In a post this week, Taylor Burton-Edwards, Director of Worship Resources of the General Board of Discipleship -- a national organization of the United Methodist Church charged with helping local churches by "equipping world changing disciples" -- asked what "missional Methodists" should do in the face of our church's newest digital report card toy -- dashboards.
To see an example of this nifty gadget click here.
Notice you can find out weekly information about churches that have the biggest gain or loss in membership and attendance, baptisms and professions of faith (you can even click on a link to those naughty churches that have not turned in their weekly numbers yet ... tisk, tisk).
In the end, Burton-Edwards, although he criticizes this form of documenting "maintenance discipleship", advises pastors to fill out the forms and then go beyond them ... (I mean he does work for the church after all and some conferences actually take the data into consideration when assigning pastors to particular churches) So, my pastor friends out there, if they ask for your Saturdays -- four days a month -- to fill out paperwork, give them at least five days. Turn in monthly reports, in addition to your weekly ones! Detail the spiritual growth and document the amazing evidence of discipleship ... go beyond ... go beyond.
I'm sure that there is something good that comes from all that reporting, but in general, as I shared in a previous post on The State of Formation, I am pretty unimpressed with how the church I love, the United Methodist Church, is going beyond its majority-white, status-quo supporting self to minister to ... the world.
John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, was quoted as saying: "The world is my parish." He did not say "the people that show up to this particular building on a Sunday are my parish." The United Methodist Church has become a cushy institution, banking on performance measures kept by fancy gadget dials to help save it from the fate towards which all mainline denominations seem to be heading -- slow death.
And yet, I believe there is hope for the United Methodist Church.
One such locus of hope centers in on the phenomenon of "church plants". Although I do not believe this move toward church planting is the 'silver bullet' that will save our denomination, I do know of at least three church plant congregations that take seriously Wesley's charge to make the world their parish:
For lack of space, I will detail the one I know best -- Mosaic in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Mosaic's pastor, Rev. Rachel McIver Morey, was my roommate in seminary. She was the one who always finished every single page of reading before class and proofread all of my last-minute writing assignments (the ones she had already finished the day before). She read a chapter of the Bible every morning (i.e. she had read it in its entirety over 5 times). She made plans and kept them; she was efficient and would have probably made whatever conference leadership extremely happy with her dashboard-dial-reporting skills.
But then at least two things happened ... first she was called to plant a multicultural church (where none had existed before) and second she became a mother.
It is this second thing, motherhood that has prepared her for the first ... church planting, and especially church planting a multicultural church. There is something about rocking a colicky baby for hours on end that gives a person a new outlook on life. Not only is not being in control of a situation 100 percent tangible (I literally watched Rachel rock her son for an hour while he writhed with stomach pain she could not fix), but the only thing left to do is be present in the midst of it. The peace that exuded from her being as she rocked her screaming baby was nothing like the anxiety-ridden seminary intern who had to make sure every aspect of the church service went off without a hitch.
Rachel and her husband, Jerad, have discovered that multicultural church planting is a colicky baby whose occasional smiles are all the reward they will see at first. It is is not a well behaved child that adheres exactly to all the developmental milestones all the books say should be there. God's peace came to Rachel in the rocking chair, and it is what gives Rachel and the Mosaic team the strength to do the street level ministry with real people that they are called to do.
Unlike a normal church appointment, Rachel and other church planters must build up their congregations from scratch. They build up networks of interested people (this means a lot of coffee dates, covered lunches, community activities, etc), raise funds (preach in the pulpits of churches who take up offerings, reach out to potential donors, etc.) and launch four preview services. Whether or not Rachel continues in this project, in part, depends on the amount of people that attend these preview services. Here is a description of their most recent preview service:
On Saturday, March 12th, Mosaic gathered at Odyssey Academy in Brooklyn Park to make sandwiches for Simpson shelter -- which, with all hands on deck, ended up taking twenty minutes even with a break to go buy more bread! -- and collect canned goods for our local food shelf. At five o'clock, we chimed the gong and began worship. Our worship was a new format using table conversation and fellowship alongside music from Paraguay, the U.S., and Indonesia. We closed with a celebration of communion and each had a bologna sandwich in communion and community with the Simpson Shelter guests who would be eating them for lunch the next day.
Not your typical Sunday Service ... Praise God. It's not that I hate liturgy (in fact I worship in an Episcopal church at the moment, which is much more formal than most United Methodist congregations), but I love that Mosaic takes the liturgy out into the world.
In the book of 1st Samuel chapter 16 begins, "The Lord said to Samuel, 'How long will you grieve over Saul?' I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons." In this text, the prophet Samuel has been ordered by God to go anoint a new king, while the old king, whom Samuel had also anointed, is still around. Samuel goes to do what he is told, has all of the sons of Jesse pass before him, but not one is the king God has chosen. Samuel asks "Are all your sons here?" And Jesse replies ... "There remains the yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep." This youngest son, David, would eventually become the most revered and loved king of Israel.
