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.

Lester Dornon: Reflection on my (Medical) Mission in Nepal

Today’s piece is by Lester Dornon, M.D. Dornon is a missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries, assigned as senior physician at the Tansen Hospital in western Nepal in Asia.

My path towards medical missions started when I was growing up as a missionary’s kid (MK) in Japan. Seeing the hours that my father was away from home counseling young people rather than coming home to play with me, I proclaimed to my mother with as much conviction as a pre-school boy can muster, “I’m never going to be a missionary!” But there is no doubt, when I look back, that the seed of my desire to serve others, to make my life matter, was planted while watching how my parents lived, worked, and served for 45 years in Japan.

My enjoyment of the sciences led naturally to medical school, and a desire to serve took me through family medicine training. God’s call was to serve those who had no one else to care for their medical needs. So, in July of 1990, I found myself in Kathmandu, starting into language studies, in preparation for a term of service in the mission hospital at Tansen in rural Western Nepal. My wife and I even had our two young children in tow! A three-year commitment has now extended into 21 years of service over these past 31 years. It is a good thing that we were not given the long-term plan at the beginning, which would surely have scared us away!

We are sometimes asked how many people we have converted over all these years in Nepal. We don’t think we have “converted” anyone. (It is actually illegal in Nepal.) We have had people say how they appreciated something we did or said that helped them during a difficult time. Often, we don’t even remember doing what they are remembering. This reminds us that even though we speak about our faith when we can, it is God who brings someone to saving faith in Jesus. Our mission is of course to proclaim the Gospel, using words when necessary. Our lives are our message. The incarnational lives we live, by being among those we minister to, living with them and alongside them through their ups and downs, allows God to show seekers what their life might be like as a Christian, and what difference it might make to choose to follow this Jesus.

I believe that just as faith without action is dead (James 2:26), proclamation without service is at best unproductive, and at worst counterproductive, because it hardens the hearts of those who hear us. (“How can we believe in this God of love they speak about, if they don’t even care enough about us to help us in our need?”)

Others might similarly argue that service without proclamation is pointless, since it doesn’t bring anyone to faith if they don’t hear about Jesus (Romans 10:14). But our experience is not so. This hospital, which has served the poor for 67 years, is known as the mission hospital, where help is available for all. The initial missionaries, who were also forbidden to proselytize, left behind a congregation of believers who came to faith in Jesus through the healing ministry in the hospital and through seeing the lives of the Christians.

John Stott wrote, “We are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We live. We go. We serve. And in this we have (or should have) no ulterior motive. True, the gospel lacks visibility if we merely preach it, and lacks credibility if we who preach it are interested only in souls and have no concern about the welfare of people’s bodies, situation, and communities. Yet the reason for our acceptance of social responsibility is not primarily in order to give the gospel either a visibility or a credibility it would otherwise lack, but rather simple uncomplicated compassion. Love has no need to justify itself. It merely expresses itself in service whenever it sees need.”[1]

All service to neighbors can be and is used by God to advance His Kingdom. Yet there is something unique about medical missions. Physical illness or injury causes an immediate and deeply internal anguish, which the healthcare provider can assuage with compassion. And the death, either of oneself or of a family member, is so universally feared, that we all need help in facing it, whatever our nationality or faith. Being there during those times when life is hanging in the balance, doing whatever can be done to help, we have a chance to minister to the deepest needs of a person’s soul. I have truly been blessed to have the opportunity to work in this field.

Yet the longer we are in Nepal, the more I have come to realize that what I do impacts others much less than who I am and how I live. We often complain about the “fishbowl” living that happens here. Nepal is traditionally a very community-based society: every detail of everyone’s life is known to everyone else. It is considered normal conversation to ask what we would consider highly personal questions about income, child rearing, marriage, and personal habits. Those of us from Western countries long to be invisible in the crowd or left alone inside our houses at times, but even what we do at home is often watched, questions asked, and talked about in the community. Even more than how I treat patients and visitors at the hospital, people notice how I treat my family at home, or those who come to our door.

We talk about how all our works will be judged and rewarded at the end times (1 Corinthians 3, Revelations), but in Nepal at least, all our works are scrutinized each day, sometimes every minute of the day, by the people around us who are watching. Some are just curious at seeing a life that is different and novel, but others are looking for a different kind of life, to see if we have something worth listening to our not. Our prayer is often for our actions and words to not get in the way of someone seeing Jesus.

And what better place to show God’s love than in the family? There were four of us when we came, and we added one more while we were here. Now the children are grown and on their own. Some people might say that my family responsibilities took me away from the “real ministry” that was happening in the hospital or in the local church. But I would reply that the priority that I gave to my family, and how I treated my wife and children, especially in dealing with difficulties like discipline, illness or injury, disappointments, or failures, was a much more important ministry than anything else that happened here. Do they want to know about a God who loves them and forgives them? They will be able to believe in him when they see how we forgive each other and love each other even in our failings.

