Church at the Speed of Life

Last week, Karen Oliveto, the first openly gay bishop of the United Methodist Church was elected. Much like at her baptism, she was consecrated with the laying on of hands and sacred words of declaration.   She has even been appointed to her place of service for the next four years. This is a historic moment indeed.  Some will say historically tragic. Others, historically grand.
How did we go from decades of “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and the inability of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals” to being ordained with Karen Oliveto being elected Bishop?
How did we go from all matters of sexuality being referred to the Council of Bishops at General Conference to this historic election just a few short weeks later?
While this decision is dramatic, it is certainly not without precedent.
Consider the number of annual conferences that have voted in favor of non-conformity with the Book of Discipline, and now refuse to take on church trials related to LGBTQ folks.  (The acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning.)  Eight annual conferences voted in favor of full inclusion of gay clergy.
It’s no secret that the church is often slow to change. Measured and cautious, we approach change with a deliberate pace. We’ve taken some flak for it. Missed some opportunities. Not acted while the iron is hot.
The pace has suddenly picked up when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion.  At least it may seem fast to many of us. But consider the gay people, who were baptized at birth in the church, and later called by God to be in ministry. They’ve responded.  But we have not thrown our arms wide open.  Even so, gay people have been answering the call to ministry and serving UM churches for decades.  What’s happened is that we’ve finally hit church at the speed of life, to borrow a phrase from a colleague.
The world is changing and it’s not waiting for committee votes or episcopal commissions or legislative changes.   Same thing in the church.
Over the years, various conferences have voted for greater inclusion of gays and lesbians from the Great Plains to Arkansas, and New Jersey to Germany.   Resolutions have been passed, legislation has been voted on. But the Book of Discipline has remained unchanged on these matters of human sexuality.
That is, until the Western Jurisdiction and the North Central Jurisdiction nominated three openly gay candidates for bishop between them, and one was elected.
Certainly, there will be upset and judicial rulings.  Some people will decide to leave the church.  Others will decide to come back to church.  There may be a split, a schism, an exodus.  People on all sides will have opinions.
One thing will not change:  the need to love each other in the midst of fear and anxiety.
In the United Methodist Church, this election has been a long time coming.  Especially if you are gay, called to ministry, and anxious to live out that faithful calling. Although I’m straight I am anxious to receive the giftings of these clergy, and welcome Bishop Karen Oliveto to the Rocky Mountain Conference. Turns out she’ll be my Bishop.


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How Shadow Missions Derail the Church: Bishop Schnase’s Guest Blog

Bishop Schnase, your book Just Say Yes! addresses how to unleash people for ministry.  It’s an empowering and inspiring read.   In it, you write about “unspoken shadow missions that actually drive behaviors or limit alternatives more than the stated mission and adopted values.”  The local church pastors I mentor definitely encounter shadow missions in their churches.  Do you believe the UMC as a whole has a shadow mission?  Does it impact or hinder local churches?  If so, what can be done to set local churches free?

Many churches operate with explicit vision statements that define their distinctive role and identity—Leading People to an Active Faith in Christ, or Building an Outwardly-Focused Christian Community in the Life of Grace. Others adopt the denominational mission or rely on a common language to shape congregational behavior—Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World, or Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.

However, churches sometimes operate with unspoken purposes that actually drive behaviors more than the stated mission and adopted values. The logo uses missional language to motivate but leaders actually rely on maintenance language to make decisions.

In effect, an unspoken shadow mission says that our true priority is to fulfill one or more of the following:   Preserve the building. Keep everyone happy. Don’t offend the choir. Maintain a family feel. Don’t ask for money. Protect the endowment.

Most shadow missions are driven by fear—fear of conflict, of upsetting someone, of financial stress, of loss, of change. Energies are redirected toward security and survival, leaving little space for creative initiative. The answer is No to anything that challenges or threatens the shadow mission, even if an initiative has great potential for changing lives or reaching people. A shadow mission is like a magnet set beside a compass, an unseen force that draws us off course from our true mission.

