Broken bodies mend. Depressed minds heal. Storm-tossed cities rebuild. Troubled institutions recover. Churches experience renewal. So why not the Methodist Church? This book confronts the facts and invokes the Spirit. It will explore the multiple meaning of recovery and the denomination's prospect for recovering. It will take seriously the possibility that recovery of Methodism may not require--or include--the survival of The United Methodist Church as a denomination. That is part of the mystery of recovery. By confronting provocative questions relating to funding missions, declining membership, itinerancy, guaranteed appointments, ordination requirements and authorization, the author helps Methodism take those crucial first steps on the road to recovery.

Methodism in Recovery

Renewing Mission, Reclaiming History, Restoring HealthBy William B. Lawrence

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2008 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-49188-9

Chapter One

Checking the Vital Signs

"You hypocrites! ... Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Luke 12:56)

In the early summer of 2006, I sat with about fifteen other United Methodists in a windowless room tucked inside a Nashville office building. We were a rather random (not to say "representative") bunch—a few bishops, a few academics, and some staff professionals from several general agencies of the denomination. What we had in common was that all of us, in our differing types of work, engaged in research. The topic on the agenda was to share those facets of our research that might shed light on The United Methodist Church. What data could our conferences, agencies, and educational institutions provide to develop an accurate picture of the church's present and an accurate prognosis of the church's future?

It was an inauspicious time to hold such a discussion. Most of the annual conferences in the five regional jurisdictions within the United States had recently concluded their 2006 sessions, and the hard data reported at those gatherings were quite disturbing. The denomination had continued its statistical declines in membership, worship attendance, and church school participation. Specifically, membership had apparently fallen below eight million, in a continuing erosion of members that had begun four decades earlier.

What's more, the detailed numbers within those aggregate statistics were even more troubling. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, the decline of the denomination was unmistakably occurring even in regions of the country that had previously shown growth in the numbers of both members and attendees. While the denomination as a whole has been shrinking since its formation in 1968, at least some signs of increase had been occurring in the southern states. But the evidence compiled in 2006 brushed aside that boast as well. The Florida Conference reported a membership decline greater than 1 percent and a worship attendance decrease approaching 3 percent. The North Alabama Conference reported even larger declines in membership and worship attendance. The Texas Conference dropped more than 2 percent in membership and, though its decrease in worship attendance was smaller, there was a decrease nevertheless. The North Texas Conference experienced only a small decline in its membership, but the worship attendance figures dropped 2 percent.

So the mood in that windowless Nashville room was not sober, it was sour. Some observers had been warning for years that even where United Methodism seemed to be growing—in Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Texas—the increases were only in absolute numbers. Compared with the growth in the population of these states, United Methodists have actually been decreasing proportionately. That detail may have been too subtle for some to notice, too counterintuitive for some to embrace, or too unpleasant for some to acknowledge. But facts in the statistical reports offered no refuge from reality. By the time the numbers were tallied in 2006, subtlety had subsided and intuition could not ignore the truth. The declines were evident in both absolute and relative terms.

Moreover, the group gathered in Nashville did not have to focus solely on membership and attendance. One of the bishops offered another reason to be troubled. It was financial pressure. "We can calculate the unfunded liability of our pension program," the bishop said, "and we can calculate the unfunded liability of our health insurance obligations, but we cannot calculate the unfunded liability of the guaranteed appointment." This was a reference, of course, to legislation affirmed by the General Conference and embedded in The Book of Discipline assuring every ordained elder that she or he will receive an appointment to some place of ministry and will receive compensation no less than the amount the annual conference sets as a minimum. What happens when declining members, reduced revenues, increased health insurance costs, expanding pension obligations, and guaranteed salaries combine to create an untenable financial situation?

It was in this heavy atmosphere that one of the academics posed a question to one of the professional agency staff. "How many years have we got? ... In what year, given these data, do you estimate that The United Methodist Church as we know it will cease to be?"

After a long pause, the agency officer gave an answer: "2010."

His courage was admirable. His willingness to offer a direct answer instead of some bureaucratic fudge was commendable. And at least it will not take long to learn whether he was right. But the key to the question—and to his answer—was the institutional nature of it. The rescue of an ecclesiastical organization is never a priority for Christian mission. The fear of organizational failure is never an ultimate threat to the Christian mission. "The church is of God, and will be preserved to the end of time, for the conduct of worship and the due administration of God's Word and Sacraments, the maintenance of Christian fellowship and discipline, the edification of believers, and the conversion of the world." Does it really matter if The United Methodist Church endures? Or is the far more vital issue the mission of the church? And is there some possibility that the recovery of Methodism is still relevant to that mission?