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[1] John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World (London: Falcon, 1975), 30.

Recommended Viewing: Methodist Church of Great Britain Twinning Training

The Global Relations team of the Methodist Church of Great Britain has created a series of training resources for what they call "church twinning," but is also called "sister church" or "sister parish" relationships. These training materials are intended for local congregations with partner congregations in other parts of the world. Many UMC congregations have such partnerships as well. The resources constitute five 10-15 minute long videos, each with discussion questions. The topics covered include "Mission Today," "Money and Power in Global Partnerships," "Sharing Gifts," "Crossing Cultures," and "Race, Racism and Unconscious Bias." The videos are highly recommended for churches looking to improve the quality of their international partnerships.

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.

Rosemarie Wenner: God is on the Move – A Call to be the Church in a New Way

Today's post is by Bishop Rosemarie Wenner. Bishop Wenner is a retired bishop in the United Methodist Church, having led the Germany Central Conference, and is currently the Geneva Secretary of the World Methodist Council.

As I noted in an earlier piece, in my role as Geneva Secretary of the World Methodist Council to connect the World Methodist Council (WMC) with the World Council of Churches (WCC), ecumenism is my daily work. In my previous blog, I discussed new expressions of ecumenism. Now, I would like to turn to the topic of migrants, mission, and ecumenism.

Methodist history has been influenced by migration. In the 18th and 19th century Methodist ministers and lay preachers served those immigrants to what is today the USA. They offered spiritual support to those who settled on the East Coast and accompanied those who went westwards.

German settlers came to personal faith in Methodist congregations in the USA. They became instrumental in sending missionaries to their home country which led to the foundation of Methodist congregations in Germany.

Migration is an opportunity to share Gods love also in our days. According to the 2020 World Migration Report of the International Organization on Migration, in the year 2000, 2.8 % of the world population were migrants, and it increased to 3.5 % in the year 2019. Unfortunately, the growth of refugees is even higher: In 2000, 14 million people were forced to leave their homes; in 2020, 25.9 million people seek refuge in a foreign land, and 41.3 million people are internally displaced.

In several countries, including Germany, discussions of migration have the potential to divide society. Fear of an increase of migration is nourished by the false assertion that migrating people are enemies of the “Christian Occident” because they belong to other religions and potentially bring fundamentalistic Islamic beliefs.

Statistics prove, though, that 55 % of the immigrants to Germany are Christians. Many of them worship in so called migrant congregations. These congregations often operate separately from the well-established churches. If anything, there are only loose links to the national or regional ecumenical councils. Even on a local level we rarely interact in worship and service.

Churches in countries where many people leave for economic reasons or because of conflict or climate change often seek to accompany their migrating people. We see this phenomenon within the World Methodist Council. The Korean Methodist Church established congregations all over the globe. The United Methodist Church in the Philippines responds to the call of the huge number of migrant workers by sending pastors or officially recognizing lay preachers in the Middle East, in Europe, in several Asian countries and in Australia. The United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe formally registered in Great Britain to serve their members in the British diaspora. The Methodist Church Ghana supported the inclusion of Ghanaian Methodist congregations into the UMC in Germany. In North America though, a mission diocese was established.

These migrant churches are outposts for mission, evangelism, service, and advocacy mainly for migrants of the same country of origin. Long established Methodist and Wesleyan churches in the various countries where migrant congregations are formed, though recognizing the spiritual needs and missional opportunities of the migrating siblings, often receive the formation of new Methodist churches as a lack of ecumenical courtesy, if not as offence.

In June 2019, the World Methodist Council organized a Consultation on Migrant/Diaspora Churches at the Heigh Leigh Center near London, UK. Church leaders and practitioners from both migrant sending and receiving countries listened to reports from the various regions and engaged in honest conversations. Those who are long experienced in humanitarian aid and advocacy to refugees and asylum seekers shared experiences with those from countries like Bangladesh or Peru, where the work with refugees is relatively new and often the needs are overwhelming. Stories were shared of mission activities, of struggles to overcome the trauma many migrants face, of gracious ways to support refugees, of pain because of a lack of mutual understanding, and of cooperation and growth in building diverse communities.

The participants worked on a statement: “God is on the Move – a Call to be the Church in a New Way.” It is an invitation to intentionally re-think theology, relationships, and mission in the light of migration and it offers joint principles: Being “in mission together” shall be expressed by “collaboration through partnership and mutual accountability,” “intercultural awareness” and “advocacy and humanitarian assistance.”

Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted efforts to intentionally overcome silos between “old” churches and “new” congregations. Plans to organize round tables to establish formal partnerships had to be postponed. People got stuck when boarders were closed. Online worship services and webinars offer possibilities to connect with home churches, which is well received by migrating people. Yet uprooted people need more then virtual worship services; they need fellowship and accompaniment just where they are right now. This is especially true for migrating children and youth.

