Category: United Methodist

Post-Ordination Post

Last Wednesday night’s ordination service was an event I’ll always remember, even though I think I’ll spend a lot more time processing exactly what happened there. Fortunately, I can go online and watch the service if I forget anything!

On Sunday, I wore my stole for the first time. It felt good after having held off for three years during my probationary (yes, yes provisional) period to wear it. I know that everyone feels differently about this, but for me it was a tangible sign of my new identity as an Elder in Full Connection. Strangely enough, I do feel a little different after the whole experience of ordination, even though I can’t quite explain it.

Other than my ordination, Annual Conference was pretty typical this year: hours of reports and lots of coffee with friends. The only other new experience was seeing the beginning of a new quadrennium. There was a little bit of political intrigue as the Board of Ordained Ministry is electing a new Chair person. As for me, I serve on two different committees. I’ve been on the Mission and Service Ministry Team since 2006, and now I’ll be serving as Vice-Chair of that committee. I’m also on the Young Adult Council, most likely because I’m 31.

It feels strange not to think about anything related to preparing for ordination. After all, this has been an important focus for nearly eight years of my life. However, now I’ll be shifting to focus more on my D.Min. I’ll be flying out to Madison, NJ in a couple of weeks to begin the on-campus portion of the degree. I’ll be taking a methods course, an exegesis course on Job, and a course on prophetic leadership. I’m looking forward to the extended time for study, but I’m not looking forward to being away from my wife and kids.

Well, I think that’s it for now. I’ve been reading a terrific book I read at AC called Evangelism after Christendom by Bryan Stone, and his discussion of evangelism as a MacIntyrian “practice,” has me really giving some thought to our conference’s new “strategic plan.” It seems to me that the distinction between goods internal and external to a practice could really help us think more clearly about what we’re doing and why. Maybe I’ll throw a post up on that in a couple of days. Until then, grace & peace!

Many Hands Make an Elder

This morning it hit me. Next Thursday, I’ll wake up as a full Elder in the United Methodist Church. This journey has taken about eight years, and it has defined so much of my life during this time.

Next Wednesday night I’ll walk up the steps to the chancel area of Boston Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Two other elders that I’ve invited will join the Bishop in placing their hands on me, carrying on the tradition that stretches across the centuries. The Revised Ordinal on Services for the Ordering of Ministry reminds us of the ancient connections of this practice with 2 Timothy 2:6, as Paul encourages Timothy to, “…rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.”

I always wonder how people make this decision and why each ordinand chooses the people they choose. I’ve asked the pastor who really helped me discern my call to ordained ministry. Dr. Guy Ames was my first pastor in the United Methodist Church at Chapel Hill UMC in Oklahoma City. He helped me see the ministry as something I might actually be called to pursue. I often say that he was the first pastors I met who I saw as a real person. He could have been successful in any number of other fields, but chose to follow God’s call to ordained ministry. Until I met him, I had never even considered those thoughts about being called as anything significant.

The other elder who will stand with me is my District Superintendent, Dr. Sandy Wylie. Sandy has been a friend, mentor, and supporter throughout my first years of ministry. He’s been there for me during a few difficult times in my first years in ministry, and he’s helped affirm my gifts in many different ways.

However, it takes many more hands to make an Elder. In the ordinal I described earlier reminds us,

The rite of ordination is the climax of a process in which the faith community
discerns and validates the call, the gifts, and effectiveness for apostolic ministry
by agency of the Holy Spirit.

Wednesday evening will be the climax of a lengthy process that begins and ends with God through the support of community of faith. Because of the community of faith, there will be a thousand hands on my shoulders that evening.

I started to make a list beginning with my wife, describing my mother (who’ll be there that night) and my father (who died the October after I was commissioned), listing the mentors who took me through those early days of exploring the call, the churches I’ve served and attended, inlcuding the thirty-something little kids at VBS last night who signed a card for my ordination, and working through the extended list of colleagues and friends who’ve helped me in so many ways.

But as I was making this list, I realized how those people who accept awards on TV must feel! There’s no way I could mention every name. There’s no way I could count the number of hands that will be on my shoulders that night.

When I stand up after kneeling that night and receive my stole for the first time, I’ll be thinking about that multitude of hands. It takes at least a thousand hands to make an elder, and I thank God for every one.

Appointment Watch ’08

It’s that time of year again. Earnest hobbyists across the denomination have their highlighters and conference journals mapping the annual migration of the United Methodist Elder. Ahh, the sweet smell of spring, U-hauls, and the itinerancy.

After three years of watching this annual migration, I’ve decided it’s a good idea to announce the appointments as soon as they are set. With a quick Google search, I’ve found several conferences who are doing this very thing: Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa. I’m sure there are several others, but I didn’t take the time to look them up.

