According to United Methodist News Service (UMNS) there are two proposals that hover near the top of the controversial list for the conference.  One calls for restructuring the denomination by, among other things, consolidating nine of the church’s 13 general agencies into a Center for Connectional Mission and Ministry under a fifteen member board.  The other would end job guarantees for ordained elders. 

      UMNS does not mention the elephant in the room, namely, homosexuality, as at the top of the controversial list.  Issues around the practice of homosexual practice, the church’s understanding of family, and moral standards in general have the potential to fracture the denomination.  But that is another discussion.

      The matter of restructuring does not generate a lot of interest among common ordinary United Methodists, but it does among church leaders and those in the church’s bureaucracy.  Questions have been asked as to an evangelical response to the “controversy.”

     Some comments:

     1)  Evangelicals would agree that restructuring is greatly needed at this time in The United Methodist Church.  Of course evangelicals have said restructuring has been needed for the past 40 years.  The 1972 restructuring, which came about in the wake of the Methodist-EUB merger, institutionalized the radical social agenda of that day.  The church adopted doctrinal pluralism, mandated social engineering by way of quota systems, created independent superboards, depreciated evangelism at the expense of social action, created impossibly huge and expensive boards of directors for the agencies (Global Ministries originally had 160 directors), and sought to reform the nation by passing and publishing a Book of Resolutions where the church (primarily the agencies) could pontificate about the social issues of the day (the book is now 1,084 pages long).  The underlying assumption of the new structure seemed to be that the realUnitedMethodistChurch was to be found in its boards and agencies and the local church existed to support those agencies. 

      Since that time, and under the 1972 structure,UnitedMethodistChurchin theUnited Stateshas lost 3.3 million members.  As has been pointed out, if the church were a corporation run by a competent board of directors, the leadership of the church would have been fired and the corporation re-organized several times by now.  Finally, within the past few years, the church is facing up to its problems.  With or without restructuring, the agencies are facing a 6.5% cut in funding.  Staff has already been reduced from 3,139 in 1971 to 1,384 in 2010.  The average age of aUnitedMethodistChurchmember is 57.  Faced with these facts, the Connectional Table and the Council of Bishops ordered some independent studies to assess why our present way of doing things is not serving us well.  The studies came back with such conclusions as, for example: the agencies are out of touch with local churches; the boards of directors are too big (and costly); there is duplication of efforts.  Out of the studies came a Call to Action report laying out principles and a process.  Out of the Call to Action process has come an Interim Operations Team (IOT) which has prepared the legislation for General Conference. 

      2) The proposed legislation calls for combining nine of the program agencies into four “ministry centers” (a new word for a general agency).  Over the ministry centers would be a group, the Center for Connectional Mission and Ministry, which would be directed by a 15-member board.  This body would replace the present Connectional Table which coordinates the work of the agencies.  The four ministry centers would operate with reduced-sized boards of directors, and, presumably, with less money and probably fewer staff than they presently have.  Meanwhile, the overseer body, the Center for Connectional Ministry, would be able to align and reallocate funds in order to focus on increased local church vitality.  All of this will be done in consultation with the Council of Bishops.  

      3)  The church seems to be dividing up sides on the restructuring proposal.  There is a group that feels that something should be done—anything—and this proposal is as good as can be hoped for.  The general agencies themselves are critical of theIOTlegislation; a number of agencies are preparing alternative legislation.  The agencies believe that their interests will receive less money and some present staff would lose their jobs.  The heads of the agencies have made a public statement saying that vital services to the church will suffer.  The ethnic caucuses are concerned that the new plan will decrease the amount of ethnic participation in the life of the church.  Methodists Federated for Social Action (MFSA), believes the church’s social witness would be compromised.

      In other words there are turf battles.  There will be winners and losers.  There will be less money to work with, smaller boards, and a different accountability process.  Especially troubling for some is the proposal that the Center for Connectional Mission and Ministry with its 15-member board will be able to reallocate up to 60 million dollars in program funds during the quadrennium.  For some this concentrates too much power in the hands of too few people.

      If there are winners it would appear to be the bishops.  The bishops believe that the church is suffering from lack of strong executive management and that the 15-member (controversial) committee can provide that strong management voice.  But lurking in the background would be the Council of Bishops.  The plan calls for the 15-member committee to be “in consultation with the Council of Bishops” and that troubles many people.  It has been pointed out that bishops do not do “in consultation with” well.  Plus the bishops will have a strong hand in who makes up the 15-member board. 

     In other words there appears to be a power shift from the agencies to the bishops.  Is this good?   

     Evangelicals in some ways are disinterested observers.  Evangelicals have no turf to protect.  There are no places in the present church structure that appear to be receptive to evangelical influence.  Thus there is nothing much to be lost.  Evangelicals generally are not impressed with the general boards.  The best thing that could happen would be to cut back the power of the boards and agencies and allow more funds to be used by the local church for mission and ministry.  There is also a conviction that the basic problem of the church is not structure but theological and moral integrity, and that doctrinal issues are not addressed by any of the structure plans.

      The question is, would new structure be good for the church or does it have the potential to make things even worse.  The answer to that question appears to be based on a prior question:  how much do we trust our bishops?

     The next Happenings article will deal with that question.

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