Where UM pastors go to Seminary

Here's an interesting article on where UM pastors go to seminary (HT: John Kavanaugh). Interestingly, more than 1 in 7 new UM pastors go to Asbury--more than seven of the official UM seminaries combined (there are 13). One UM seminary had less than 1 in 100 newly ordained pastors go there. Another less than 3 in 100. Duke came in second to Asbury.

There are different ways to react to this sort of data. One impulse might be protectionist. Let's force UM candidates to go to some of the seminaries they obviously don't want to go to. That's the price fixing option that makes a lot of people resentful. It seems more appropriate to me not to fund institutions that obviously aren't serving the UM church very well. That's a waste of money.

I understand the impulse to try to prop up seminaries that are failing in the UM marketplace. Meanwhile, Asbury is looked down on by a lot of the UM church. I've heard that United isn't always given its due. Yet these are the two schools that have most entered into the distance education realm. How many UM students go to Asbury because they can do much of their MDIV without leaving their ministry? The resistance of the other seminaries to the online/distance world is hurting them, probably among other things.

In any case, Wesley where I'm at is now ATS accredited and we would be glad to serve. :-) I'm talking the possibility of dedicated UM cohorts that move through the MDIV program together. Our network includes 17 satellite locations around Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky if you want us to come to you onsite in this area. Just think, pastors in the Indiana conference could get their entire MDIV degree onsite and never have to leave their church. It would be an opportunity for the conference to have more direct influence on the training of their own pastors than any UM conference has over the training of its ordinands currently!

We're Wesleyan without an ideological edge. And wouldn't you rather have your pastors train with us than at an Anabaptist or Presbyterian seminary? We intentionally focus on the practice of ministry and are not an ideological seminary like many perceive Asbury to be. Sure, we're conservative in the vast scheme of American Christianity, but we take seriously Wesley's sermon On a Catholic Spirit.

Over 20 percent of our faculty are UM in the seminary, and 2 more teach in the undergraduate. We'll let you teach any UM specific courses you want to be part of your ordinands' program if you want to bring in your own people.

How about it, GBHEM?

Quick Thought on the UMC Crisis

I more and more believe that the UMC split is not going to happen. I can already see the writing on the wall. If it does, it will only be a small minority of churches that withdraw. The resultant body would not be strong if it tried to continue on its own and it might even have an unhealthy dynamic.

Why? Because of gravity. It will take a massive amount of sustained energy to withdraw, to leave orbit. That usually takes a level of anger or resolve that I just don't think many have, and those who do are often scary people. I personally would not want to join my own, currently peaceful denomination, to that sort of dynamic, even if we agree theologically. Your theology can be the same but your flavor entirely different because of the trajectory you are on.

The vast majority of UM congregations (who probably have not even heard of the crisis) would stay with the parent body even if they agree theologically with the proposed separators. Most UM congregations are aging and not at the point of life where they're up for a long, sustained battle. They more have the same flavor of unity within disagreement that the liberal bishops have. They are UM precisely because they love inclusion, unity, and order.

Here is then my two cents critique of those pushing for amicable separation. They should be attacking the dysfunctional organization of the UM church, not doctrine. The ironic thing--and what really has their ire up--is that they currently have the votes. What ticks them off the most is that the leadership of the church is not following the policies it is their job to enact.

The question of homosexual ordination may be what is of most concern to the "agree to disagree" group. But they have undermined their cause by front-featuring that issue (or letting their opposition front-feature it). It makes them look like separatists. It makes them look unloving and hostile. It makes them look narrow-minded. It makes them look un-United Methodist.

What they should do rather, in my opinion, is to plan and mount in full view a full scale organizational assault on the dysfunctional organization of the UM church to be taken up at the next General Conference. They should get their best legal minds to orchestrate the needed reorganization of the UM church in such a way that their supreme judiciary cannot overthrow all their hard work at the last minute, as happened last General Conference.

Everyone knows the UM church is dying and is in drastic need of organizational modification. Everyone knows that the COB pretty much does whatever the heck it wants no matter what the people of the UM church vote for. The proposal can be orchestrated publicly in a way that everyone knows the votes are there before they even get to the conference. Then the movement is poised to save the church not to separate from the church. Then the anger is against dysfunctional leadership that ignores the rules of the church, is stubbornly insistent on self-destruction, and couldn't give a rip what the people of the UM church think.  THAT is how you change the church, IMO.