The United Methodist Church needs to look out among these young pastors -- the ones who are out tending the sheep. They, not the ones best at keeping score on dashboard dials, make the world their parish and change the world through discipleship. They could be a part of a new era of Methodism ... so my Methodist brothers and sisters, how long will you grieve over the loss of your past glory? God has rejected it and moved on ... and we should too.
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Nice, huh? We unbelievers are sub-human.
Frankly, as hypocritical, hateful and nasty as the Methodist church is, the sooner it is disbanded, the better.
This is where the Methodist Church needs to look at itself and become what it says it is, a church with open arms, open hearts, open doors.
Until it does that honestly and welcomes ALL, it is not being church.
Using locus as the metaphor, and using it in the evolutionary computation sense, church plants are heterozygous. That is, in that place they have different traits than the mainly homozygous United Methodist Church. I do understand that you use only this one locus of church plants, where there are possible other places(loci) for differences to provide adaptations that are necessary.
My interface with the United Methodist Church was with the Board of Missions, not Discipleship. In using your analogy of marriage and motherhood as training for mission, that Board would only choose a career oriented woman for hiring. It as if the nucleus, in replication of its agenda, had programmed apoptosis.
Thank you for your observations. Although I had to look up the scientific language (Genetics... I believe) I think you are right on in terms of our structures determining or at least shaping the type of output - in this case ministry - of a particular organization (organism). If the structures work and live by a particular set of values, those values will be replicated or at least influence the rest of the organization. Is this sort of what you meant?
Thanks again for your comments.
Peace,
Kelly
Thank you for your comments and your obvious love and commitment to the United Methodist Church.
As I said in my post, I do not believe church planting to be the silver bullet that will save our denomination nor do I believe that the only locus of hope for the church is manifest by these three church plants. What these three particular church plants (not the general act of "church planting") demonstrate are exactly what your humble proposal suggests - less of a worry about metrics and the edifice complex and more striving to live up to the promise of open minds, hearts and doors. There are other examples that are not church plants, but added up all together (church plants, local church ministry, etc.) these examples, in my opinion, are exceptions to the UM status quo and not the norm.
Focusing in on these examples (not just the three mentioned in this post but the others as well) - on these shining flashes of the Kingdom of God in the midst of the world - could perhaps provide ideas to local, district, conference and national Methodist leadership about ways the church structures need to change. Whether or not they are heeded is another question entirely, since institutional change does not usually benefit those running the institution.
Thanks again for your comments and service.
Peace,
Kelly
Over the past few decades, the UMC has cast aside its legacy of evangelical Christian teaching in favor of a "tolerant" lukewarm theology. I chose to join another strand of the Wesleyan mosaic because our local UMC district condemned and sometimes refused to credentials of clergy members (including my mother) who preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation, and the Bible as the infallible Word of God.
Setting aside the obvious snark-producing issue of why women clergy would take an evangelical viewpoint (and we both have dealt with this issue in our individual ways, my mother by being a non-teaching UMC assistant pastor with no pulpit privileges, and myself by serving as an M.Ev.C. chaplain at a health care facility who does not participate in the preaching team at my church), it seems that the worst thing that a Methodist minister can do, at least in our local UMC district, is to actually believe in the historic Christian faith.
Our church's issue:
We are a very welcoming church. Now, how do you get people to come to the door.
We offer community services and outreach. People come for those things (the food pantry, the medical care, the community picnics and festivals and lives are touched I know because I see it; but those same people do not come back for worship or any other activity. And, perhaps, our focus is wrong when we have hope that they will. I just don't know.
I don't have any answers except to keep serving God faithfully every day.
Thanks for citing my blog post. I hope this means it, and the rest of the blog (which I host but on which I am not the only author) may gain some additional readership.
GBOD is deeply involved in new church starts. In fact, since 2008, we've be part of starting 119 ethnic and multi-cultural faith communities in partnerships with our Path1 initiative. I'm glad you're highlighting that good work as well.
The deal with the dashboards-- very likely, very soon, many if not all congregations will be required by their bishops to enter this kind of dashboard data weekly. This data as currently being collected, however, neither captures enough of the things that make for vital congregations (measuring what congregations are designed to do well) nor, and especially, what congregations and other groups are doing that contributes directly to discipling people in the way of Jesus whose kingdom is transforming the world.
We will likely get no choice about providing the data that doesn't point to discipleship. Our bishops may simply require it of us, as some already currently do.
But we do have the choice ALSO to provide data that does point to discipleship. I hope many of our leaders and congregations will decide to do just that.
Thank you for your comments. I do hope this post will drive more traffic to you site and maybe bring more people into the debate about how the United Methodist Church carries out its mission "to make more disciples of Christ".
I appreciate the work of the GBOD and the other agencies of the national church. They use resources in great ways to help equip congregations to do God's work.
What I am hoping for is for a debate that might shape the actions bishops take. UM leadership needs to stop, fast, pray and think about the structures of accountability they require of local pastors. What type of message does this number-crunching send, especially when churches are ranked on public websites in terms of which churches have gained more members and which have lost the most members? Is this a Christian form of accountability? Does it convey to those outside of the United Methodist Church who Christ is? I am not against accountability, but this not only takes away from ministry time, but can shape the actual culture of ministry... Pastors and churches might begin to cut certain ministries that do not "bring in the numbers" or shape sermon messages that will keep people coming every Sunday instead of preaching a challenging Word from God.