Your question about shadow missions in the denomination and the effect these have on congregations is provocative and worth exploring. Several possibilities come to mind, but I will offer only two.

First, a significant shadow mission in the UMC is the constant pressure to preserve the status quo, to maintain current systems, and to require everyone to do things the same way as everyone else without regard to local context. The United Methodist Church has built systems and developed deep-running expectations that mandate extraordinary uniformity of operations at the local church, conference, and general church levels.

A conference that colors outside the lines is seen as problematic. For instance, if a conference experiments with a better way to offer Course of Study, or explores new expressions of campus ministries, or adopts non-traditional approaches toward camping in order to reach more young people, or rethinks its apportionment formula, or endeavors to improve supervision and intervention processes for clergy, then the conference is viewed as creating a problem to be solved by general agencies, the judicial council, and by other conferences.  Instead of encouraging innovation and imagination, we pour inordinate energy and resources into controlling outliers, even when the experiments are wonderfully effective at expanding ministry, increasing effectiveness, and extending our mission.

An innate institutional conservatism pervades the denomination. I’m not talking about theological or political conservatism so much as a fundamental resistance to adaptive change. A conference or congregation that takes an alternative pathway, even a successful one, is seen as rocking the boat. In response, more rules and restrictions are embedded into the system. Everyone agrees that our conference operations, our General Conference processes, our seminaries, our clergy credentialing methods, and our financial systems are not working well in today’s environment, but the innate institutional conservatism makes it nearly impossible to effect major change.

A second shadow mission is our seemingly unalterable allegiance to a structural connectionalism rather than to a more fluid, adaptive missional connectionalism.   We confuse our connectional roots and identity (which were missional and worth preserving) with the particular expression of connectionalism that has emerged in the last 50 years.   The Council of Bishops, the Judicial Council, GCFA, the general agencies, the concept of annual conferences as business sessions and of General Conference as a legislative session—we behave as if these have always been with us and must continue in their current forms if we are to remain connectional. In fact, none of these existed until a few decades ago or in the earliest expressions of Methodism when we operated with a more missional connectionalism.   In our origins, every expression of connectionalism was intended to multiply impact and extend the mission—the creation of circuits, use of laity, conferring annually to reinforce identity. John Wesley did not establish chapels and preaching houses and societies so that one day he could preside over a conference; he formed a conference in order to multiply the impact of chapels and preaching houses and societies.

The combination of these two shadow missions—to protect the status quo and to maintain the current structural connectionalism–keeps us from learning and experimenting and innovating. These shadow missions preserve prerogative, focus us on survival, foster denial, and permit avoidance tactics. In a time of diminishing resources, these shadow missions feed competitiveness, conflict, and territoriality as each part of the church maneuvers for support.   These shadow missions imbue creative people with a sense of helplessness, the feeling that nothing can be done. Monolithic intransigence makes us ever more irrelevant and ill-equipped for meeting the overwhelming human needs we face in our society and around the world.

Simply naming a shadow mission does not free us of its power, but it’s a first step.   We need to foster more innovation, imagination, and experimentation rather than continue to insist on uniformity and control.

In Just Say Yes, I mention the idea of “dancing on the edge of our authority,” a concept borrowed from Marty Linsky. If we only operate within the authority given us and according to the expectations of the organization, we will never lead the change that is necessary. The community will fail to adapt to the changing environment and will slowly die. Complacency and stagnation wins. We have to exceed our authority in order to lead the organization toward places it will never ask us to go.

On the other hand, if we don’t give proper attention to the existing expectations and fail to do the work the organization has authorized us to do, we’ll be rejected. We must meet the fundamental expectations so that we don’t lose trust, disconnect, and become leaders without followers. Managing expectations involves maintaining and improving existing systems, and this is important work. Leaders tend to be rewarded for caring for the organization and working for “what is” rather than for stimulating change and focusing on “what is not yet.”

“Dancing on the edge of our authority” involves meeting enough of the existing expectations to stay connected and to foster trust while also pushing the organization to boldly take initiatives that fulfill the mission. This leads to your last question: How do we set local churches free?

