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A UMNS Report
By Heather Hahn*

5:00 P.M. EST June 1, 2011

United Methodist clergy from Côte d’Ivoire and Texas celebrate Holy Communion at Jourdain United Methodist Church in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. A committee has recommendations to strengthen the church’s global bonds. UMNS photos by Mike DuBose. View in Photo Gallery

An international panel of United Methodist leaders is offering three ways to make the denomination less U.S.-centric and strengthen its worldwide connection.
The group’s suggestions include:

• Urging General Conference, the denomination’s top legislative body, in 2012 to adopt “A Covenant for the Church as a Worldwide Church.”
• Streamlining the Book of Discipline so that the denomination’s law book focuses on law and doctrine that applies to the entire global church rather than dealing with predominantly U.S. issues.
• Renewing conversation about restructuring the denomination so that General Conference can concentrate solely on issues that affect the church worldwide. The committee does not expect any action on its suggested structural changes until the 2016 General Conference at the earliest.

The 20-member Committee to Study the Worldwide Nature of The United Methodist Church seeks feedback to its ideas by June 15 at its website or by email at response@worldwideumc.org. The committee plans to release a full report in July ahead of the 2012 General Conference.

“We believe that living more fully into our worldwide nature is a long process,” said Kansas Area Bishop Scott J. Jones, the chair of the committee. “We’re wanting to help the church take the next steps.”

Serving a changing church

The United Methodist Church has nearly 40,000 congregations in the United States, Africa, Europe and the Philippines. In 2010, the denomination reported more than 12 million members worldwide.

Delegates to the Methodist Mission in Cambodia gathered Jan. 29 in Phnom Penh to celebrate their first annual meeting.
View in Photo Gallery

For more than 40 years, the denomination’s U.S. membership has been declining, even as the church in Africa and the Philippines has been growing. Today, about 7.8 million United Methodists live in the United States.

The denomination’s Council of Bishops and Connectional Table named Jones’ committee in 2009 to study the denomination’s changing demographics and take recommendations to General Conference.

For the past three years, the committee has been holding listening sessions with United Methodists around the world. Committee members have learned that United Methodists in most regions have no desire to be autonomous.

“They want to belong to a worldwide church,” said the Rev. Forbes Matonga, a committee member in Harare, Zimbabwe. “That was very clear. But it was clear also that the current structure gives domination to the U.S. part of the church over other regions.”

That needs to change, Matonga said.

In 2012, the committee’s main emphasis will be the General Conference’s adoption of the covenant as a statement of intent. Such adoption will require a majority vote by delegates.

“United Methodist churches throughout the world are bound together in a connectional covenant in which we support and hold each other accountable for faithful discipleship and mission,” the committee declares in the covenant’s current draft. “Through a worldwide covenant relationship, we also carry out our missional calling beyond national and regional boundaries.”

The committee has requested an hour of plenary time at the 2012 General Conference for conversation on the proposed covenant.

Matonga hopes the covenant will “move the church from legalistic engagement to connectional engagement where it is our common faith that brings us together.”

Clarifying the Book of Discipline

Jones said the petition to slim down the Book of Discipline is more of a clarification than a dramatic change at this point.

“The (denomination’s) constitution says you can adapt the Book of Discipline, but nobody knows which parts are adaptable and which aren’t,” he said. “The crucial question here is what questions belong to the unity of the church and must be kept at the General Conference level and what things are appropriately decided by regions or annual conferences.”

The committee’s proposed legislation to the 2012 General Conference specifies which parts of the Discipline are bedrock and global in nature. These include the denomination’s constitution, doctrinal standards, Social Principles, standards of ordained ministry, rules on church property and the organization of various church institutions, among other matters.

The Rev. Cynthia Harvey of Texas dances with choir members at Jourdain United Methodist Church in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, during a closing worship celebration. View in Photo Gallery

In contrast, Jones pointed to theological education as an example of an area where the church should welcome more diversity.

Accepting the legislation by majority vote would open the door to have a more streamlined Book of Discipline in the future, Jones said, but the committee is not seeking such a change immediately.

Church restructuring

The committee’s third proposal regarding church restructuring will have a familiar ring to many United Methodists.

The group calls for church members to discuss creating “Continental Conferences,” new regional bodies in North America, Africa, Asia and Europe/Eurasia to focus on regional church issues. Under such restructuring, General Conference would still meet every four years, but its role would narrow to include only issues of global relevance.  

In 2009 and early 2010, voters at annual (regional) conferences rejected constitutional amendments that would have formed similar regional structures.

“A number of people voted against this simply because they did not understand (what it would do),” Matonga said. “They did not want to give a blank check to something when they really don’t understand the consequences.”

The debate about restructuring the church also got caught up in discussions of homosexuality, an issue that surfaces at each General Conference. Some voters feared that decisions regarding the denomination’s ban on self-avowed, practicing gay clergy would be left up to individual regions.

To address these concerns, the committee agreed in 2010 to keep doctrinal and ministerial qualifications under the umbrella of the worldwide church and in the Book of Discipline that applies to the entire church. That means that issues related to homosexuality would remain the province of the General Conference.

“What the study committee is doing is inviting people into more conversation,” Jones said. “We think that the defeat of the constitutional amendments was not the end of the story. ... What we heard during the constitutional-amendment discussion is that people want more details. The Book of Discipline legislation provides more details.”

Restructuring is something the church will need to consider strongly as it prepares for the next century, Matonga said.

“The center of Christianity is shifting from the Western world to the so-called Third World,” he said. “Therefore, if we want to be sensitive to the future of Christianity, we will have to recognize the shift, especially to the African continent.”

*Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service.

News media contact: Heather Hahn, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.