, however, has led to institutional complexification, amplifying opportunities for elite capture of institutions and a decreased ability by average constituents to participate in those institutions. Maintenance cannot address questions of institutional relevance. Since maintenance is internally focused, it is a poor strategy to address external challenges, such as the time squeeze limiting members’ ability to give of their time and money. Finally, the failures of denominational institutions in recent crises are further evidence that a more significant response to institutional decline is required than further maintenance.

We are past the point of maintenance. We need substantial renovation.

Yet in this regard, the UMC is fortunate. A division with the Global Methodist Church represents an opportunity for the remaining UMC to enter a process of institutional renovation. Mergers have consistently been an occasion for Methodism to periodically revamp its institutions. Having missed the chance to do that with the merger with Cote d’Ivoire in 2008, the UMC will have to content itself with a division as an opportunity to reassess its institutions.

And an opportunity it is. Traditionalists recognize the opportunity they have to revamp denominational institutions by establishing a new denomination; those remaining in the UMC should not miss the opportunity they have to make overdue changes while there is fluidity in the denomination.

Yet to recognize this division as an opportunity, those remaining in the UMC must avoid scapegoating their anxieties about and frustrations with denominational institutions in either of two ways.

First, they must avoid scapegoating Traditionalists for the dysfunctions of denominational institutions. As previously described, Traditionalists have de-legitimized denominational institutions, but they are far from the only force pushing those institutions towards decline.

In this regard, it is important to avoid thinking of the division itself as the thing that will relieve pressures on denominational institutions. While division will alleviate one current crisis and will reduce some of the pressures from special interests, it will by no means solve most of the challenges of the denomination’s institutions, which result either from external societal forces or from having a system of denominational institutions that has not been substantially updated in a half century. Division creates a window of opportunity for changes to strengthen the denomination; it is not itself the solution to all the problems in the denomination.

Second, those staying in the UMC must avoid scapegoating leaders for the dysfunctions of denominational institutions. It is easy to attribute the current situation of institutional decline to a failure of leadership. While not without truth, such a view can be dismissive of the magnitude of challenges facing denominational institutions and the extent to which denominational institutions are geared towards maintenance as a primary strategy.

The biggest failure of institutional leaders in the UMC has perhaps been too great a fidelity to the institutions of the church as they currently exist. In this regard, they are caught in a paradox: They are selected to care for and maintain institutions as they are, which by design are supposed to be consistent and not change much. Yet, by resisting changes for the sake of institutional preservation, leaders subject those institutions to on-going pressures that, over time, have substantially weakened them, making them more vulnerable to collapse.

Moreover, focusing on the culpability of leaders misses a significant point. Whoever may deserve blame for the current situation (and I have suggested that it is a broad group), determining blame is not the same as determining a strategy for how to address institutional decline. Regardless of the errors up to this point, right now it is time to rethink our institutions.

If those remaining in the UMC are convinced that denominational renovation is necessary, there are a variety of ways to go about it. Work on the Global Book of Discipline could become a platform for rethinking the church’s structures.

General Conference could create a series of commissions to work on denominational revamping, as the 1968 Uniting General Conference did. There could be an extra session of General Conference to support the work of those commissions, as there was in 1970.

General Conference could even pass an amendment at its next meeting (to be approved in annual conference voting) to allow for a future General Conference to function as a constitutional convention, which could allow major changes to be passed more efficiently than the normal one-resolution-per-paragraph method and perhaps with less possibility of judicial review blocking any major denominational revisions.

My point here is not to advocate for one strategy for implementing the work of systemic and extensive renovation of The United Methodist Church’s denominational institutions. My point here is simply to insist that that renovation must happen, by whatever means possible. The alternative is further institutional decline. Those who love the church must be willing to let it change or risk condemning it to a slow death.

The UMC and Institutional Decline: Institutional Maintenance and Expansion

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.

Throughout this fall, I have been exploring the issue of the decline of denominational institutions in The United Methodist Church. In these posts, I have followed Patrick Wyman’s definition of institutions: (https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/what-are-institutions-and-why-are): “An institution is a system of rules, beliefs, norms, and organizations that together generate a regularity of behavior.” I have defined institutional decline, then, as a change by which institutions are no longer able to produce the same sorts of behaviors that they have previously or at least not to the same extent.

Note that not all forms of institutional change constitute institutional decline. Institutions have a bias against change because their purpose is focused on “regularity of behavior.” Yet, some changes may be neutral or may even help institutions be better able to generate regular behavior. Indeed, since the world changes all the time, some institutional changes are a necessary response to external forces to ensure that the same sorts of behavior continue to be generated regularly.

Thus, we can define institutional strengthening as changes to an institution that increase or maintain its ability to generate regular behavior. Institutional strengthening is the opposite of institutional decline, though both are forms of institutional change.

We might think about three forms of institutional strengthening: institutional maintenance, institutional expansion, and institutional renovation. Institutional maintenance includes relatively small, routine changes in an institution that are designed to preserve its ability to produce existing regular behaviors. An example is a change in provider for clergy health insurance with the aim of keeping costs and benefits the same. Institutional expansion includes changes to increase the amount or extent of an existing regular behavior. An example is starting new Walk to Emmaus chapters and holding more walks in existing chapters. Institutional renovation is reconsidering which behaviors an institution should produce and how it should produce them. An example is an annual conference ceasing support for a children’s service agency and instead promoting the formation of Fresh Expressions in congregations.

Most of the time, institutions and their leaders are focused on maintenance and expansion. This is as it should be. Institutions exist for regularity of behavior, and both maintenance and expansion take as a given the nature of that regular behavior. Institutional renovation calls it into question. It is impossible to always be in renovation mode, since if an organization were constantly questioning what behaviors it should produce, it would be ineffective at producing any regular behavior.

Institutional maintenance and expansion, however, have their own limitations. Some of these limitations can ironically end up creating an additional set of forces leading to institutional decline, and maintenance and expansion are not sufficient strategies for all situations.

