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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:
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.
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