I'm grateful for the overwhelming support that the Kansas East, Kansas West, and Nebraska Annual Conferences gave in moving forward with plans to create one new annual conference. It was also clear from the comments received that we have a lot of work to do. I was on a mission trip during the latest Transition Team meeting so I don't know all the ground that was covered there, but I want to share here a couple of my own personal reflections after the "five-finger vote". These are my observations, not the opinion of the transition team as a whole.
1. In his excellent book Journey in the Wilderness Gil Rendle says, "As in all difficult moments, the starting point of change is finally to name the tension or conflict between expressed values and actual behavior." I think this is the crux of the problem we face. We state that we value the mission of the church, but in reality we value the institution of the church. We know what we should value, but our actual practices don't back this up. For example, who would not support risk taking for the sake of the mission? But how often have clergy second-guessed an appointment of another pastor as one that doesn't fit in the system or privately criticized a pastor when the church struggles after the appointment (a natural pattern if the pastor is really trying to change things)? How many times have laity challenged a significant change in direction from their church rather than embracing the risk?
Many of the comments that came back to us ask for answers to questions like where will annual conference be held? Where will the episcopal office be? How will pensions and health insurance be affected? What committees will go away? These are all critical questions that we need to answer for the sake of the institution. Beginning in August I'll be part of a smaller group that will begin to seek how to find answers to some of these questions. They do need to be answered. I want answers to them also. But they are almost irrevelant to the mission of the church. Our annual meeting accounts for 4 out of every 365 days. As currently formulated, we hear reports from instiutional committees and take votes on institutuinal matters. The most important missional component of Annual Conference is worship, which is also the lightest attended part of Conference. In a world with more efficient travel and technology, the location of the conference office and bishop's residence will have very little affect on the bishop's performance. Pensions and health insurance are important to our clergy now, but with the exception of the burden of the cost of health insurance to the local churches the changes we make now will hardly be remembered 20 years from now.
Again, these are important questions that need to be answered - we are an instiution, after all. But the instiution needs to help us fulfill the mission. Our focus needs to continue to be raising questions that move our mission forward. Questions like "how can we make sure that the right pastor is appointed to the right church? How can the bishop and cabinet best support our local churches? How can we raise up our laity as spiritual leaders inside and outside the church? How can smaller churches make a bigger impact in their communities? How can a new generation of United Methodists build and improve on the heritage that we leave behind?" These are the questions that will lead us towards renewal. They are much harder to answer than the technical questions, but when we look back 50 or 100 years from now our answers to these questions will matter much more.
2. Several people said that we are moving too fast. I expected that. But many others said we are moving too slow. They say that we need bold, radical change now and the transition team is holding back too much. This also speaks to the tension that we face. Very few people believe that we don't need to change. A large majority seem to believe that we need significant change. But how much change is needed how soon is where the debate lies. My own bias: knowing that all of us tend to push against change more than we should I'm in favor of the most change that we can make.
One other comment was very common - "You make some good points and I agree we need to change, but how will becoming one conference result in the change we need?" I'll address this next week in part 2.
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