One result of a focus on maintenance and expansion is a general trend towards institutional complexity. Like many institutions in the United States, the institutions of the UMC have evolved towards greater comprehensiveness (that is, anticipating as many scenarios as possible and prescribing actions in those scenarios) and towards legal protectionism (that is, guarding against the threat of lawsuit).

These two driving forces – greater comprehensiveness and legal protectionism – are a byproduct of institutional maintenance and expansion. Institutional maintenance tries to address unique scenarios that raise questions about the regular behaviors of an institution. Maintenance in the form of greater comprehensiveness eliminates “glitches” that might disrupt those regular behaviors. Institutional expansion creates new scenarios in which an institution’s desired behaviors are generated, thus also expanding institutional comprehensiveness. Legal protectionism often goes along with the elaboration of possible challenging scenarios and seeks to guard against threats that could disrupt an institution’s ability to function.

The result of these two trends is a preference for formal rules instead of informal norms and thus an increasing number of rules for the operation of institutions. The upshot of such developments is that while institutions are not necessarily more expensive to operate than they were fifty years ago (though in some instances, they are), they do require more specialized knowledge. Therefore, fewer constituents have the knowledge necessary to maintain those increasingly rule-bound institutions.

To put it in concrete terms, while the percentage of local church budgets collected in apportionments has gone down by 50% in the last 50 years, the length of the Book of Discipline has gone up by 50%. Denominational bureaucracies are less expensive to the local church, but all of the institutions of The United Methodist Church are more opaque to the average lay person or even the average clergy person.

Therefore, there are fewer people willing and able to navigate the complex procedures required to serve as conference delegates or to participate in denominational committees. With denominational institutions comprehensible to fewer people, that increases the chances of both loss of relevance and elite capture for those institutions. Thus, when maintenance and expansion lead to increased complexity, that can actually lead to rather than prevent institutional decline.

Moreover, even when institutional maintenance and expansion avoid such pitfalls, there are inherent limits to what they can accomplish. Maintenance and expansion seek to preserve and expand institutions as they are. Thus, they are ill-equipped to address questions of institutional relevance. They assume that the behaviors an institution seeks to produce are the right behaviors to focus on, even if there is less call for such behavior among an institution’s constituency.

Moreover, maintenance as a strategy is generally inward focused. It seeks to make relatively small, internal changes to ensure smooth organizational functioning. Therefore, it may be unable to address significant challenges that result from disruptive pressures from an organization’s external environment. Such pressures, since they originate from beyond an organization, are outside the realm of what maintenance seeks to control and indeed may be beyond an organization’s ability to control at all.

Therefore, institutional renovation is occasionally necessary. Institutions benefit from periodic reassessment of their functions and constituency to ensure continual adjustment to their environments. Without renovation and the periodic attention it brings to questions such as institutional relevance and external environment, it is impossible for organizations to adequately balance the tensions that inevitably build up between an institution and its environment. Renovation will not free institutions from all external pressures but can help ensure that the amount of pressure is manageable.

It remains an outstanding question, though, of how and when an institution determines a major revision is necessary. I would argue that The United Methodist Church is at a point where it requires institutional renovation, not merely maintenance or expansion of its existing institutions. I will elaborate in my next post.

The UMC and Institutional Decline: The Impact of COVID and Denominational Crisis

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.

Having looked at various reasons for the decline of denominational institutions—the unwillingness and/or inability of their constituency to support them and de-legitimization from vested interests—there remains one last set of contributing factors to explore: the impact of crises on denominational institutions, specifically internal denominational conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The basic insight here is that the more institutions fail to serve the purposes for which they were created, the weaker they become. When institutions are unable to produce their intended regular behaviors, it reduces their ability to do the same in the future. Unless skillfully addressed, institutional failure usually begets further institutional decline.

In large part, this is because institutional malfunction delegitimizes institutions by lowering constituents’ expectations and willingness to have their behavior shaped by the institution in the future. Regardless of whether the sentiment on the part of constituents is “That institution won’t work for me” or “I don’t want to work for that institution” or some combination of the two, the result is decreased institutional capacity to shape the behaviors of its constituents.

While such institutional breakdown can happen at any time, crises are particularly fraught situations that make failure more likely.

Unfortunately for its institutions, The United Methodist Church has been in a prolonged crisis in the form of the debate over the place of LGBTQ+ persons in the church. This crisis has undercut the institutions of the church in at least three ways.

First, the conflict between Traditionalists and Progressives in the UMC has led to the polarization of almost everything in the church, including its institutions. Thus, one’s willingness to participate in and give heed to the church’s institutions, from the boards and agencies to the Judicial Council to the appointive process to apportionments, becomes a function of whether one sees those institutions as aligning with one’s own theopolitical stance. Support for institutions is no longer a given part of denominational membership; it is a political statement in an ongoing conflict.

Second, the debate over sexuality has undermined many of the institutions of the denomination because of their failure to resolve the debate. A mutually acceptable for both sides solution may always have been a fantasy, but many institutions within the church have still tried and failed to find such a solution. This includes General Conference, the Council of Bishops, and the Judicial Council. When the highest authorities within the denomination are unable to resolve a crisis, it undercuts the membership’s trust in and expectations of their ability to successfully regulate behavior.

Third, the denomination’s divisions have made it increasingly difficult for any other business to get accomplished. The debate between Traditionalists and Progressives has come to dominate more and more spaces within the denomination, which has reduced the capacity of denominational institutions to produce regular behavior even in matters unrelated to the main debate. There is less time and attention available, so less gets done. This lack of capacity can lead to the inability to carry out even routine other forms of business.

Of course, denominational division is not the only crisis the UMC has faced in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic has added an additional layer of crisis. And, as in discussions of other sorts of institutions in US society and the world, the pandemic has both amplified and accelerated the pressures already facing denominational institutions. Again, this has taken several forms.