COVID-19 increases the vulnerability of migrants and refugees. Immigrants who are illegally in a country do not dare to ask for vaccination. Workers in precarious conditions lost their jobs. Do established churches see the siblings in Christ who are on the move? To be the church in a new way not only calls for acts of mercy, but also for repentance and restauration of those who build their economic wealth and their intellectual superiority on the exploitation of other people and of mother earth.

We have to take into action what the participants of the WCC Conference on World Mission and Evangelism in March 2018 in Arusha, Tanzania, stated, when they called Christians to “transforming discipleship”: “We are called to break down walls and seek justice with people who are dispossessed and displaced from their lands—including migrants, refugees and asylum seekers—and to resist new frontiers and borders that separate and kill (Isaiah 58:6-8).” And: “We are called to follow the way of the cross, which challenges elitism, privilege, personal and structural power (Luke 9:23).”

Whilst we are waiting for opportunities to learn from one another at the World Council of Churches 11th Assembly August 31 to September 8, 2022, in Karlsruhe, Germany or at the World Methodist Conference on the theme “On the Move” postponed to 2023 or 2024, we can intentionally reach out to those who bring Global Christianity to our neighborhoods. Perhaps we might host angels as we create platforms for mutual learning and Christian fellowship (Hebrews 3:2).

Robert A. Hunt: United Methodist Divides as a Site for Interreligious Dialogue

Today’s post is by Rev. Dr. Robert A. Hunt. Hunt is responding to “Love and the Christian Way of Being in the World,” a piece by Don Manning-Miller, which is itself a response to “Lifestyle Evangelism and Moral Convictions” by David W. Scott, which draws on essays by Hunt and by Thomas Lambrecht.

While continued conversation is welcome, Don Manning-Miller’s recent response to David Scott’s piece misses the point a bit – primarily because he’s driving toward a standard of his own, and one long embedded in the conversation of progressives in this regard.

As I read this post, Manning-Miller begins with what seems unassailable: an assertion that love is the fundamental “ethic” that forms Christian ethics. Yet, despite his mischaracterization of Lambrecht’s work, Manning-Miller knows, I think, that the claim of love as an ethic is problematic when everyone claims it.

So, as he ends his post, he acknowledges that making ethical judgments, in particular judgments about those with whom to fellowship is possible, is indeed necessary. Then he offers what seems to an airtight basis for such judgments: Do the ethics of a group cause harm? And of course, he asserts that the ethics of Good News do indeed cause harm.
 
The problem is that the definition of harm is no more obvious and shared among United Methodists than the meaning of love. And this gets us to the real problem. Good News and the WCA operate out of a classical ethic based on attaining the teleos for which each creature, including humans, was created. In this view, that which causes harm is that which prevents a person from reaching the end God has designated for their personhood as a human and as an individual.
 
The progressive ethic, which Manning-Miller expresses, is not teleological, in my view. It is a process ethic in which the name of the process is love and in which there is no particular teleos to be seen. The Reign of God is less an end than a set of values that guide the process. As long as all those engaged in the process of love manifest those values, their behavior is ethical. At best, any discussion of an end or purpose for humankind would be couched in terms of ever-changing forms of human fulfillment. But this fulfillment can’t refer to a true teleos, because it isn’t linked to a genesis.
 
So, Lambrecht could say in perfect sincerity that the ethics of the Good News/WCA/Traditionalist United Methodists doesn’t cause harm, even if it does cause pain. In fact, he could claim their ethic prevents harm by keeping individuals and the church moving toward their divinely appointed teleos, when all those who either refuse their divinely appointed end or hinder others, that is (to quote scripture) “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Rev. 21:8)
 
But for Manning-Miller, this approach certainly causes harm because harm is anything that interferes with the discernment and realization of human fulfillment. Put another way, the concept of harm is embedded in the concept of fulfillment, and a classical and a process understanding of fulfillment are fundamentally different, as are their understandings of the Reign of God.

This fundamental difference between these two perspectives demands the hard kind of dialogue, the kind that is met in real inter-religious dialogue, the dialogue between groups that do not begin at the same place in understanding the nature of reality. Schubert Ogden and Mark Heim recognized this back in the 80’s.
 
The question remains whether those holding the classical view of reality and those holding a process view of reality can find a way within their distinct worldviews to accommodate some kind of cooperation with the very much other. A fair amount of work has been done on this in the world of inter-religious dialogue, but I see no evidence that either the WCA or UM Progressives have thought of one another clearly in these terms.

Thus, neither group has formulated a sensible and internally coherent approach to dialogue with the other, and as a result, both engage in polemic primarily intended to shore up the support of their own faithful while wondering why they keep talking past rather than to each other.

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.