Recommended Reading: Katelin Hansen on the ongoing ministry of deaconesses

Deaconess Dr. Katelin Hansen published an article on UMNews this week entitled "Deaconesses are still here - let's invest in them too!" In it, Dr. Hansen explains the ongoing mission and ministry that deaconesses and home missioners offer to the world through their service as an order of The United Methodist Church. She connects the historical roots of this mission and ministry with its present shape.

As part of that effort, Dr. Hansen offers a corrective to how some of that history was presented in Rev. Dr. Javier Viera's recent article on the mission and ministry of deacons, including its treatment of the Chicago Training School for City, Home, and Foreign Missions, one of the predecessor institutions to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Several UM & Global readers, including Dr. Hansen, raised similar points in comments (public or private) on a previous UM & Global Recommended Reading piece calling attention to Rev. Dr. Viera's article.

Dr. Hansen's article is thus well worth reading both for its own highlighting of deaconesses and home missioners and as part of a larger conversation with Rev. Dr. Viera.

A Defense of My Congregation

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.

One of the unexpected upsides of the pandemic for me and my family has been the opportunity to move back to my hometown, Decorah, IA. Along with that move, I’ve been able to resume my connection to the church I grew up in, First United Methodist Church of Decorah.

Being a part of Decorah FUMC has not only been a nice opportunity to reconnect with people who have been an important part of my spiritual development, it has also been a unique opportunity to reflect on the challenges that have faced American Christianity in the past 25 or 30 years as they have played out in this congregation.

Like many United Methodist churches (and like many churches of other denominations), Decorah FUMC is a smaller and older congregation than it was when I grew up in it. While it’s easy to interpret that statement in entirely negative ways, I think it’s worth saying a word in defense of the church, a word about why the church does not deserve to shoulder all the blame for that change.

I make this defense of my congregation not because I think it is unique, but rather because I know it is not. From my wife’s experiences as a pastor, my knowledge of the ministry of other pastors, my teaching of Course of Study, and my reading of stories about United Methodist and other churches in the United States, I think what is true in Decorah is true in a lot of places. I’m able to make this defense for Decorah FUMC because I know it better than other congregations, but a lot of what I have to say carries across congregations.

Changes in Attendance
Although The United Methodist Church and only mainline denominations have been losing members since the 1960s, Decorah FUMC, like a number of other United Methodist and other mainline congregations, was actually doing really well through the 1990s. Indeed, the 1990s were something of a heyday of members and ministries for several United Methodist congregations that I know, including congregations across the theological spectrum.

Since the 1990s, though, membership and attendance has dwindled, at Decorah FUMC and at most of the other congregations I know for whom the 90s was a heyday. Attendance at Decorah FUMC peaked at somewhere around 120 a week in the 90s. Currently, it’s probably somewhere between 40 and 50 on a given Sunday.

While that drop may seem dramatic, it’s more typical than one might think. One Hartford Institute for Religion Research study found that the median worship size for US congregations across denominations fell by just over 50% between 2000 and 2020. Another recent Hartford study has shown that average attendance has decline by a further quarter compared to pre-pandemic.

Put these two figures together, and one would expect Decorah FUMC to have attendance in the average low 40s these days just based on national trendlines. As dramatic as this drop in attendance figures may seem, it’s not exceptional. It’s normal.

Small and Rural
Both of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research articles cited above make clear that drops in typical attendance have been especially pronounced for smaller churches and churches in rural areas or small towns. Decorah FUMC fits both these categories. Indeed, given the unique challenges of rural and small congregations, Decorah FUMC is doing somewhat better than one would expect.

Rural churches often don’t receive a lot of attention. Most Americans live in suburbs; only 14% live in rural areas and small towns. But 47% of American congregations are in rural areas and small towns. That means while the typical American Christian may be in the suburbs, the typical American church is not.

This is true for United Methodism as well. One of the legacies of the circuit riders is that the UMC has churches in most small towns in America. There are about the same number of UMC churches in the United States as there are post offices. The typical UMC congregation is small and located in a rural or small-town setting.

While detailing all the challenges of rural and small-town life in 21st century America would go far beyond this essay, a pervasive sense of dwindling and decline applies to many aspects of rural life. Businesses close. Young people move away. Schools are consolidated. The population ages and declines. Why should churches be exempt from these trends?

