Editor’s Note: Gerry Charlotte Phelps offers an insightful article on the nature of the demographic problem facing the mainline church. It is the same one, essentially, faced by the West – creeping depopulation. The mainline church reflects the larger culture and is imploding. As we lose both our children and spiritual children, drastic – or perhaps a better word is “radical” – measures are required to reverse the problem. But just when a radical reordering of our lives in Christian witness and obedience is required, are we theologically and spiritually up to the task? She writes as an ordained Methodist minister, however her message applies to the rest of the mainline as well. Could the UCC agree to these four goals and keep “Evangelical, Conservative, Orthodox, and Traditional” members?
By Gerry Charlotte Phelps (c) 2008 Used by permission.
At least, an effort is being made. Apparently the leaders are beginning to draw back from the abyss looming ahead – the onrushing disappearance of the United Methodist Church, through long-term steady decline or through splitting. After some 40 years of steady decline, and risk of splitting, some willingness is developing to do what it takes to avoid extinction.
Is this too harsh a summary? Not when we consider that the average age of Methodists is an amazing 60 years old. Why is that? Because, like their secular friends, they were reluctant to have children. Especially spiritual children, that is. The “children” or offspring of a church are its new converts. And enough new converts would make the average age much lower.
Methodists, however, largely quit doing what it took to make new converts a long time ago. Now they say they are going to try to make converts again – to evangelize. But they no longer know how. Their evangelism committees go through contortions to avoid ever actually talking to anyone about their salvation. Practicing avoidance of any such encounters, they often claim “evangelism” means things like compiling recipe books. Anything to avoid actually doing evangelism. Unfortunately, this includes many, maybe most, Methodist pastors as well.
The new compromise is to change to four major goals; two each for the conservatives and the liberals. The two for the conservatives are the things that, if they are not done, the UMC will die. They are, one, starting new churches and renewing old ones (which can happen only through evangelism.) And two, developing new leaders (only 3.4% of Methodist fully-credentialed clergy are under 35.) The liberals get two social-action goals. ministry with the poor, and improving health globally. They probably would not stay without something similar. The conservatives are happy with all four of these goals. The liberals, maybe only the last two.
The first two goals are needed to prevent the United Methodist Church from dying slowly. The second two – and the relinquishing of older social goals – is needed to avoid abrupt death from splitting.
While the lack of evangelism has kept new members from being brought in, the social goals of the last 40 years have propelled many old members out the door. These old social goals have been identity-group oriented. They were set in concrete in the activist 60s by setting up agencies dedicated to them. The agencies since then have spread out like ossified coral reefs, using up the nutrients and hogging the available sunlight. Climbing up into the agencies and into their leadership became the way to “move up,” through work on committees and commissions.
The agencies actually produce little but endless meetings, conferences, negotiated proposals with little action or results, lobbying, expensive budgets, controvery and extreme public pronouncements that have offended many ordinary Methodists and driven them away. Whatever services they may have provided could have been done more effectively and at less cost by utilizing outside specialists and ministries. (As when the UMC hooked up with Chuck Colson’s Prison Ministries rather than starting their own.)
The big social agenda that has nearly split the church is the hard-edged push by some, including some bishops, to force Methodists to ordain acknowledged homosexuals, and to support gay marriage. That, presumably, is being tacitly dropped – at least by the bishops. Even though such proposals have been resoundingly voted down by large majorities every time they have been proposed, the efforts of the activists have only intensified. This is the big controversy that has all but consumed the agenda every four years at the General Conference – the body that makes church law. This new arrangement seems to be intended to replace that situation with this new one. If so, it could work.
It remains to be seen what would be done with the agencies. The presumption would seem to be that they will be replaced by new agencies focused on the new goals. The same risk of ossification of the new agencies, so that goals can hardly be changed, is there. Then there is also the problem of what to do with current old-agency employees. Following the model of government bureaucracies, when one program is over and a new one begun, most old employees are simply folded into the new program. Which can cause the new program to be just more of the same old problem. Only a replacement by people with the proven skills necessary for the new programs would offer much hope for success.
The biggest, most difficult change, however, will be to re-introduce massive, increasingly-skilled evangelism and discipling into seminaries and churches, with the scale and speed needed to turn around the denomination, on time.
It is hard to know just how much time is left. Like people who won’t change their lifestyle until the cancer shows up or it’s time for the heart surgery or kidney dialysis or liver transplant, so that they can no longer deny that their life is on the line, the needed change can come too late in the game. If it is only half-hearted, it can be too little, too late as well. Medicine alone can’t do it at that point. The life-style must change for life to continue..
Methodists are attempting a long-delayed first step toward a turn-around in their denomination’s lifestyle. The Methodist church will need a lot of prayers from a lot of people for a lot of time, for this to work. But we must do something like this, soon, to grow instead of declining, and to stay together instead of splitting.
UM Logo courtesy GerryCharlottePhelps.com and JoshuaTreeVillage.com