Imagine if some genius could orchestrate a new rule within the UM church that made it possible to remove bishops who do not abide by the Discipline of the church!

Bishop 5 (Bishops as Change Agents)

Now chapter 5 of William Willimon's Bishop, "Bishops Leading Change."  Previous chapters were:

1. Methodists, Alabama Conference in Motion
2. Summoned to be Bishop
3. Bishops Sending Pastors
4. Bishops Cultivating Fruitfulness

Highlights of chapter 5:

1. I suspect that tact isn't Willimon's strong suit.  There is certainly a time to use power to force change that a group of leaders believes needs to happen.  I don't doubt that the UM church needs a good slap in the face, but it sure feels like Willimon is a guy that enjoys slapping just a little too much. This sentence jumped out at me the most in this chapter, "I lamented to a DS that the  episcopacy committee seemed so willing for me to retire" (86).

Beware the cocky change agent, often with far less up top than Willimon.  At least Willimon is wicked smart and mostly right, annoying but probably moving in the right direction.

2. "After the storms I discovered that those who disbelieve in change for the sake of change are wrong, particularly in a moribund institution with so many means of self-protection" (71).  I suspect he is more right than wrong when it comes to the UM church.  When not to change means to die, you have to change.

I caught a few minutes of the remake movie, Poseidon the other day.  There's a scene where a group of people in an overturned ship can either stay where they are and die, or they can go through a narrow vent and at least live a little longer.  In that situation, there's no promise that change will allow you to survive, but you know that no change means certain death. That is the condition the UM church is in, according to Willimon and many others.

"Disruption is an essential component of organizational innovation" (72).  He speaks of how Martin Luther King, Jr. saw no way for change to happen without creating "a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation" (73).  Of course this is the philosophy of Hamas and the IRA as well.  King and Ghandi by contrast insisted on non-violent protest.

I think these things call for great wisdom.  Change isn't always positive or helpful.  And if it isn't done at the right time, it can hurt your cause or set it back.  "For everything there is a season." You can grow without shock therapy.

3. Willimon draws on Bridge's book Transitions.  "Change begins with ending" (76). Then there is a neutral zone between old and new when there is lots of complaining. Hopefully that resolves with new beginnings.

4. Here's a fun quote about the UM church: "Our church is full of people who think of themselves as theological liberals but who are organizational reactionaries" (81). :-)

5. More controversial quotes: "The most important task for a district superintendent is to overcome the clerical propensity toward empathy" (82). "Empathy causes clergy to go limp." Empathy "is an enemy of transformative leadership" (81).

Again, he puts things in the extreme to get things moving but I know what he is saying. I had an academic friend who didn't want to go on to do a doctorate. He was then shocked when his superior gave him an ultimatum. Enroll in a doctoral program or lose your job.  He was shocked because he thought the superior was his "friend."

It's great if a leader can be friends with those who work under him or her, but good leadership sometimes will require hard decisions that don't go the way others want.  Leadership can create a distance, which is what I believe Willimon is talking about.  However, I don't see this as a lack of empathy on the part of a leader.  I don't like the way Willimon frames it.

Sometimes a leader just has to make unpleasant decisions for the greater good.  But it can be done with grace.

Bishop 2

This is my second week reading William Willimon's, Bishop.  You'll find last week's post here.   Chapter 2 is called, "Summoned to be Bishop."  Here are just some things that jumped out at me.

1. Ministry is God's idea before it's ours (13).

2. Those who are most reluctant to be bishop should be (15).

3. Wesley and Asbury really tussled over the idea of bishop.  Wesley despised the idea. Asbury thought of it in apostolic terms. Asbury saw itineracy as the heart of being a bishop, moving around giving oversight. Quite interesting.

4. So Methodist episcopacy claims to be different from the Episcopal "monarchical episcopate."  Willimon calls it a "managerial episcopate."  Willimon tries to look at ministry in general as practical rather than "ontological," as if the office of minister or bishop itself makes a person intrinsically different in weight.