Related to the challenges of denominational division, the pandemic has forced the postponement of many denominational meetings. While necessary, such delays have forced United Methodists to devise other means for making decisions and doing work. In the process, it has raised questions about the value of traditional means for doing so. If it’s possible for the work of the church to get done without meetings of the standard institutions (such as General Conference), and if the main function of those institutions is just to serve as a forum for fighting, how important is it really to have those institutions?

The COVID crisis has revealed another way in which institutional weakness begets institutional weakness. Many annual conferences in the United States have struggled over whether and how to issue guidance to their congregations about in-person gatherings and health precautions during the pandemic. Especially in light of the politization of COVID precautions within secular society, denominational leaders have been faced with a tough choice:

On the one hand, annual conference leaders could issue guidance, knowing that some pastors and congregations would not follow that guidance. But issuing guidance that one knows will not be followed (and cannot be enforced) exposes the weakness of an institution: It shows that the institution is unable to produce regular behavior among its constituents. Moreover, if congregations flaunt annual conference guidance in this area without consequence, it emboldens them to flaunt guidance in other areas as well.

On the other hand, annual conference leaders could not issue guidance or issue guidance that leaves decisions up to pastors and congregations. This avoids exposing the weakness of annual conferences’ inability to produce required behavior. But it ends up weakening the institution in another way: By doing nothing, it raises questions among those who would like guidance about why the institution is not doing anything. If the institution is not going to provide guidance during a crisis, what good is it? Why pay for an institution if it is not going to serve you when you need it most?

The result of these overlapping crises is that the institutions of the church emerge weakened. People have fewer expectations that denominational institutions will try to influence their religious behaviors, and people are less willing to go along with those institutions when they do. And this process compounds upon itself: failure begets weakness, which makes future failure more likely, thereby accelerating decline.

Having now surveyed the variety of forces that are currently conspiring against denominational institutions, I will turn in my next post to the question of whether there is anything that could be done to support or strengthen denominational institutions amid such a climate.

The UMC and Institutional Decline: The Time Squeeze

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.

For the past two weeks, I have been exploring reasons why the institutions of The United Methodist Church are in decline, at least in the United States. For the purpose of this analysis, I have defined decline as a reduced capacity to produce regular behaviors among the constituency of the UMC, which is primarily its members.

My previous two posts have looked at choices, motivations, and strategies among United Methodists that have had the effect of weakening institutions, either by reducing the time and effort members choose to devote to them or by delegitimizing them as a source of norms.

For this analysis, I want to look at a series of forces outside the denomination that have reduced the ability of United Methodists to support their denominational institutions, even when they see those institutions as legitimate and are motivated to contribute time, effort, and money to those institutions.

These are forces that originate within the economic and social structures of American society that have left denominational members (and potential members) with less time and energy to devote to the maintenance and continuation of denominational institutions, even if, all other things being equal, they might be interested in doing so.

The key insight here is that many church institutions, from local congregations up through denominational bodies, have traditionally relied on significant amounts of volunteer labor to function. Volunteer labor has supported everything from charitable work to Sunday schools to committees to the two weeks plus prep time it takes to serve as a General Conference delegate. Moreover, much of the institutions of the church are structured around people being able to contribute such volunteer labor on a regular basis. Yet economic and cultural factors have reduced the time and energy available for such regular volunteer labor from several different groups: women, retirees, the working class, and the middle class, especially parents.

While women in the workforce may seem like a given nowadays, it is worth remembering that in 1972, when most of the institutions of the UMC were set, female paid workforce participation in the United States was 44%. For the past two decades, it has been around 60%. The change is slightly more dramatic for married women. This transformation has been about both cultural factors (more opportunities for women) and economic factors (families have increasingly relied on women’s wages to maintain or expand their earning power).

While there have certainly been beneficial aspects to women’s paid employment, more women in the workforce means left fewer women available to serve as volunteers to keep denominational institutions going. It’s one thing to organize Sunday school in your congregation or serve as the treasurer for the annual conference UMW when working in the home. It’s another when working 40-50 hours a week outside the home.

The reduced availability of homemakers as a source of volunteer labor has put greater emphasis on another traditional pool of volunteers: retirees. Yet here too, there have been economic and cultural forces eating into the ability of retirees to contribute their time and efforts to churches and denominational institutions, as older Americans are working longer and filling their retirement years with additional commitments.

After decades of falling, the average age of retirement and the percentage of US residents over 65 in the workforce have been creeping back up in the past two decades. While there are a variety of reasons that older adults might choose to work, financial constraints are one reason. Changes to retirement plans over the past several decades have moved toward less generous benefits and have shifted much of the financial risk associated with saving for retirement toward individuals. Even among those individuals who do retire, the Baby Boom generation has embraced a model of “active retirement,” with increased travel and leisure activities that take them away from regular church commitments.

Economic and cultural developments impacting working adults have also left them less able to contribute the volunteer time necessary to maintain denominational institutions, though for different reasons in different groups.

Working-class Americans have been increasingly alienated from mainline Protestantism, and institutional religion in general, over the past several decades for a variety of social and cultural factors. Yet even working-class people who are part of United Methodist churches may be less able now than in years past to partake in and contribute to the institutions of the denomination.

While life has always been precarious for those among the poor and working classes in the United States, the amount of precariousness has increased in recent decades. Low wage jobs increasingly have erratic and unpredictable schedules, often including work on Sunday mornings, thus making regular participation in church and its institutions difficult. There’s a difference between working a regular shift at a diner that was closed on Sundays in 1972 and working at a fast-food restaurant that’s open seven days a week in 2021, but where you never find out your shift schedule more than a week in advance.

The social and economic safety net to support poor and working-class Americans has also been steadily dismantled over the past four decades. Even where it remains, it has often been made intentionally more difficult to navigate to discourage people from using it. Thus, much of the surplus time and energy of working-class church members may be used up trying to navigate obtuse government and school bureaucracies to arrange the supports they and their families need instead of dedicating that surplus to helping ensure the smooth functioning of church institutions.

Thus, life for lower-income Americans has become increasingly chaotic with fewer supports. Some working-class Americans would likely be interested in being part of United Methodism and its denominational institutions but find themselves unable to pay the time costs involved.