I hope we can continue this dialogue. Thanks again for your comments and for speaking out about the inadequacies of dashboard-type performance measures.
Peace,
Kelly
just ask yourself who did jesus have the most problems with?
of course it was organized religion and their leaders.
I attended a church with a friend this morning and the pastor stated that only with jesus does the holy spirit enter the person. it is teachings like that that turn people off. the our way is the only way.
christian churches with their fallen human status teach guilt and fear and the need to be saved and collect tons of money for it. god demands atonement? man demands atonement so they put that ignorance on god.
please just find one christian church that does not think their god is made in their image and sees the bible for what it is. full of ignorance and profound wisdom.
neither the religious nor the materialist can see the bible in that light. one claims it to be all truth and the other all lies.
now the good news there is evolution of consciousness in every human mind and god is in no hurry. take all the time we want after all the more time and experiences the more expressions revealed of this Infinite that cannot be defined.
of course we can define the Infinite source of all that is, if we make it in our image.
fanned!
I do want to encourage you to re-read Taylor's extremely thoughtful blog post, however. I think characterizing his suggestion as more denominationally-encouraged paperwork is an unfair assessment of what he's trying to encourage missional pastors to do. If your church is doing something that's groundbreaking, then the denominational metrics will in all likelihood NOT apply, in part or in whole. So how do you communicate to those who oversee your ministry what it is you're up to, if it's not part of the dashboard? You have to find another way.
So is this the denominational bureaucracy breeding more paperwork? No...it's a recognition that doing a faithful, innovative, unique ministry requires constant explanation and encouragement. It's repetitive and time consuming to tell that story...but it's God's story too. Isn't that what we're called to do as the Church?
Thank you for your comments and push-back.
I do think there is a place for sharing stories of great ministries and even for the need to communicate when things are not going well. I hope that part of what this post on a few church plants has helped to do just that. Creative ways need to be developed to share God's story and these stories should not necessarily be the pastor's responsibility to tell (especially through even more reporting). For example these church plants have awesome websites with testimonies, pastor's blogs and descriptions of how they are impacting the community.
I do think Taylor really cares about how to support missional Methodists, I just wish someone would take on the UM church leadership (not Taylor, but those pushing dashboard-type performance measures) that should be held accountable for the type of competitive numbers game that is demonstrated by conference dashboard/performance measures movement. For the focus (out of both anxiety and pride) often becomes not God and what God's vision is for any one ministry, but rather how to get the numbers up... and the big question is for whose glory is this all being done? God is certainly not blamed when there are bad numbers... I would bet that when their are good numbers some do not necessarily do all their boasting in God either...
Thanks again. I do appreciate your thoughts and I'd love to keep up this dialogue.
Peace,
Kelly
In my conference, we measure 4 things: professions of faith, worship attendance, apportionment payout, and hands-on mission/ministry. Does an overall increase in these measures indicate a growing community of disciples? Perhaps. But perhaps not. Worship attendance and financial contribution are necessary but not sufficient (and does apportionment payout = the kind of giving commended in the Bible? Hmm...). Professions of faith and hands-on mission get us closer, but can still be easily "gamed." A ministry that cycles new Christians in & then right back out is not disciple-making.
Finally, we don't have a consensus on what a disciple looks like, much less how to build one. This is a serious problem: how can we decide what to measure if we don't even know what it is? Without a substantial image of what a 21st Methodist disciple of Christ looks like...this whole plan is sunk.
Thanks for the conversation!
If I'm not mistaken, you haven't responded to the concerns that several people have expressed: that the UMC has essentially abandoned its evangelical legacy. This seems true to me. I grew up in the UMC, and have watched it drift away from orthodox theology and teaching - which is the central, primary reason for any Christian church to exist at all. I have sat under Methodist pastors for a number of years, and the vast majority have re-defined the church into some kind of social service agency, or a gathering for "seekers" in a place that specializes in a sort of generalized, vague spiritual atmosphere. They even manage to make the Bible "fit" into such an aura.
The original gospel - including "speaking the truth 'in love'" - is the only thing that will really save the Methodist Church.
Am I wrong in expecting you to re-define the traditional understanding of the faith?
Thank you very much.
David
Raised Catholic and Protestant
At the same time, I've seen great ministry torpedoed by not paying attention to what the numbers were saying - pastors who actually wanted to spend their time and money on ministries that weren't where the Spirit was pointing through community interest. Particularly with intentional cross-cultural ministry - what if that's what I say we are, but we're still majority white and just like to "dabble" with international music? That 51% is a number to pay attention to.
Dying institutions fetishize reports and statistics in their agonizing over how they got to this place and what they can do to "prevent death". A word of good news for Methodists and all others in our shoes: Resurrection. Let die what needs to, and see what God raises from the ashes.