5. He mentions "evangelical whiners" who want the bishop to do more but would never give the bishop real power to do it.  You get somewhat of a sense of disempowered bishops, from his perspective. They make ministers and that's about it, you get the impression.

6. He has restorationist tones now and then. So the early church was "connectional" rather than "congregational."  He finds no evidence that it was democratic.

7. He believes the Methodist system is biased to pick ministers who, "follow instructions, preserve rigid rules, keep information sharing to a minimum, and develop a clergy system that privileges experience and credentials over God-given talent and sacrifices creativity for conformity" (25).  At one point he suggests that a bishop is more likely in the UM church to get in trouble for not meeting diversity quotas on boards than for not believing in the Trinity.

Willimon thinks it's a system prejudiced toward "uncreative bean-counters" (26). I had a brief conversation with someone at IWU recently who said bureaucracy was indicative of a declining organization, one that has passed its peak. Someone else told me that policies sometimes are meant to replace good leadership, so a system will run itself and you don't have to count on gifted individuals.

8. Willimon has an interesting take on seminary education, in fact one very similar to Kevin Myers' talk at our Wesleyan general conference.  Willimon believes it is the church conference's job to train ministers at practical tasks.  The job of the seminary, he thinks, is to be a seedbed of biblical interpretation, sermon preparation, theological discernment, biblical languages, etc. Basically, he sees seminaries as giving the theory and the annual conferences teaching the practice.

Kevin Myers said something similar when he said that the local church (or in his case the large church) is the place to train ministers. The implication is then that colleges and such would give the Bible, theology, and theory, but the local church would provide the training.  This is a model that certainly would improve on the predominant models, and Russ Gunsalus at HQ has taken up the offering quite vigorously.  IWU undergrad has been working with the KERN foundation to set up a similar model that would get a students to something like "MDIV equivalency" in competency in 5 years out of high school.

Meanwhile, Wesley Seminary at IWU has reformulated its MDIV around a practical focus and training as well. We try to do a critical mass of both training and classic theological disciplines in an integrated form. The key is that we require a person to be in connection with a local church as they go through our MDIV. Surely there are many ways to get to the goal. All these models agree on the competencies a minister should have. They just try to get there in different ways.

Bishop 1

Since I know a number of others are reading Will Willimon's new book Bishop: The Art of Questioning Authority by an Authority in Question, I thought I might as well.  I don't plan to write extensively, just give a few tidbits and perhaps reflect a little.  For today, I read the Introduction and first chapter.  My numbers are just to keep track of subjects.

1. Willimon is quite proud of the episcopal structure of the UM church.  He in effect calls John Wesley an "ecclesiastical whiner" for discouraging it. (xii)  This is a hint of his somewhat in-your-face style.  Hey, he's a retired bishop. He can say pretty much whatever he wants.

2. He doesn't like idea of it being lonely at the top.  He quotes approvingly a quote by Ron Heifetz that the greatest "myth of leadership is the myth of the lone warrior" (5).  He saw himself as continually surrounded by co-workers and saw the appointment of District Superintendents as the most important appointments a bishop makes.  "Nothing moves in the UMC until a DS commits to leading that change."

3. He likes John Kotter's stuff on Leading Change.  Strong leadership without good management gets an organization nowhere (6).  Yet, "Change cannot be managed; it must be led" (7).  "While DSs need not be great leaders, bishops must perform both management and leadership functions."

4. Obviously he thinks the UMC needs to change or die.  We'll see what he has to say.  He sees a need for risk.  "Management values control and devalues risk" (8).  There may be some here of relevance to IWU as it searches for its next president.

5. The final section of the first chapter has some rather blunt words by Willimon about both the privilege and challenge of being bishop in Alabama.  On the one hand, it is the state of Rosa Parks and Helen Keller.  On the other, it was there in 1921 that a Methodist preacher who was also an active member of the KKK shot a Roman Catholic priest dead for marrying his daughter to a Puerto Rican.  This Methodist was acquitted and went on as a preacher.

It was there that Governor George Wallace physically tried to block black children from going to school with white children.  He later would renounce his earlier attitudes, not wanting to meet his Maker before he had repented. Willimon clearly does not believe that the state has changed entirely, and mentions what he considers some of the most mean-spirited anti-immigration legislation in the nation in recent days.

More perhaps next week...