Here, too, Decorah FUMC is indicative of broader trends. Decorah, IA, is in many ways a successful and thriving small town compared to others. But the population has been static since 1980, with a recent dip from declining enrollment in the local college. There are fewer people in the surrounding county now than there were in 1870. In a static to declining population, even maintaining church membership is a challenge, especially given national trend lines away from religion.

This is especially true given the outmigration of people from small towns. Looking through pictures of the confirmation classes from the years my brothers and I were being confirmed, I see that probably 75% of the kids who grew up in Decorah FUMC have moved away. It’s not that other young people haven’t moved to town since, but the experience of moving can be disruptive those with weaker church attachments. Newer young people moving in are less likely to affiliate with a church than the young people who grew up in a congregation but are now moving away.

Focusing on young families (the golden grail of so many churches) reflects another challenge that small churches have. As churches contract, it becomes harder to maintain a critical mass of young families. My family has been the only young family in some churches we’ve attended, and my kids have been the only kids under 10 in those churches. It can be rough.

For parents who care about passing on the faith to their kids, there is an incentive to switch to another church with more kids and perhaps a Sunday school. Even when I was in high school, the attraction was palpable of the larger, Lutheran youth groups when compared to the small band of Methodists. I know other families in Decorah who were connected to First United Methodist Church but switched to other churches than still had a larger attendance so that their kids would have age-level peers in church.

Exegeting the Experience
Am I making excuses and saying that it’s okay that membership and worship attendance at Decorah FUMC have dropped? No! I sincerely wish it was different. It breaks my heart to see the congregation a fraction of its former self, especially because I know the faith of those who have been a part of the congregation and the good work that the congregation has done.

What I am saying is that I don’t think we should place all the blame for these changes on the congregation itself. Has the congregation made mistakes in the past 25 or 30 years that have cost it members? Sure. Every organization makes mistakes, and the congregation and its ministers have made mistakes too.

But the congregation has also done things right and tried new things in the past 25 or 30 years, things that the experts say should lead to growth and vitality. They experimented with a new, non-traditional worship experience. They’ve been heavily involved in their local community. People are willing to talk about their faith. They have welcomed new members. When I look around on Sunday, a good portion - probably between a quarter and a third - of the people in the pews were not yet there when I was growing up.

And many of the factors affecting the congregation are far beyond its control. It cannot control the educational, economic, and cultural incentives that make young people decide to leave town. It did not control the 2019 General Conference, though its outcome did cost the church members. It certainly didn’t control the COVID pandemic, though that’s been the most disruptive impact on church attendance in living memory. And, while everyone bears some responsibility for the larger cultural shifts away from church attendance and membership, it is unfair to hold individual congregations responsible for solving a problem that US Christianity as a whole has not been able to.

Decorah FUMC is a good congregation, and it has done good ministry and continues to do good ministry, even as its numbers have declined. And as hard as it may be to see empty pews, what’s even harder is to see good, faithful people feeling like they have failed because of those empty pews.

Yes, evangelism should be a practice and a value of the church. But to fault every congregation that is not growing amidst a tidal surge in the opposite direction, especially congregations in areas with real demographic limitations to growth, is cruel. We cannot expect every congregation to be like those in growing suburbs. And to insist that they must is to abdicate responsibility for really engaging with the reality of nearly half of American congregations.

Nor is it productive to make congregations feel bad because they have fewer members. No one wants to join a floundering or failing organization. Telling congregations that they have failed because they have lost members is counter-productive to the goal of bringing in new people. Christianity is about good news, not about fulfilling obligations even though the experience is sort of a downer.

To continue to reach new people, we need to focus on what goes right at our churches, not just what goes wrong. So, in my next post, I’m going to write an appreciation of Decorah UMC and celebrate the things that go right there, and in so many other United Methodist congregations in the United States.

Claudio Pose: The Pastoral Ministry in the Dynamics of Mission

Today's post is by Rev. Claudio Pose. Rev. Pose is a pastor 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 Bible provides us with abundant material on the image of the shepherd. The context of a rural culture of antiquity, in which shepherding flocks was a common and well-known task, make this figure a pedagogical resource to explain, for example, God's love and care for God’s people. Since the Old Testament, God appears as a shepherd (Ez 34:31). In the New Testament, Jesus declares himself a shepherd (Jn 10:14). Shepherding implies caring for and guiding the flock (as in Ps 23). One can also note that references to the flock may include groups and persons not contained in the immediate group (see Jn 10:16).

