General Conference Challenges

A friend blogged about his upcoming visit to General Conference -- a trip I planned to make myself until I suddenly discovered the next six weeks will need to involve a lot more packing than I might have thought a couple of weeks ago.

He asked what might be the top four issues facing the UM church as it holds another of its quadrennial General Conferences. That meeting, for you non-Methodists, is when we determine what our church law book will say, what positions we might take on certain issues and handle other legislative-type business. I started to respond in his comments, but then I realized I was writing more than a comment section needed, so here's what I have, in no particular order:

1. Organizational angioplasty. In our General Boards and Agencies, the United Methodist Church truly lives up to its character as the so-called quintessentially American church, because they are as sclerotic and out of touch as any federal bureaucracy ever created. Any number of methods might accomplish this. I think a wholesale sacking of the general secretaries and their executive staffs, a group that seems determined to live a long time ago as a polity far, far away might be the most fun to watch.

2. Updating many of our church operating procedures. For example, say people move away from this town and church, but we lose touch and don't have a contact address for them. They don't go to the church anymore, because they moved across the country and the commute is a deal-breaker. But we have no address to see if they've joined another church or stopped altogether. If we started the process today, we wouldn't be able to remove them from our rolls until 2010. This is just one of our many operating procedures that assumes a society and culture that stepped off the stage with Eisenhower.

3. I'll borrow one from another friend and agree with him it's less useful to ask or argue about what our founder John Wesley did than it is to understand why he did what he did.

4. Drop our ad slogan, "Open hearts, open minds, open doors: The people of the United Methodist Church." I debated saying this, because I've got a loooong rant about it. But putting it here ensures I trim my rant and thus bore you that much less. Who in their right mind dreams up a church branding statement that never mentions God? The United Church of Christ, one of America's most liberal denominations, mentions God in their commercials, but we must have filmed ours on the Sabbath because He's a no-show in the whole campaign (We talk all about ourselves, though. I smell a baby boomer). Plus, the phrase is as limp as language can be and not be a Michael Buble song. Know what it misses most (other than God)? VERBS! Ten distinct words, not counting repeats, and not a single verb! It defines our Igniting Ministries initiative! It's our commercial! It's on our stationary, our bulletins, our billboards and our church signs, and it completely lacks VERBS! My writing teachers would laugh at something like this and not bother grading it. Remember: Verb! That's what's happening!

Well, that's just what I think. Someone else might have a different idea.

ETA: Yes, "open" is a verb, but here it's being used as an adverb, so it doesn't count.

(H/T to Matt)