Finally, there are middle-class Americans, who also find themselves with less time and energy, especially with the rise of always-on-call work cultures, increased expectations on parents, and decreased support for families.

There has been a proliferation of think pieces in the past decade about burnout, especially as a phenomenon among middle-class and upper middle-class professionals. This is a group that traditionally might have had the flexibility to take time from their jobs to dedicate to church efforts. Yet new technologies such as laptops and smart phones and increased economic anxieties about middle-class instability, among other forces, have driven these professionals to working more, having fewer “off” hours, and having less mental and physical energy for endeavors outside of work, such as church.

In addition, for middle-class parents, there are increased expectations around active parenting compared to fifty years ago and frequently fewer supports for parents. Moreover, the economic anxieties of the middle class have driven parents to enroll their children in an increasing number of activities, including on Sunday morning, to try to ensure that their child will have an opportunity to get into the right sort of college that ensures the right sort of job that will make a middle-class lifestyle still possible for them. Thus, middle-class parents are run ragged, with little left over to devote to church.

All these economic and cultural forces (combining personal choices and structural pressures) which take more from people and make them responsible for a greater load of their well-being and that of their families leaves all these groups – women, retirees, the working class, and the middle class, especially parents – with less to dedicate to the church. Yet, as discussed in a previous post, denominational institutions, like all other institutions, require time, energy, and money to persist. When time and energy are increasingly squeezed out of people, denominational institutions must suffer.

The forces I have described over the past three posts have operated in the best of times. Next week, I will examine the impact of COVID and other crises on church institutions.

The UMC and Institutional Decline: Opposition from Vested Interests

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.

Last week, I began to explore possible reasons why the institutions of The United Methodist Church are in decline, at least in the United States. For the purpose of this analysis, I am defining decline as a reduced capacity to produce regular behaviors among the constituency of the UMC, which is primarily its members.

Last week, I examined the case for a loss of institutional relevance as a factor in explaining decline. That analysis looked at the constituency of the UMC’s institutions generally, and it focused on the willingness of that constituency to pay the costs of time, effort, and money needed to sustain institutions.

Yet, looking at the constituency of an institution as a whole misses important details. No institution’s constituency is monolithic, and different groups within that constituency will have varying attitudes towards the institution. When a specific group within the general constituency has a unique set of interests in and attitudes towards an institution and the motivation to pursue those interests independently of the interests of the constituency as a whole, that group forms a vested interest within the constituency.

Part of the reason for the decline of UMC institutions comes from the actions of four different (and largely distinct from one another) groups of vested interests and their impact on the perceived legitimacy of the UMC’s institutions. Institutions require not just resources to keep functioning but also perceived legitimacy. Rules, beliefs, and norms are an important part of institutions. But these all require a sense of legitimacy to influence people’s behavior. People largely do not adhere to norms that they see as illegitimate. Thus, a loss of perceived legitimacy leads to institutional decline.

One vested interest within the constituency of an institution is those running the institutions. This is particularly true for institutions as organizations. While in many cases, the interests of those running an institution overlap with the interests of the general constituency, there is also a possibility that an institution may be “captured” by elites running it and, as a result, the functions of that institution may be altered to serve the interests of those elites and not the interests of the general constituency. When that happens, it de-legitimizes the institution and makes the general constituency less willing to pay the costs of maintaining an institution, leading to decline.

This is a favorite critique of conservatives within the UMC of the boards and agencies and of the bishops. According to conservatives, the actions of boards, agencies, and bishops reflect elite liberal interests that are “out of touch” with the general membership of the denomination, thereby making them illegitimate sources of authority. UMW’s continued strong direct financial support by members despite liberal social positions suggests that the critique of elite liberal capture leading to alienation of general membership is not true in all cases, or at least not for the reasons conservatives allege.

Still, that does not mean that insider capture of institutions never occurs. Certainly, bishops and agency executives tend to differ from the general membership of the church in matters such as education and life experience, which gives them different perspectives, and they are closer to and more invested in church institutions than the average lay person. That means that what institutional leaders understand as in the best interests of their institutions does not always align with or make sense to those more peripherally connected to those institutions, who may therefore view leaders’ positions as illegitimate.

Conservatives themselves represent another vested interest within the denomination that has contributed to the decline of its institutions. As suggested above, conservatives object to many of the functions of boards, agencies, and bishops for ideological reasons. Since the formation of Good News in the mid-1960s, conservatives have had a sense that the institutions of the denomination are closed to them and do not reflect their interests.

Therefore, conservatives have been engaged in a long-term effort to de-legitimize many of the institutions of the denomination. The various lines of critique advanced by conservatives against boards, agencies, bishops, apportionments, and other aspects of the denominational infrastructure are well known to those familiar with the UMC.

The impact of this campaign of de-legitimation is that constituents of UMC institutions who are influenced by conservative leaders are less likely to conform their behaviors to the institutions of the UMC, regardless of the nature of those behaviors. In other words, it is not just that conversative-influenced members refuse to participate in particular behaviors they see as objectionable. Instead, because of de-legitimization, they are less likely to cooperate with all aspects of denominational institutions.

The other thing that conservatives have done to undermine the institutions of the UMC is to start alternative institutions. As a result, conservative UMC members have alternatives for shaping their worship, small group, mission participation, conferencing and other church behaviors. To give a concrete example, they don’t need to purchase Sunday School materials from the United Methodist Publishing House; they can buy them from Seedbed.

A third vested interest (or set of vested interests) also feels that the institutions of the denomination are closed to them and do not reflect their interests. This vested interest includes racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities within the church. Unlike the conservatives, however, these groups are generally interested in reforming the institutions of the church to make them more open, rather than tearing them down.

While many no longer remember this, the first action of Black Methodists for Church Renewal was to protest the General Board of Global Ministries and demand that GBGM devote more attention and funding to issues related to racial justice in the United States. BMCR did not want to abolish GBGM or replace it with an alternative mission agency, but they did have a sharp critique of the agency as an institution. One can think of more recent examples in the sorts of critiques of bishops and conferencing advanced by those supportive of gay marriage and gay ordination.