The church took the figure of a shepherd from the Scriptures to refer to ministry in church communities, although the New Testament testifies to the use of other figures taken from the culture: elders, teachers, etc. Although some versions translate the word pastor on several occasions, only in Ephesians 4: 11 do we find an explicit mention of the figure of the pastor as a ministry in the congregational task.

The theological controversies of the first centuries within the Church strengthened the figure of the pastor as a doctrinal authority responsible for the administration of the sacraments, to guarantee that those people recognized by the community determined what was correct, amidst the disputes and interpretations that abounded.

The Middle Ages concentrated the regulation of “sacred matters” in the ordained ministry, producing a priesthood of mediation between the people and God. The Protestant Reformation confronted this idea by upholding the universal priesthood of all believers.

Methodism, as a movement that emerged within Anglicanism, maintained the criterion of the ordained ministry and the universal priesthood of believers. However, the plasticity with which Wesley responded to each new challenge led him to maintain the tension between respect and recognition for the ordained ministry of the Church of England and the need to provide answers to the enormous number of people who joined the ranks of Methodism.

In the colonies of America, the process was different, and the arrival of independence posed new challenges that included the ordination of ministers. Although the functions of the elder continued in accordance with Anglican precepts, new ministerial figures emerged for preaching, teaching, and spiritual guidance of communities.

From this background of the rich heritage of the universal church, Latin American Methodism was nurtured, particularly, from the model brought by the missionaries from the United States. Along with their theological training and Methodist identity, but the missionaries also brought their lifestyles and their cultural baggage, which were not always easy to differentiate from the contents of the gospel. I remember in my early adolescence during a congregational assembly, listening to a brother defend the idea that it was necessary to bring missionaries from the United States because together with the wisdom of their faith and their formation, they brought us a lifestyle that we needed. Theology, culture, and even ideological values seemed to be a single package.

The appearance of local seminaries in Latin America produced groups of pastors formed in the light of theological traditions, coming from the northern hemisphere, but now with an eye on the vernacular challenges. Starting in the sixties of the last century, this search for a dialogue between the problems of our continent and our communities became more evident. The nascent processes of autonomy simultaneously accompanied and enriched the process.

New times for mission and ministry

As has been stated in previous articles, the mission of the church in these times requires a review and rethinking. Pastoral ministry is an expression of the mission of the church. This is the order. In its Constitution, the Argentine Evangelical Methodist Church defines ordained ministry as follows:

“The Argentine Methodist Evangelical Church recognizes the universal priesthood of believers, as well as the need for an ordained representative ministry, called by God and authorized by the Church for specific functions of the same.” (Art. 7, sub. 3)

The ordained ministry is an expression of the universal priesthood and is representative of it, as well as of the connection of the church. It immediately clarifies that it is for specific functions, so that there is no way to confuse representation with substitution, a phenomenon that we will address below.

In the present, one may detect some tensions produced by the expectations that exist about ordained ministry in the framework of churches with difficulties in rethinking its mission and functioning. In addition, the ordained ministry has traditionally been formally trained in theological institutions and supported, partially or totally, to guarantee greater time dedicated to such tasks. All this appears up for debate in the present. The possibility of revising traditions and purposes is always something beneficial. The question to take into account is where we carry out the debate from.

Next, we present four descriptions of mission and pastoral ministry.

The pastoral ministry as a substitute figure. As stated above, there is an idea rooted in the communities that the pastor concentrates the responsibility for the mission of the church, transferring the universal priesthood from all the believers to one person. The enthronement of the pastor as a kind of “ideal believer” is an underhanded demand that no person, minister or layman, can bear. In some cases, this phenomenon has reached the pastoral family, causing an unbearable burden on spouses and children.