To answer that question, one requires a fundamental appreciation for the fact that there is no way to rescue any institution from its own capacity to fail. In theological terms, the church has taught this as the doctrine of original sin. It does not derive from some mythic incident in a prehistoric garden that was biologically transmitted to an endless chain of human offspring. Rather, the doctrine of original sin expresses the irrepressible capacity of human pride. Martin Luther conceived of it in terms of a spiral, imagining that the human soul is curved inward upon itself. But one can find it even in recent entertainment circles. For instance, a character in the computer-animated film The Incredibles says, "No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again."

Failure is intrinsic to human life and to whatever human beings create. Often that is the case simply because our creations are so complex. When Microsoft designed its Windows 2000 operating system, it was written with twenty million lines of source code. There is no human possibility of testing for every conceivable form of error in that much mathematical text. Then Microsoft issued Windows XP, which was designed with forty million lines of source code. The numbers for its next system, Vista, are surely even more staggering. Yet human activities depend upon machines and systems that are sure to have faults and to fail, because there are no flawless or faultless or fail-proof systems.

The church was established by God. But its organizational systems, its decisions about how and whom to ordain, its methods for managing financial resources, its choices about where to establish new congregations, its compromises about what will constitute authentic worship, and its willingness to show courage in fashioning new forms for fulfilling the Christian mission are imperfect.

The curious thing is that everyone in the church knows this, recognizes this, and (at least on a theoretical level) acknowledges this. And yet there is, within the church, a widespread resistance to confessing it.

I have opportunities to visit a significant number of local churches and to participate, as a worshiper or a guest speaker, in Sunday services. Many of these congregations are among the celebrated large-membership churches in United Methodism, where the Sunday attendance is calculated in the thousands. These are the congregations generally blessed with an amazing array of gifted laity and clergy who lead the ministries of the church.

Almost invariably, their Sunday worship offers magnificent music, whether it is in the more classical genre from European and North American cultures, or from some emerging Latin, Asian, Native American, or African cultures, or from the array of so-called "contemporary Christian" music styles. The preaching is typically of very high quality, the prayers have spiritual integrity and sometimes poetic elegance. In short, these are the churches that offer the most outstanding experiences of worship available.

But one thing is frequently absent from the elements of worship in these churches. Whether the liturgy is formal, with a printed program and written prayers, or informal, with a casual bulletin of announcements and spontaneous prayers, I often have noticed something missing. I have realized at the end of worship that there was no prayer of confession, no acknowledgment of sin, no declaration of forgiveness, no act of reconciliation.

There are many plausible reasons for this.

Sometimes these churches, especially the very large ones, have multiple services with crowds moving into and out of their buildings on a relatively tight schedule. Worship and other activities have to be rather closely timed. Some may be broadcast on radio or be recorded for telecast or for distribution by digital recording on the church's Web site. They may be structured to last for a preprogrammed period of fifty-five minutes. With the commitment already made to a large music budget, with a congregational expectation that a decent sermon should last some reasonable amount of time, with necessary room for programmatic announcements, and with appropriate portions of worship to enable congregational participation such as singing hymns, some things have to be eliminated. Among the options not available for exclusion are the financial offering, the words of greeting or welcome, and the choral anthems. Among the options that may be available for exclusion are the recitation of a creed, the reading or responsive chanting of a psalm, the full liturgies for administering sacraments, and prayerful practice of remaining seated in silence for the opening and closing organ voluntaries.

A relatively easy option is to eliminate the act of confession. To forgo admitting sins and announcing God's merciful gift of forgiveness and reconciliation can save two minutes or more. Thus, one reason for removing penitential words or actions from the liturgy is to increase efficiency in the use of time.

Another possible reason rests with the very fact that these churches are indeed so successful. Marvelous worship experiences, vibrant youth ministries, solid educational programming, broad community service activities, effective evangelistic outreach, and international forms of emphasis characterize their achievements in Christian mission. Moreover, the persons who tend to worship in these settings are themselves likely to be accomplished in their careers, dedicated to their spiritual development, and willing to volunteer in various ways toward the congregation's vital ministries. Confession is not always congenial to such personal and communal accomplishment.