While the intention of these critiques may be to reform rather than undercut institutions, the critiques advanced can still have the effect of de-legitimizing those institutions in the eyes of those sympathetic to the critiques. This de-legitimizing then also has implications for United Methodists’ behavior when they are less willing to pay apportionments or use the church’s logo or allow the mechanisms of General Conference to happen.

A fourth vested interest, one which overlaps at different points with the two previous vested interests, is megachurches. Megachurches, regardless of their theopolitical ideology, have incentives to either actively or passively resist some of the institutions of the denomination.

Megachurches have an incentive to actively resist the frequent change of pastors that is implied by the appointive system and to resist the paying of apportionments, which can be quite expensive for megachurches. While most megachurches do still pay apportionments, they frequently function as exceptions from the general system of itinerant ministry, which has the effect of weakening itineracy as a denominational institution.

Moreover, even when not trying to oppose the institutions of the denomination, the model of megachurches can end up corroding them. Megachurches are built on their own brand, not on the brand of their denominational affiliation. Moreover, megachurches have the funds to create their own resources and programming separate from those offered by denominational institutions. While some megachurches are good about supporting denominational agencies or about sharing their material with denominational networks, conforming to denominational norms is essentially optional for most megachurches, and there are almost always ways in which they do not do so.

That refusal to follow denominational norms is itself a weaking of denominational institutions, but when megachurches are held up as the exemplars of success within the denomination, that further weakens denominational institutions. The implicit message is that there is no need to follow denominational norms in terms of worship, programming, and resources, since some of the most successful churches in the denomination do not do so.

The point here is not to offer a moral critique of any of these vested interests. Depending on one’s theo-political views, the motivations of these various groups will be seen as good, bad, or indifferent. My overall point is simply to point out that the cumulative impact of de-legitimization (and occasional withholding of funds and effort) by these vested interests weakens denominational institutions.

Yet there is another set of significant forces that have been pushing United Methodist institutions towards decline, forces that originate not within the constituency but beyond it. I will examine these forces next week.

The UMC and Institutional Decline: Declining Institutional Relevance

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.

Last week, I explored the decline of institutions, defined as “system[s] of rules, beliefs, norms, and organizations that together generate a regularity of behavior.” I indicated that The United Methodist Church as a denomination is composed of many institutions, and these institutions have experienced decline in the sense of no longer being about to produce the same regular behaviors as in the past, at least not to the same extent as previously.

Yet the question remains: Why have the institutions of The United Methodist Church experienced decline over the past several decades?

To answer that question, it is necessary to begin with an observation: Institutions require resources of time and money to keep running. Although most institutions are set up to continue indefinitely, that continuation is only possible because of the time, effort, and money that humans are willing to devote to the maintenance of those organizations.

A wisely established institution will include the dedication of time and money for its own maintenance as one of the regular behaviors that it seeks to generate. Thus, when institutions are running well, people willingly contribute the time and money necessary to keep them running well, often without thinking much about it.

As an analogy, think about a subscription service. Most subscription services are set to automatically renew every month, with the money being directly withdrawn from your credit card. Netflix as an institution is set up to make your regular financial contribution as easy and thoughtless as possible. While theoretically, you could cancel Netflix at any point, practically, you probably don’t ask yourself every month, “Should I continue to subscribe to Netflix?”

Similarly, while people do need to contribute time and money to the perpetuation of institutions, for the most part, they are not asking themselves every month or year, “Should I continue to put in this time and effort?” They simply do it because of the inertia of habit.

Nevertheless, even when the maintenance of institutions is routine and incentivized by those very institutions, it is still possible for an institution’s constituency to collectively decide that they are no longer interested in doing the work or paying the money to keep an institution going. Or the constituency decides that they’re no longer interested in having their behaviors shaped by that institution and would like to shape them another way. Thus, for instance, people decide they’d rather shop online rather than put in the effort to drive to the mall, and therefore malls as institutions face hard times. Such decisions need not be conscious but can instead be the cumulative effect of many small decisions that over time shape patterns of behavior.

Hence, one possible explanation for the decline in church institutions—from general agencies to the hymnal to the system of itineracy and beyond—is that United Methodists are no longer interested in putting in the effort to keep those institutions going, no longer interested in having their behavior shaped by a denomination, and/or are more interested in shaping those behaviors around other principles (congregational, secular, consumerist, etc.) than denominational ones. In other words, United Methodist institutions have lost relevance with their constituency, which is United Methodists generally.

There is credence to this theory, as a quick review of United Methodist history shows. The institutions of the UMC by and large took on their present form by 1972 and have had only minor adjustments in the 50+ years since then. Prior to 1972, most major church institutions in our denominational predecessors were majorly revised for one reason or another at least every 30 years.

The functions the current UMC institutions were created to perform were all functions that made sense in the world of the late 60s and early 70s. Yet while there has been only tweaking of most church institutions since then, much in the world has changed. Think about how much of the rest of the collective behaviors of US Americans are different than they were in 1972, let alone the relationships among US Americans and other parts of the world. There have been profound transformations in most economic, governmental, political, social, and other institutions since 1972. That there have not been the same profound changes in the institutions of the UMC makes it plausible that these institutions have lost relevance over time.

Moreover, we can think of particular examples of instances in which new institutions have arisen that have provided an alternative and more attractive way for United Methodists to achieve the same ends.

For instance, short term mission trips as an institution have replaced older forms of mission involvement through the sending and support of long-term missionaries. It’s not that United Methodists don’t want to be involved in mission anymore; it is that there are new possibilities for how to do that now that were not as widely in 1972 but have now become available because of technological and social changes in the surrounding world.

Another example might be the increased use of contemporary worship music in US church services, a transformation facilitated through the rise of CCLI as an alternative institution to the hymnal. CCLI was founded in 1988, the year before the current United Methodist Hymnal was published. Over time, the power of the UMH to generate musical behaviors in UMC worship services has declined as the power of CCLI to do so has risen.