The characteristic of the pastoral task. The General Regulations of the Argentine Methodist Church define the pastoral task as follows: “The elder is an ordained minister for the proclamation of the Word, the direction of worship, and the administration of the sacraments, and to train, guide, and serve the Church in the fulfillment of its mission in the world, through teaching, pastoral counseling, and leadership.” (Article 701)

Ordination encompasses the task of proclamation, direction of worship, and administration of the sacraments. It then indicates that it enables, guides, and serves the church in the fulfillment of its mission in the world. It is important to highlight these last two elements: it is the whole church that must fulfill the mission, and it has the world as its objective.

Pastoring in a continent torn by inequality. In the situation of Latin America, where millions of people are condemned to possess the image and likeness of God disfigured by the conditions in which they are forced to live, it is necessary to ask: What is the shepherd’s flock? What are the limits of pastoral action? Do we limit the pastoral task to the administration of sacred matters, when human life, the most sacred thing, is at risk? These questions touch not only on the scope of the pastoral role, but the entire mission of the church.

The need for a trained pastoral ministry. To the extent that we can understand that the diversity of gifts and services in the church also allows us to discover the diversity of ministries, this will not blur the function of the ordained ministry. David Bosch investigates the relevance of the ordained ministry in the mission of the church and states about the pastoral role, “the guardian who helps the community remain faithful to the teachings and practices of apostolic Christianity. … The priesthood of the ordained ministry exists to facilitate, not to remove, the priesthood of the entire church.”

These times require spiritual, social, political, and cultural discernment. That is why there is a need for an ordered ministry prepared with the tools that make adequate accompaniment of communities possible. Jesus demanded that trained religious leaders be able to discern the times because the church's agenda is in the world and not inside church buildings.

“The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.’” (Mt 16:1-3)

Questions for reflection

• If the mission of your congregation has already been discussed, you could now discuss what pastoral ministry would be appropriate for that mission.
• What other ministries does the community have? Discuss how to train and support them. Why is pastoral work important in these ministries?
• What challenges does the neighborhood or city in which the community is located pose?

Recommended Reading: Robert Hunt on a Chaotic Future

Frequent UM & Global contributor Robert A. Hunt has written an insightful piece on United Methodist Insight entitled "The Future is Chaos." In it, he notes the increasingly unpredictable nature of the social, cultural, and political future of the United States and the ways in which current Christian clergy have been ill-prepared to respond to that future. The solution, in Hunt's analysis, is to promote more entrepreneurial and creative approaches to pastoral ministry, a process that will require participation not only by individual pastors but also by church leaders and theological seminaries. Hunt offers hope that if the church is able to shift its approach to pastoral ministry in this way, the result will be not only greater faithfulness, but greater resilience amidst the chaos.

After the Pandemic, Pastors Are Done Enduring Ministry

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 suggested that after the pandemic, people are done enduring wrongs. While that piece was primarily focused on movements in broader society, I connected this thesis to the church too. I wrote that, while there is an opportunity here to join in work toward the kingdom of God, "[f]or some, the things that they are no longer willing to endure are connected to the church." I want to explore that suggestion further in this week's post and a following one next week.

This week, I'd like to explore what it means that for some pastors, the things that they are no longer willing to endure are connected to their roles in and experience of church, and thus, after the pandemic, an increased number of pastors are done enduring ministry.

First, I must say out that I am far from the first to point this trend out. There has been a series of articles over the past year in both religious and secular press describing the exodus of pastors, including these sources: The Alabama Baptist, Kentucky Today, Religion News Service (also reprinted in The Christian Century and USA Today), ChurchLeaders.com, Lifeway Research, Business Insider, and Christianity Today. More citations could be added too.

It seems like this exodus of ministers is being driven by fall-out from a combination of the top headlines of last year: the COVID-19 epidemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the extremely contentious election cycle. All of these stories have made pastoral work harder, and misinformation related to the first and third of these stories has further added to pastors' challenges. The cumulative effects have been stressful and have left pastors asking questions about their place in the church.

The pandemic involved significant stress for pastors in figuring out what to do in the face of church shut-downs and how to do it, how to made decisions about remaining closed or reopening, and how to navigate the organizational dynamics of congregants' opinions on questions about reopening and COVID-19 precautions. Questions about how to meaningfully address racial conflict in the United States, especially when such issues are polarizing to (white) congregations, added to pastors' stress. Then trying to promote Christian love in a political climate of extreme division made the job more complicated, especially for pastors serving politically mixed churches.