A third possible reason is that to confess sins, as an individual or communal act, requires some level of intimacy. Of course, intimacy with God is an aspect of that. But so is a sense of intimacy, or at least comfort, with those in whose presence one is offering a penitential word. Thousands, or even hundreds, of people assembled in one place can create an impressive crowd for a shared religious experience. Having that many people sing together or shout praises together can be spiritually energizing. But how, in that context, does one find the level of intimacy needed to acknowledge a harmful deed, a racist word, an adulterous thought, a felonious act, an addictive trait, a violent temper, an abusive slap, or a crisis of faith?

Not many Christians in recent memory are viewed with an aura of saintliness quite so universally as the late Mother Teresa. Her public work was exceptional. Her public voice was powerful. Her public witness was the kind that moved many ordinary believers to new levels of compassion, devotion, and care for others. Yet only after her death has the world begun to learn about what she could not acknowledge in public—her long, dark night of the soul that endured for half a century, her sense of an "absent" Christ. Of Jesus, she wrote, "The silence and the emptiness are so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear."

To confess what would appear to be spiritual weakness or moral failure requires an environment of comfortable intimacy with God and with the community in which the confession will occur. The quiet, private space of a confessional booth offers one such place. The intimacy and trust of a relationship with a spiritual director, pastoral counselor, monastic community, or covenant discipleship group may offer another. But a vast public space or a gathering of thousands will not be conducive to the comfortable intimacy that encourages confession.

Nor, oddly enough, will reducing the size of the crowd achieve that goal.

It is not only the large, thriving, successful congregations that need to rediscover a capacity for confession. Within local churches of moderate size and small-membership churches also, confession is not a well-practiced discipline. Forgiveness is not easy to offer or to embrace.

Some years ago, I served a church in a small town where everybody may not have known everybody else, but everybody was only one or two casual conversations away from knowing all they wanted to know about everybody else. In such a context, nearly all families have their children enrolled in the same school system, nearly all use the same health-care providers, nearly all shop at the same few grocery stores, and nearly all can be identified with one of the handful of churches in town. It was in such a setting that a married member of the church came to me for some pastoral counseling. The individual confessed to having had an extramarital affair with another married person. Moreover, the affair had ended unhappily. The penitent person feared, quite reasonably, that both marriages would be ruined as a result. The person in my office was seeking an environment in which to confess, to seek mercy, to hope for God's forgiveness, and to find a way that might lead to reconciliation.

Such a thing could hardly be confessed in public worship, of course. But in a small town or in a small-membership church there is not likely to be a small group where trusted intimacy would permit such a confession either. The only option seemed to be in private worship. So I counseled the individual to write a prayer of confession, to express what needed to be acknowledged and what needed to be sought in mercy, forgiveness, and absolution through God's grace. We then agreed to meet in the sanctuary of the church, just the two of us, at a time when it was certain no other person would be in the building. Kneeling at the chancel rail, the penitent one read the prayer of confession. Some long silences punctuated the prayer. More silence followed. Then, as the liturgy of the church equips a pastor to say, I offered the words "Hear the good news: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God's love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!"

It was a halting, hesitant moment. But it was also a holy one.

The recovery of Methodism will require a deepening awareness of the need to confess our faults, failures, and spiritual emptiness. It will require building time and space for intimacy and trust.

And our confessions will have to involve more than the individual misconduct that arises in sexual indiscretions or violent acts or criminal behavior. There are other forms of sin besides the blatant ones in the second table of the Ten Commandments.

We are still in the process of recovery from Methodism's failures to affirm God's call of women into ministry. The long and difficult story of this grievous error did not come to a conclusion in 1956, with the decision by The Methodist Church to grant women full clergy rights, including ordination and conference membership. It was a failure in the nineteenth century when women were officially denied permission to undertake missions abroad. It was a failure in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when women had to struggle for admission as lay members of annual conferences and for election as lay delegates to General Conferences. It was a failure likewise during those same decades when women who had clergy rights within some traditions that eventually merged into The Methodist Church and The United Methodist Church suffered as those authorizations were sacrificed in compromises for the sake of union.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Methodism in Recoveryby William B. Lawrence Copyright © 2008 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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