In some instances, the services church institutions were set up to provide have largely been taken over by the government, non-profits, or businesses. This transition can represent a successful secularization of church functions, though it still deprives church institutions of their purpose.

As an example, we no longer rely on the church to provide hospitals and retirement homes. While these were an innovative way for the church to care for society when introduced a century or more ago, now these functions are routinely supplied by other sources: government social security and healthcare programs, private hospitals, and secular insurance and retirement investment options.

In other instances, the call for the services provided by church institutions or the willingness of constituents to pay for those services has decreased as a result of social and ideological shifts, within the church and in the world at large.

Thus, for instance, itineracy as a form of ministry service is less attractive now in a world where dual-career households are common than it was 50 or more years ago, when single-income households were much more typical. Social shifts around employment have made the institution of itinerant ministry less attractive for potential ministerial candidates.

As another example, an increased emphasis on choice, customization, and individuality has pervaded American culture in recent decades, affecting everything from how products are marketed to how government-sponsored college savings plans operate. In a world of increased emphasis on choice as an ideology, sticking to the denominational norm for any type of church-related activity is less attractive since it inhibits congregational or individual free choice.

Yet just because decreased relevance to the general constituency is a factor eroding support for denominational institutions does not mean that we should assume that it is the only factor. Instead, in two following posts, I will examine the role of vested interests in the fate of institutions and the role of a constituency’s ability to maintain institutions as a separate issue from its desire to do so.

The UMC and Institutional Decline: What Are Institutions, and What Is Institutional 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.

The United States is, it seems, in a time of institutional decline. There has been a lot of (digital) ink spilled in the last five years about the turmoil in and disruption of political institutions in the United States. But already twenty years ago, sociologist Robert Putnam was writing about the impact of declining social capital on civic organizations and other communal institutions.

As many commentators (Putnam included) have noted, a decline in institutions in general is bad for religion, at least in its institutional variety. Yet it is particularly problematic for denominational religion. Congregations, which are most Americans’ primary connection to institutional religion, are their own set of institutions, but denominations add an additional set of institutions to those of the congregation. Thus, denominations are doubly threatened by institutional decline: It can impact both the denomination and its constituent congregations.

If, then, the United States is in a period of general decline in multiple forms of institutions, that trend is likely to have significant importance for The United Methodist Church as a denomination.

To get a better grasp on what is at stake for The United Methodist Church, though, it is necessary to get a better handle on the scope of the problem: What exactly are institutions, what does it mean for them to decline, and why do they decline?

Historian Patrick Wyman, drawing on the work of economic historian Avner Greif, has defined an institution in this way (https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/what-are-institutions-and-why-are): “An institution is a system of rules, beliefs, norms, and organizations that together generate a regularity of behavior.” While many might think an institution is the same as an organization, Wyman’s definition gives a broader scope.

Applied to the UMC, this definition highlights the wide variety of institutions at work in the denomination. Certainly, the boards and agencies as central organizations count as institutions. But so do things like the appointive system of ministry, episcopal oversight, the paying of apportionments, the practice of conferencing, and The United Methodist Hymnal (1989). Each of these works in its own way to create regular behaviors among United Methodists, ranging from worship to pastoral ministry to finances to mission.

Institutions exist to serve a particular constituency. In the case of denominational institutions, that constituency is ostensibly the members of The United Methodist Church. Yet the issue of identifying an institution’s constituency is actually more complex. There are subgroups within the nominal constituency (say, for instance, clergy and laity in the UMC), and an institution may impact the behavior of those outside of its nominal constituency as well, which may then give them a vested interest in the performance of that institution. For example, the UMC Social Principles (which are a form of institution) are against gambling, which impacts not only United Methodists but also non-United Methodist who may try to expand gambling in an area, only to encounter opposition from United Methodists.

To say that institutions exist to produce regular behaviors is to say that institutions are intended to influence the actions of individuals and groups on an on-going basis. Regularity implies predictability and persistence. In order to “generate a regularity of behavior,” then, institutions are generally set up to continue indefinitely. Changes in behavior make them less regular, so institutions have a bias against change. Institutions are set up to continue; change is in many ways the exception.

One sees this persistence in most of the institutions of The United Methodist Church. Episcopal oversight is not a limited-time practice in the UMC; it’s a central feature of the denomination, intended to persist over time, even as there have been shifts in what episcopal oversight looks like in the 200+ years of American Methodism. Similarly, while the amounts asked and collected in apportionments vary from year to year (or quadrennium to quadrennium), there is no sense that apportionments are going to be a feature of the church for these four years, and then they will stop, to be replaced by something else. Even when it comes to denominational hymnals, where it has been common practice to issue a new hymnal every generation, the concept of a hymnal as a means to shape worship has carried throughout (most) of Methodist history.

Of course, as acknowledged, change does happen to institutions, in big and small ways, suddenly or gradually, because of internal and external factors. Even though institutions are set up to produce regularity, some amount of change is not incompatible with that purpose. The world in which institutions exist is always changing, so it is impossible for those changes not to influence institutions in some ways. Institutions could only be truly unchanging in some sort of abstract, ahistorical sense. Nor is all institutional change is bad for the institution; some change allows them to adapt to continue to serve their function.

Decline, however, is a particular form of institutional change. Institutional decline is a loss of institutional power to generate regular behavior. Institutions decline when they are no longer able to produce the same sorts of behaviors that they have previously or at least not to the same extent.

Hymnals can provide a good example. For most of history, the official denominational hymnal had significant power to shape what sorts of songs Methodist congregations sang; the liturgies used for communion, marriages, and funerals; and even the order of worship services. Yet the denominational hymnal’s role as an institution that sets norms for United Methodist worship behavior has declined. Due to the advent of contemporary worship, a growing recognition of the significance of ethnic and global worship styles, the availability of worship resources online, and other factors, the hymnal is a less significant force in shaping the worship activities of any given United Methodist congregation on any given Sunday. Depending on your view, this development may be good, bad, or indifferent, but regardless of its moral valuation, it represents a form of institutional decline.