In each of these instances, these issues presented large, complex challenges that required significant adaptation and presented no easy solution. In many instances, pastors felt alone in trying to navigate these challenges. Thus, the substantial stress of responding to such issues has been enough to leave some pastors wanting a break.

But these issues also raised questions for many pastors about their relationship to their congregants and denominational leaders. Pastors risking COVID infection for themselves and, sometimes, their families to do ministry wondered whether congregants or denominational leaders cared whether they got sick. Pastors asked whether their white congregants were more attached to white supremacy than they were to Jesus' gospel of love for people of all races and nations. Pastors watching their congregants write vicious or false things on Facebook, either about the election or the pandemic, questioned how that fit with the Christian message of truth and love. Pastors wondered whether denominational leaders would support them in conflicts with their congregations over any of these issues and sometimes felt that those leaders did not.

These questions also undercut pastors' willingness to endure the challenges of ministry, challenges which were usually significant pre-pandemic, but which have only grown in the last year and a half, as described above. Why endure the stress if those for whom you worked didn't care and your work wasn't going to change people's actions or hearts anyway?

So, an increased number of pastors have decided that they are done. They have left or are leaving ministry.

This trend seems to be impacting pastors across the theological spectrum, in different denominations and polity systems, and in different geographic areas (as indicated in the breadth of news sources quoted above). Varying age ranges are also involved, though anecdotal evidence collected by my wife suggests that the trend is especially pronounced among pastors in their 30s and 40s and among women. While many factors are likely at work, this group includes parents of school-aged children, some of whom are also caregivers for older relatives as well, both groups negatively impacted by the pandemic. Women in particular have borne a significant amount of the pandemic-related parenting stress.

While the resolve and faith of those pastors staying in ministry is certainly to be praised, we must be careful about treating those who choose to leave as "failures" or their complaints as unimportant. Such responses lack compassion and seek to justify oneself. Decisions to leave reflect real issues in the church laid bare by the last year, and these departures will have real impact on churches. We as the church must take both seriously and seek to learn from them, rather than write them off.

What implications does this trend have for churches? I see several.

1. Increased difficulty for congregations seeking a pastor. The number of congregations, while shrinking overall, does not seem to have reduced as sharply as the number of pastors in the past year. Thus, fewer pastors = fewer possibilities of filling open pulpits. This trend will play out in different ways in denominations with call vs. appointment systems, but it will impact them both. This impact will be manifest immediately.

2. Increased pressure on struggling congregations to close. There is already pressure on such congregations. Small, impoverished, or dysfunctional congregations will have the greatest struggles attracting new pastors and had the most significant pre-pandemic challenges. If they are unable to find pastors, that creates yet another incentive for them to close their doors. While the pressures may be immediate, the resultant closures are likely 2-5 years down the road.

3. Disruption of leadership pipelines. Especially if it proves true that a disproportionately high number of early- to mid-career pastors are leaving, that means that there will be fewer pastors to develop into leaders for large congregations and denominational positions. This impact won't be felt immediately. Instead, it will become increasingly manifest in the next 5-15 years.

Thus, the impact of the pandemic on clergy supply in the United States will last much longer than the pandemic itself, serving as a drag on Christian ministry for years to come. Clergy are not and should not be solely determinative of the health of Christianity, but it would be foolish to pretend that clergy leadership does not matter to the quality of the church's mission and ministry.

While these forces pushing pastors away from ministry are cross-cutting, there is something that congregations and denominational leaders can do. Pastors that feel supported by their congregation and their denominational leaders are less likely to leave. Tangible support can reduce stress levels from responding to the pandemic and other social forces, and the existence of support reduces the questions pastors have about their relationships to their congregations, colleagues, and supervisors. Pastors are often looked to as sources of love and comfort, but they need these mercies as well.

Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma - African Women and Mission, Part I

Today’s post contains remarks prepared by Rev. Jacqueline Ngoy Mwayuma for the panel “African Women and Mission” at the Methodist Mission Bicentennial Conference. Rev. Mwayuma is administrative assistant to Bishop Mande Muyombo of the North Katanga Episcopal Area. Rev. Mwayuma’s remarks are translated from French.