Even though I’m curious about the reasons these conferences made the move to public announcements prior to Annual Conference, I still think this is a good idea.

This kind of openness in the process can’t help but limit some of the speculation that goes on. It also seems that lay people might want to have access to this information in order to keep track of clergy who’ve served their congregation or even those who answered the call from within their congregation. Finally, most of this stuff ends up making the rounds anyway. It seems that making it public as soon as it’s announced to the churches is just the next logical step.

Any potential problems with doing this?

Are you Incompetent?

I’m reading a book by Seth Godin, who I just found out is a really creative and interesting thinker. It’s called, small is the new big: and 183 other riffs, rants, and remarkable business ideas. It’s really just a collection of essays from Godin in hardback edition, but it’s really thought-provoking.

One of my favorite so far is a riff/rant on competence.

Competent people have a predictable, reliable porocess for solving a particular set of problems. They solve a problem the same way, every time. That’s what makes the reliable. That’s what makes them competent.

There is a side effect to all this competence however,

…competence is the enemy of change! Competent people resist change. Why? Because change threatens to make them less competent. And competent people like being competent. That’s who they are, and sometimes that’s all they’ve got.

Godin seems to argue that there is a “new competence” in the world, which he calls zooming,

In the face of change, some of us are becoming competent at zooming: Our skill set includes the ability to move from opportunity to opportunity doing the same thing, only differently. It’s this new breed of competents, of people who in another age might be labeled incompetent, who are going to lead us through the changes we encounter.

He doesn’t define these zoomers as people who can’t become competent, but people, “who have the option to become competent but choose to try something new.”

Managers, in Godin’s line of thinking, are the most dangerous competents of all. They are, “the ones who will do everything in their power to fight the next round of necessary changes because they’re in love with their competence.”

The most successful organizations have a skill Godin calls velocity.

Velocity is a company’s ability to zig and zag and zoom – to make significant changes when significant changes are necessary.

Any organization that needs to change must be willing to take risks and have the resolve to become incompetent for a time, in order to develop new forms of competence to meet challenges and changing dynamics in the world.

Let me toss a few questions into the air and see what happens? Would you characterize your church as an organization that is competent? Would you characterize the UMC as competent? Are we able to make significant changes when necessary? Are we willing to become incompetent for a time in order to meet challenges with new approaches?

Local Pastors, Get Out Your Buzzers…Maybe

During GC, I posted about local pastors possibly getting the right to vote for delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conference. This wasn’t something that got a lot of attention during GC, and there was a bit of confusion over whether or not this really passed.

This morning I saw this article from UMC.org. Here is an excerpt,

The 2008 United Methodist General Conference approved a constitutional amendment giving local pastors, provisional members and associate members voting rights to elect clergy delegates to General Conference and jurisdictional conferences.

In 2005, nearly 15 percent––or 6,660 of the total clergy membership of annual conferences––were full-time or part-time local pastors. Of these, approximately 4,000 local pastors will be able to vote for delegates to the 2012 legislative meetings, should the amendment be approved during the 2009 annual conference sessions. In 2005, there were 2,492 probationary members, now called provisional members, and 2,065 associate and affiliate members.

To go into effect, the amendment must be approved by two-thirds of the aggregate vote of all clergy and lay delegates voting in the 2009 annual conferences, said the Rev. Robert Kohler, a staff member of the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry.

Some of my faithful readers equate this to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and yes, I understand that 4,000 more people voting for delegates probably isn’t the kind of profound shift that will cause our denomination to be more or less faithful in the mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

On the other hand, my Local Pastor friends seem to appreciate the potential opportunity to get some kind of voice in the process of electing delegates. To me, at least at least this would include them in the process. After all, they can’t serve either as lay or clergy delegates!

In any case, I’ll be voting that local pastors will get this opportunity.

If a Tree Falls in the Woods…

Remember that old question? If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to observe it, does it make a sound? Sometimes I feel like this is a metaphor for some of the things that happen at General Conference.

Our Book of Discipline and our Book of Resolutions are constantly expanding. If this keeps happening, we’ll probably have to have multiple volumes of both. We keep passing resolutions, adjusting language, and generally feeling pretty good about both.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it just feels like we still think that we’re living in the United States circa 1950, when Time Magazine published articles on our bishops (see here and here). I consistently hear about living in a post-Christian world until it comes time for General Conference. Then we pass legislation and wheel out petitions, all of which are consistently ignored. If we add an entry to the Book of Resolutions and no one is there to read it, does it matter that we’ve officially decided to increase our tithes on mint by 2%?