At the extreme of institutional decline is institutional failure or institutional collapse. In these cases, an institution completely ceases to exist. Were the United Methodist Publishing House to close permanently without a designated successor organization, that would be an example of institutional collapse. Institutional collapse is the most dramatic form of decline and gathers the most attention.

Yet, while institutional failure is sudden, it is usually preceded by a long period of institutional decline that is the result of subtle shifts that happen over time due to long-standing pressures. To take the example of the Publishing House again, if it ever does close, it will not be a case of brisk sales and comfortable revenues one day and then closed the next. It will be the result of years of falling sales, shrinking budgets, and reduced staffing and capacity.

As the examples of The United Methodist Hymnal and the state of the United Methodist Publishing House suggest, many, perhaps even most, United Methodist institutions are indeed facing decline. Moreover, this decline goes beyond the numeric decline in the number of US United Methodists. It’s not that UMC institutions are in decline because there are fewer US United Methodists to generate regular behavior among. It’s also the case that UMC institutions are struggling to generate regular behaviors among the US United Methodists that remain in the same ways that they have in the past.

That leaves the question of why. The answers, it turns out, are multi-faceted. I will examine them over the course of a series of subsequent blogs.

The Ministry Consequences of Reduced Apportionments

Today's post is the second in a two-part series 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 discussed earlier this week, it is highly likely that there will be a significant reduction in the amount of apportionment money at all levels of the church in the future, due both to proposed reductions in general church apportionments and to protests and possible division in the denomination.

This situation naturally begs the question: What are the possible consequences of this reduction in apportionment funds? I will look at the range of possibilities on two levels: institutions and programs.

Apportionment money goes to support a variety of institutions – some components of the church itself, like annual conferences; some ministries of the church, like boards and agencies, church camps, and collegiate ministries; and some relatively independent but still church-supported organizations, like colleges, hospitals, and social service providers.

One possible impact on these institutions could be that the church (or churches, if there is a division) could decide to reduce the number of institutions it supports that are doing similar work. Thus, the UMC could reduce the number of supported seminaries or the number of episcopal areas, for instance.

The future of agencies no longer supported would vary – loosely controlled agencies like seminaries, hospitals, or colleges could try to continue on their own without church funds. Some might succeed; others likely wouldn’t. Portions of the church like episcopal areas or annual conferences would need to consolidate down to a smaller number.

Another possible consequence could be that the UMC (or its successors) could consolidate institutions with dissimilar but related functions. This option is most likely for general church boards and agencies, where reduced general church apportionments could lead to the return of something like Plan UMC, but this option could also play out at the annual conference level. The idea would be to try to reduce spending through shared services, fewer staff, fewer board members, shared facilities, etc. The amount of savings realized may or may not be sufficient to prevent other types of impacts, but this possibility would likely be combined with other types of cuts.

The model might even look like the unitary board model common in other smaller denominations, wherein the denomination has one board with various departments instead of multiple separate boards and agencies.

A third possible consequence could be that annual conferences or the general church decides to stop supporting institutions that do certain types of work. The church could choose to focus on or prioritize some forms of work and cease funding for others. Again, the implication for the institutions no longer receiving church funds would depend on how closely tied they were to the church and how significant church funds were for covering their overall operating expenses.

A fourth possible impact is that the church (either general church or annual conferences) could expect church-supported institutions to rely more on other sources of funding, perhaps direct giving, grants, or fee-for-service arrangements. This option is most likely for relatively independent church-supported institutions and ministry organizations.

This may or may not be a realistic expectation, depending on the type of institution, the type of ministry it does, and its previous experience with other forms of funding. It is unrealistic to expect an institution that has previously relied entirely on apportionment money to suddenly self-fund, but church institutions like hospitals, colleges, seminary, camps, and social service agencies with previous experience with other revenue streams may be more successful. Such a decision to push for greater institutional self-support may end up being a de facto decision to cut programming at those institutions.

Whether or not it impacts the programming of institutions, the decision to reduce church financial support of institutions will also have the effect of reducing church control of institutions. Control usually follows money, and less financial support likely means less control. That may or may not be a bad thing, either from the church’s perspective or that of the institution.

The final option for the church (either general church or annual conferences) would be to keep the same set of institutions but to expect them to do less, since they would be receiving less funding. That leads to the second level of implications: the programmatic level.

For any institution impacted by the reduction in apportionments, there are a few ways to cope with reduced funding: reducing overall business costs, doing less of the same programs, and doing fewer programs.

One main way of reducing overall business costs is by increasing efficiencies within the institution – finding cheaper paper suppliers, automating tasks, outsourcing IT support, etc. Due to the general business climate and specific financial pressures may church-related institutions have faced in recent years, the search for greater efficiency is already well underway. It is unlikely that institutions could realize a cost savings of 15% (the proposed reductions for some boards) just through greater efficiency.

The other way in which contemporary organizations reduce their overall business costs is by shifting the costs of business onto their employees. This is a general trend in American business and is carried out in many ways – changes to benefit packages, the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, the use of more temporary as opposed to long-term employees, etc. There may be moral reasons why this form of cost-savings is unsavory to the church, but such proposals can often be presented in financial terms that obscure the impacts on employees.

The second programmatic option is to do less of the same thing. Under this option, institutions continue to conduct the same sorts of program, but spend less on them by operating these programs at lower levels – fewer clients served, less staff support, fewer scholarships given, fewer visits by the DS, etc.

Lower levels of inputs likely produce lower levels of outputs and outcomes, though the correlation between inputs and outputs is not always linear. Some programs may have outcomes that depend upon a certain scale, and for these, doing less of the same thing may result in a reduction in outputs that is proportionally greater than the reduction in inputs.

Some programs may also have a minimum size that they need to function based on staffing levels, physical space, or other criteria. There comes a point at which it is not possible to do less of certain programs and still do them in any meaningful way.