Introduction and History
In debates about "feminism," too often one confronts abstract and simplified theses. It is worth the trouble of going to the field to see how things went yesterday and go today. Despite their marginalization, African women are creators and actors in several sectors: social, economic, political, religious and cultural. A woman’s identity is more determined by roles in the secular social that limit her rather than by her understanding and acceptance as a child of God who can exercise ministry in the world.

Most of the statistics available today report the presence of three women among every five missionaries, all countries considered together. That is to say, that the role of women in the mission is far from negligible. However, it has not always been so, as a quick historical glimpse highlights.

During the post-Reformation period, Christian missionaries emphasized the family. Women going out in mission had, as their primary responsibility, to care for their homes and to support their husbands in prayer (1 Corinthians 14.33 -36).

The difficulties faced by women in the mission of the church in Africa start with the fact that the acceptance of the missionary woman was not easy in the society where she worked.
Within African society, in a traditional approach, women could neither teach men nor exercise any authority over man. Another more current approach states that the woman could teach, but she was not allowed to occupy a position of authority.

The woman was poorly perceived by those around her, which points to discrimination on the part of men. Women encountered serious depression in the face of cultural arrangements where women in primitive society were considered second class.

On the one hand, knowing that a leader is necessary and that one has the gifts for assuming this function, but that the leadership role has not been offered because one is a woman, led to a lot of frustrations.

On the other hand, accepting such a position in a cultural situation where the woman did not usually occupy a place of leadership can cause strong tensions that will often be very difficult to manage. A woman assigned to a leadership position in mission can easily be judged badly, even by her own colleagues. If she makes an error, it will be judged more severely than a male colleague occupying the same position. If under her direction certain aspects of the work are not as satisfactory as expected, the fact that she is a woman will often be blamed, sometimes quite wrongly.

After several decades, the missionary movement had a great impact in Africa, where women played a large role in this mission, in accordance with the opinion that men and women are equal according to Galatians 3:28.

Men and women, youth and adults, rich and poor, all have understood their baptism as the basis for service in the Christian ministry. Historically, the Methodist movement has given women the opportunity to assert their callings to their duties and to ensure roles of ecclesial leadership for them.

Thus, The United Methodist Church in Africa involves women in all activities – evangelical, spiritual, material, financial and social. Therefore, in Africa, women perform all the same functions as a man; they are actively involved in the functions with which they have been entrusted, according to their gifts.

Over time, the opinion that men and women are equal in the church is spreading more and more nowadays, especially within the major denominations: Reformed, Methodist, Lutheran, and others. This is how John Wesley, the organizer of the Methodist movement, used the biblical foundation to encourage all people.

The church is aware of the importance of the contribution of women to its mission in Africa, which would be less dynamic, less ready to welcome education and generous service without them. They have helped the African church to clarify the understanding of proper service due the power of evangelism. This is particularly true from the point of view of dedication, self-giving, welcoming, listening, concrete attention to people small and large, rich and poor. It is a perspective capable of helping people to challenge certain mental patterns, prejudices or ways of understanding and to organize ecclesial life.

The challenge today in Africa is to give many more places to women in the management of ecclesial affairs. The voice of women continuing the mission must be heard in the same way as the voice of men, because the church is not for men only but also women, especially in Africa where our churches are 70% filled with women.

Bibliography
Mady Vaillant, “Les femmes dans la mission,” Fac-Réflexion 49 (1999), 24-36.

Ruth A. Tucker, “A Historical Overview of Women in Ministry,” Theology News and Notes (Fuller Theological Seminary, March 1995), quoted by Dr. Saphir Athyal.

E. M. Braekman, Histoire du Protestantisme au Congo, (Bruxelles: Librairie des Eclaireurs Unionistes, 1961).

Delia Halverson, Kabamba Kiboko, M. Lynn Scott, and Laceye Warner, Women Called to the Ministry: A Six-Session Study for The United Methodist Church, (Washington, DC: General Commission on the Status and Role of Women, The United Methodist Church, 2015).

Leevy Frivet, “Femmes pasteurs et femmes de pasteurs: Porte-voix des femmes,” Gender Links (March 30, 2013), https://genderlinks.org.za/classification/themes/femmes-pasteurs-et-femmes-de-pasteurs-porte-voix-des-femmes-2013-03-30/

The United Methodist Church, Le Quotidien du Défenseur Chrétien, Vol. 2: Ministères Globaux (Nashville, TN: [n.d.]).