Conferences get just as stuck as congregations do. Conferences need to unleash churches for ministry just as churches need to unleash people. This means less centralized control so that churches can start churches, experiment with second sites, initiate conversations about adopting sister congregations, and establish campus ministries. With a missional focus and high expectations, we can practice a guided autonomy that permits and encourages congregations to take more initiative, to dance on the edge of their authority, and to practice greater innovation.   When we set congregations free, we encourage healthy churches to take responsible risks consistent with their mission to relieve suffering, proclaim justice, and meet human need across the globe. We stop trying to squeeze everyone into the same mold.   We practice ministry as an improvisational art, just as Wesley and the early Methodists did with their bold experiments. This does not mean that anything goes; Christ-centeredness, excellence, fruitfulness, and accountability must be expected. The book Seven Levers: Missional Strategies for Conferences gives countless examples of how Just Say Yes! Unleashing People for Ministry works at the conference level.

Robert Schnase serves as Bishop of the Missouri Conference of the United Methodist Church, and is the author of the bestselling books Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Five Practices of Fruitful Living, Practicing Extravagant Generosity, and Seven Levers: Missional Strategies for Conferences. His latest book, Just Say Yes: Unleashing People for Ministry, is written for people whose passion has been simmering for years, who yearn to be told Yes! Schnase examines the systems and attitudes that restrain and control ministry. He demonstrates practical ways church leaders can rethink fundamental assumptions about organizations and leadership.

Downloadable resources are now available to help local congregations unleash people for ministry, including supplemental videos, invitational postcards, a leader retreat guide and a 7-session devotional guide. Visit www.SayYesToMinistry.org.

Energy Subsidies v. Food For All

Congress is in the midst of wrestling with our fiscal problems. Currently, they are trying to set the budget for 2012, ensuring that it sets us on the path to fiscal health while adequately funding programs that we, as a country and as states, cannot function without.
As a person of faith, I believe that the most vital of these programs are those that provide for families and individuals struggling financially.
In this time of economic uncertainty and unemployment, opportunities such as the SNAP program (formerly food stamps) and the Women, Infants, and Children Program provide support to the millions of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet.
As a United Methodist clergywoman for 17 years, I have seen families and individuals who never expected to need the help of the government rely on these programs to get through the hard times. And in the most challenging economic time we have seen since the Great Depression and questions about what our economic future holds, these programs are needed now more than ever.
And yet, as our elected leaders work to achieve fiscal health, many of these programs are being threatened with reductions in funding. Others could be eliminated altogether leaving the already vulnerable to wonder where their next meal will come from or how they will keep the heat on next winter.
At the same time, while families are being denied support, we continue to provide incentives in the form of subsidies for energy companies — including those companies that are getting rich from energy found on America’s public lands. They are not required to pay for leasing the land or to compensate U.S. families for the profits they reap from selling the oil and gas found on public lands.
Companies such as Exxon Mobil and BP are being provided with financial incentives to develop energy in the United States and yet these companies are recording record-breaking profits year after year. Various analyses indicate that from the years 2000-08, energy subsidies for fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas, amounted to more than $72 billion. Yet in 2008, Exxon Mobil reported a record profit of $45.2 billion.
Is this the picture of justice that Jesus envisioned? He was greatly concerned about the plight of the poor of his day. I fear that Congress will provide little or no money for the vulnerable among us, including children and single moms. Yet, we are seeing record profits for multinational energy corporations as a result of financial support from the United States. Our priorities are out of line.
We must end the subsidies for energy companies, particularly those that are securing energy from our public lands. These lands are owned by the people of the United States and given to us as a gift from God. We must invest this money in our communities, our families, and the health and well-being of future generations.
Let us shift our priorities to focus on the health of our people — not the health of a multinational energy corporation. This is our faithful call and our responsibility.
Read more: http://trib.com/opinion/columns/energy-subsidies-vs-food-for-all/article_e519489f-8db0-59fd-8a09-dac678913bfb.html?mode=story#ixzz1zK0tpsNO