Don’t get me wrong. Even though it seems that we have a quadrennial bout with pessimism, I’m less skeptical than some of my friends and colleagues. It’s just that I sincerely believe that we should be trimming the fat, digging through the strata of bureaucracy, and focusing on mission more than ever. Instead, it seems that we spend far too much time churning out statement after statement and developing proposals until they reach the sky.

I suppose that’s one reason I’m encouraged by our focus areas. Making new congregations a priority is far overdue, but it is essential and encouraging. Thanks be to God, it is something tangible. This is something that will make a real difference in the daily lives of women and men wherever these congregations are planted. Our focus on reducing poverty and poverty related diseases in the name of Jesus Christ is also encouraging. These foci are not simply statements or a position. They are actions that will tangibly express the love of Jesus in the world.

We do have a future and a hope, but we have to remind ourselves constantly that this hope is in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It isn’t some vague disembodied hope in the human spirit. It isn’t nostalgia for the good old days when Time had a reporter at General Conference and congress actually cared what the mainline churches were saying. It’s a hope embodied in Christ, enlivened by the Spirit, and lived for the glory of God!

Local Pastors to Vote for Delegates

An interesting constitutional amendment will be sent for approval by annual conferences. You’ll find some of of the details in an article on umc.org.

If annual conferences approve the constitutional amendment, deacons, associate members and provisional members may join ordained ministerial members in full connection in voting for delegates to General and jurisdictional conferences. To be eligible to vote, local pastors must have completed the Course of Study or master of divinity degree and have served under appointment for served two consecutive years immediately preceding an election. Only ordained members in full connection with an annual conference may serve as delegates.

Stephen Taylor, over at NitroRev also has a few thoughts on this since he spent time on the committee that worked on this legislation.

I’m happy to see this pass, even though I’m sure many local pastors would like the opportunity to serve as delegates as well. In any case, I wonder what this means for the more politically minded among us. Will local pastors get more attention in election years than they have in the past? Will this mean we’ll have increased representation from clergy in rural areas? What do you think?

Guaranteed Appointments Anyone?

In all of the conversation about other important issues, I haven’t heard much about guaranteed appointments. It was a hot topic before General Conference, and I figure we’ll eventually hear about it again.

In any case, apparently this is what came out of the legislative committee for Ministry and Higher Education and was adopted by General Conference on one of the consent calendars (these tended to fly under the radar a bit more than some of the more high-profile marathon-debate type stuff):

There are professional responsibilities (¶340) that elders are expected to fulfill and that represent a fundamental part of their accountability and a primary basis of their continued eligibility for annual appointment. These shall include:
a) Continuing availability for appointment;
b) Growth in vocational competence and effectiveness through continuing formation is expected of conference members. The board of ordained ministry (¶ 634.2n) shall set minimal standards and specific guidelines for continuing formation for members of their conference and ensure their availability. Further specificity of priorities for current appointments shall be arranged in consultations with appropriate bodies in that setting.
c b) Annual participation in a process of evaluation with committees on pastor-parish relations or a comparable body comparable authority as well as annual participation in a process of evaluation with the district superintendent or comparable authority;
c) Evidence of continuing effectiveness reflected in annual evaluations by the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee and by the District Superintendent or comparable authorities;
d) Annual participation in evaluation with his or her district superintendent Growth in professional competence and effectiveness through continuing education and formation. The Board of Ordained Ministry shall may set the minimum standards and specific guidelines for continuing education and formation for conference members;
e) Willingness to assume supervisory and mentoring responsibilities within the connection.
3. If an elder fails to meet these professional responsibilities, the provisions of ¶ 362.4c may be invoked the bishop may request suspension, recommend an involuntary leave of absence, suggest the voluntary surrender of credentials, seek the administrative location of the elder, or file a complaint. Any elder who does not demonstrate growth in vocational competence and effectiveness as defined by the annual conference and any elder who will not accept the appointment determined by the bishop forfeits the right to an appointment.

3. When an elder’s effectiveness is in question, the bishop shall complete the following procedure:
a. Identify the concerns. These can include an elder’s failed professional responsibilities, vocational ineffectiveness, or refusal of Episcopal appointment.
b. Hold supervisory conversations with the elder that identifies the concerns, and designs collaboratively with the elder, a corrective plan of action.
 c. Upon evaluation, determine that the plan of action has not been carried out or produced fruit that gives a realistic expectation of future effectiveness.
4. If an elder fails to meet professional responsibilities (¶340), does not demonstrate vocational competence or effectiveness as defined by the annual conference through the board of ordained ministry and cabinet, and/or does not accept the appointment determined by the bishop, then an appointment may be forfeited and the provisions of ¶362 may be invoked.

Anyway, just thought you might want to know about this.