United Methodist Connectional Ministry and Content (Un)Bundling

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 my previous piece, an overview of the United Methodist apportionment system, I argued that apportionments could be thought of as “United Methodist subscription fees” rather than as “church taxes.” Apportionments are a way in which local churches buy into the set of services and ministries that The United Methodist Church, through its annual conferences, boards, and agencies provides. Most of these services and ministries are ones that individual congregations could not provide on their own.

Yet, as detailed in that piece, the apportionment system is in significant flux as the GCFA board has recommended a significant cut to the amount of general church apportionments and as United Methodists explore possible divisions and reconfigurations of the denomination as a whole in the wake of General Conference 2019.

The possibility of denominational division in particular raises significant questions about how and what connectional ministry will be financed in the future. Will boards and agencies go with one portion of the current church into a successor denomination? Will successor denominations pick and choose to support particular boards and agencies, which could be shared across denominations? Will annual conferences pick and choose? Will individual churches?

Thinking about apportionments as subscription fees allows us to think about the possible funding futures for connectional ministries in a helpful new way: through the metaphor of content bundling.

Content bundling has long been a practice, first in cable television and now through streaming services. The notion in content bundling is that users purchase access to a “bundle” of content – movies, TV shows, etc. They can then choose which programs to watch from among that bundle without having to pay further fees. Nobody watches the whole bundle, and there is always content that any given user would not have paid to have access to, but overall the bundle approach provides for a wide array of options at lower cost for the individual viewer and reliable revenue streams for the content producer.

Almost as long as there has been content bundling, there has also been debate about “unbundling”: giving users greater discretion to pay for specific content or types of content. Unbundling allows consumers to decide whether they want to pay for HBO or save money by not subscribing, but it also allows producers to charge more for unbundled services.

The ultimate in unbundling is the pay-per-view approach, wherein the consumer pays for each individual piece of content she or he views. Rather than subscribing to Amazon Prime and having access to all the content included as part of that price, she or he pays $2.99 to rent individual movies through Amazon.

The apportionment system has been the ultimate “bundling” approach to connectional ministry for United Methodists. Local churches have paid one apportionment fee and then had access to all of the ministry content available through districts, annual conferences, jurisdictions, and the general church. Yet the connectional ministries of The United Methodist Church were a bundle: local churches could either buy into all of them or none of them. The same is less true for the relationship between annual conferences and the general church, since annual conferences have more discretion over which general church funds they pay into, but the principle remained one of bundling.

One way to interpret the time of change that The United Methodist Church is going through is that it is an unbundling of the United Methodist package. In the future, it is likely that congregations or annual conferences will have greater freedom to select which components of United Methodism they want to buy into, in both affiliation and financial senses.

Much of the discussion I have seen thus far has assumed this unbundling will lead to a complete pay-per-view approach: This group will want to support that particular board, or perhaps even that particular program. The notion is that churches/annual conferences/denominations would evaluate each individual institution and/or program and determine whether they wanted to support that particular institution/program.

Yet unbundling does not necessarily mean no bundles. It is possible for unbundling to mean the breaking up of a larger bundle into various smaller bundles. Instead of one cable price, there is the basic cable bundle with a variety of additional optional packages: the sports package, the premium package, the movie channel package, etc.

Thus, if United Methodism is becoming unbundled, perhaps the question to ask is what smaller bundles of United Methodist services and ministries will congregations or annual conferences be able to choose from? Is there a basic bundle of United Methodism? Will annual conferences offer bundles of services and ministries for local churches to choose from and financially support, or is the annual conference the basic bundle of United Methodism?

On the general church level, is there a financial/administrative bundle that consists of services from GCFA and Wespath? Are the monitoring services of GCSRW and GCORR part of the basic administrative bundle, or are they an add-on? What sorts of bundles exist for mission? Is Global Ministries and UMCOR its own bundle, or are there other components to mission added into the bundle – perhaps new church starts at Discipleship Ministries? Is there an educational bundle with GBHEM, the Ministerial Education Fund, the Black College Fund, and the Africa University Fund?

Does this metaphor of content bundling help us think in new ways about international relations within United Methodism? Is participation in General Conference part of the basic bundle, or is it an optional add-on? Can General Conference itself be unbundled so that groups can choose to participate in some portions of collective decision-making and not others?