When that point comes, it leads to the third possible programmatic consequence: doing fewer programs. Institutions may decide to cut programs because they lack the funds to sustain them at sufficient levels or because they decide to focus and prioritize elsewhere. That saves the institutions money spent on salaries, supplies, services, etc, but means the church no longer try to prevent malaria or support ethnic new church starts or do whatever else happened through shuttered programs.

Again, the church, both at the annual conference and general church levels, is likely to employ multiple of the above strategies for addressing the reduction in apportionment funds. Especially if there is church division, multiple strategies will be necessary.

Moreover, because of the very wide array of church-financed institutions and programs and because of the large collection of decision-making bodies for these institutions and programs, it is impossible at present to say how reductions in apportionments will play out, either in total, or in any particular field.

What is certain, however, is that the connectional and financial troubles of The United Methodist Church as a whole will have dramatic and deleterious consequences for its connectional institutions and ministry programs.

Institutional rigidity and church 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.

In previous posts, I have argued both that the choice between being a movement and being an institution is one in which both options have pros and cons and that institutions tend toward standardization, bureaucratization, and rigidity. Why, though, do institutions tend toward rigidity? Does that tendency mean rigidity is an inevitable con of being an institution? And what can the answers to these questions tell us about denominations in modern America?

First, a definition: Institutional rigidity is characterized by a well-elaborated set of formal structures, fairly tight centralized control, a commitment to existing ways of doing things, and a reluctance to change. Institutional rigidity is thus manifested in structure, practice, and attitude.

While those frustrated with rigid institutions often portray that rigidity as the result of uncaring or sinister leaders or a prevailing legalism, the roots of institutional rigidity stem much more from the incentives of institutional success and the values of modernity than they do from the personal failings of leaders (though those can also play a part).

Non-rigid institutions, by contrast, are characterized by a diversity of practices, policies, and attitudes. Decision making is not well-coordinated, and individual actors often have a large degree of leeway to make their own decisions (for good or ill). There are upsides of such a system: It encourages or at least allows for a lot of experimentation. Many of these experiments will fail, but frequent experimentation also ensures that there will be successes as well.

Rigidity originates when organizations try to capitalize on these successes. Generally speaking, once an organization has identified a pathway to success, it has an incentive to try to build on that model. Success attracts followers, funding, and other resources. Success allows an organization to continue and to grow. Therefore, there are natural incentives for organizations to focus on its successes.

Institutions generally try to build on their successes in a few ways: by implementing the model for those successes throughout the organization, by trying to produce those successes in an increasingly efficient manner, and therefore by trying to produce more of that success.

Note that the value of maximizing organizational success, especially through increased efficiency, reflects some of the values of modernity, which is focused on bureaucratic efficiency, and capitalism, which is focused on continual growth. While the attraction of success may be a universal human experience, modern institutions are conditioned by modernity to respond to that universal desire in particular ways.

Broad, efficient, and increasing implementation of a model for success has certain effects on organizations. In order to ensure broad implementation of the model, organizations centralize control and use that centralized control to standardize their policies and procedures. Such centralization and standardization keeps local units from doing their own thing, thus seeking to promote success and avoid failures (of whatever sort) by those local units.

Centralization and formal structures also result from a desire for efficiency. Formalized structures can facilitate communication and decision-making, thus increasing efficiency. Centralization allows for more streamlined decision-making as well.

In this way, standardization and centralization leads to well-evolved formal structures, but they also lead to marginalization of those who are not part of the newly created (or newly emphasized) center. Those who previously had latitude to make their own decisions (for good or ill) now have some of that decision-making power taken away from them.

Generally, this approach to organization does allow an institution significant power to do more of whatever it defines as success. This success allows the organization to thrive. In the process, the organization becomes dependent upon and committed to this particular model of success.

Yet what is successful for one time or in one place is never successful for all times and places. Eventually, the environment of an organization will change and its efficient, extensive focus on a particular pathway to success will no longer produce success in the way it once did.

When this happens, organizations then have a challenge: can they adapt and adopt a different path to success, or will they decline? Often the rigidity that an institution has developed to ensure its success prevents it from changing strategies once its initial strategy no longer leads to success.

An institution that has not committed itself to a single model of success can avoid the problem of fundamental change to its model necessitated by a changing environment, but the great majority of modern institutions are designed to focus on a single model of success.

How does this very abstract discussion of organizational dynamics apply to denominations? Denominations are, among other things, modern organizations. Therefore, most modern denominations have an operative model of success that was designed to produce organizational continuity and growth. Those models have increasingly been refined through a process of centralization, bureaucratization, and increased efficiency. These processes resulted in increased denominational power but also increased rigidity.

The problem most denominations are facing in contemporary America is that the models of success they adopted were developed for life in the first half of the twentieth century and then refined over the course of the second half of the twentieth century.

Yet American society has undergone tremendous change since the middle of the twentieth century in a variety of ways: dominant economic model (agrarian-industrial-postindustrial), a decline in intergenerational interactions, shifts from rural to urban to suburban, changes in cultural values (including those for sex and gender), an increased sense of individualism, the decline of the middle class, political polarization, etc. The list could go on.

These changes have put significant stresses on all institutions and organizations developed for a different world, from AT&T to religious colleges to the Post Office to Kiwanis clubs to the American auto industry.

Some organizations have been able to adapt and shift their core model of success. Some have not and have ceased to exist. The challenge is substantial, though, since it involves a willingness to let go of what has led to organizational health, which can feel like a dangerous proposition, even when there is some recognition that old strategies are no longer working.

In many ways, organized religion has been on the decline since the 1960s because of changes in its environment. Those analyzing such trends frequently point to theological and cultural reasons why. There may be some truth to such answers, but we cannot fully understand this trend unless we recognize the hazards that American Christians accepted when they decided to adopt a denominational approach to being church that was predicated on the assumptions of modern institutions. Denominations gained great power at the time they made the decision to embrace this model of being church, but they also set themselves up for long-term challenges when their models of success no longer fit the world in which they were living.