It seems that this ministry bundling approach to United Methodism has a couple of advantages for both local congregations/annual conferences on the one hand and annual conferences/general boards and agencies on the other.

The advantage for local congregations and annual conferences of buying into bundles rather than individual programs is the same as it is for content viewers: it allows for low-cost exploration of new content. Congregations and annual conferences can be exposed to new forms of ministry through United Methodist ministry bundles that they may not have considered previously but may be interested in exploring, especially if they can do so in a cheaper and easier way.

For annual conferences or boards and agencies offering the bundles, bundling their programming provides for greater predictability and reliability in their income, which translates into greater freedom to develop new forms of ministry.

In other words, for both those selecting bundles and those offering bundles, ministry bundling is a way to encourage innovation, exploration, and development of new ministries. Bundling is a way of keeping the church open to being led in new directions in God’s mission rather than being confined to the status quo of what is already popular. Thus, there are significant missional and theological grounds why bundling could be a good idea.

Of course, bundling will not solve all the church’s financial problems. My next piece will look at the consequences reduced apportionment funds could have at both the annual conference and general church level.

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.

Report on GBHEM Colloquy on Missio Dei and the United States

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

I had the honor of participating earlier this week in the Colloquy event organized by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. The colloquy was a meeting of United Methodist seminary professors and bishops (and me). The theme for this event was "Missio Dei and the United States: Toward a Faithful United Methodist Witness." I will provide some reflections on the colloquy as I experienced it. These, of course, will not reflect the experiences of all others at the event.

As the colloquy began, there was confusion about the purpose of the event. The stated goal of the colloquy was "to engage United Methodist scholars and bishops in constructive dialogue that will open new pathways in our understanding and faithful practice of the Missio Dei. During the colloquy, participants will explore the future of the church from a missional perspective, and examine how to reengage our Wesleyan heritage to participate in the Missio Dei."

Because of the phrase "the future of the church" and because the first GBHEM colloquy in the spring was directly tied to the work of the Commission on A Way Forward, many participants and attendees assumed that this colloquy was also intended to be directly tied to the Commission's work and the status of LGBTQ+ persons in the church. GBHEM staff clarified that this colloquy was not designed to feed into the work of the Commission; the bishops had asked for it as a separate resource for the UMC in the US.

In part because of this confusion, there were at least four different conversations happening within the colloquy: a conversation about the status of LGBTQ+ persons, a conversation about decline and pathways to revitalization in the denomination, a conversation about the general theological content of missio Dei as a term, and a conversation about specific practices of mission and ministry or specific applications of the concept of missio Dei. These four conversations frequently intersected but were nonetheless to some extent distinct.

Moreover, within these four conversations, participants spoke with a wide variety of voices based on their social location, theological presuppositions, contexts of ministry, racial and ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and personal scholarly interests. Again, there were intersections, but participants at times seemed to struggle in articulating convergences among the many voices.

What emerged instead were three broad areas of concern, articulated by Dr. Anne Wimberly: polity, especially as it relates to the roles of LGBTQ+ persons in the church; theology; and practices of ministry. While GBHEM will continue to process the insights shared around these three points, there did not seem to be overriding consensus on what the missio Dei meant for the future of The United Methodist Church within these three areas.

Two other points of convergence did, however, emerge, though not around the meaning of missio Dei or a shared vision for the future of the church.

The first point of convergence was an appreciation to GBHEM for having brought together this group of scholars and bishops for conversation, even if those conversations were at times difficult and painful. Many participants affirmed the need for the academy and the church to be in deeper relationship and more frequent conversation with each other.

The second point of convergence was around a spiritual posture implied by missio Dei, one of humility and listening. These two points came up frequently in discussions around all three broad topic areas: polity, theology, and practices of ministry. Humility and listening are not a program in any of these three areas, but they are perhaps an important prerequisite for hearing and responding to the missio Dei.

Relationship, humility, and listening may not seem like much, and for those who were hoping for specific programmatic recommendations or a shared theological framework to come out of the colloquy, it may have seemed like a failure. Yet we should not scorn such elements of deepened spirituality. They may indeed be exactly where God is leading us in God's mission.