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Commentary
WESLEYAN WISDOM: Must we lose guaranteed appointment? Donald W. Haynes, Nov 25, 2009
Donald Haynes
By Donald W. Haynes UMR Columnist
The United Methodist Council of Bishops looked recently to the future of the denomination through 2050. Their goal was to enhance the effectiveness of our bringing people to Christ, discipling them in personal and social holiness, and adapting the structures of the church for a culture that is radically different from that of our heritage.
Without a doubt, the spiritual and theological dimensions of our connectional mission should be our primary focus. However, they are also proposing some substantive changes in “how we do business.”
The bishops are preparing to ask the 2012 General Conference to discontinue guaranteed appointments for provisional members on the Elder track and for Elders in full connection.
A corollary is the recent Judicial Council decision sustaining Bishop Larry Goodpaster’s ruling that churches cannot negotiate “accepting” less than the full amount of apportioned funds—general, jurisdictional, conference and district.
Added to this is the minimum Sunday worship attendance that will now justify a church to have its own full-time pastor. Some bishops are using a figure as low as 100 and some as high as 150 in average attendance to support a pastor, pay apportionments and sustain a viable missional ministry. In reality, we have hundreds of stations with less than 100 in Sunday morning worship. What does this mean for those with sub-standard attendance?
A corollary of the Judicial Council action will be the continuing financial support of the annual conference “Equitable Salary Fund.” This establishes a minimum compensation level for every full-time pastor, regardless of conference relationship—local pastor, provisional member or full connection.
None of these can be processed without reconsidering the discrepancy between Elders and Deacons. The Deacon is not guaranteed an appointment. The local church to which a Deacon is appointed can eliminate that staff position with a 90-day notice. Though there is a “guaranteed minimum” compensation package for Deacons, the caveat is that a Deacon may ask to be appointed without salary or may ask to be appointed part-time.
All these seem to be very technical issues that concern very few people directly, but this does not reduce their importance to our “Rethink Church” campaign in United Methodism. No one has written more definitively about the philosophy underlying our church polity than Candler School of Theology professor Tom Frank. In his highly important book, Polity, Practice, and the Mission of the United Methodist Church, Dr. Frank notes: “Polity is among the most neglected subjects in the literature of mainstream denominations. Polity has been, in short, part of a ‘taken-for-granted’ world.”
He adds: “Despite their missionary intention, conferences retain many attributes of a closed union shop. Once an Elder is in the fold, he or she naturally expects to move up gradually through the system from smaller to larger churches, from lesser to larger salaries.”
His point is that we have adopted legal requirements upon the clergy and imposed fiscal requirements on the congregations without studying the organizational culture and nature of our covenant and our missiology.
Our guaranteed appointment and equitable salary came from a day when the church was strong numerically, giving was faithful and the national economy seemed to be on a perpetual escalator.
None of those assumptions is now in play. We are smaller in numbers, older in demographics and more cautious in giving.
Thousands of our churches are supported by members whose remaining life expectancy is short. It is not unusual for a local church’s giving base to be severely eroded by just a handful of deaths.
The issue with guaranteed appointment is two-fold. First, can we continue to provide places of ministry for all provisional members on Elder track and all Elders in full connection who are asking for an appointment? If in order to provide a sufficient number of appointments we must have 150 in Sunday worship attendance, we will not have a place for every pastor.
Secondly, if larger churches pay less and less of the apportioned funds with no option for designating their preferences, the Equitable Salary Fund cannot sustain a live-able wage guarantee. Churches of larger membership seem less willing to support a conference fund that subsidizes pastors in smaller membership churches.
The traditional ties of familiarity and connectional benevolence have been weakened as laity understand less and less about connectionalism. Higher priorities today include the funding of local missional ministries, mission-building teams, disaster response, congregational staffs and parish programs.
In a major study in 1989, the most frequently checked definition of “apportionment” in a multiple-choice list was “franchise tax.”
The second issue raised in any evaluation of guaranteed appointment is whether we are subsidizing mediocrity. To put it in Dr. Frank’s language, “The guarantee of appointment can too easily become an assurance of security based on minimum performance.” Should we pastors not take seriously the questions asked us upon ordination:
Are you resolved to devote yourself wholly to the work of God?
Do you approve of our church government and polity?
Will you diligently instruct the children?
Will you visit from house to house?
Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never being triflingly employed. Never spend any more time in one place (including your computer) than is strictly necessary. We cannot all be academic wizards, we do not all have the same gifts, but can we not be sure to answer the above affirmatively? And if we cannot, are we being effective? And if we are not effective, can we expect in today’s world to get an appointment?
A third component of guaranteed appointment is the rising cost of pension and medical benefits, business-related expenses, housing allowance and continuing education. Added up, these benefits almost equal the salary of an entry-level pastor. The bottom line is that fewer and fewer of our local churches can “pay the freight” which accompanies the salary of a full-time pastor. Again, this is especially true if the church is expected to pay 100 percent of all apportioned funds.
Let’s look at some options.
My last column proposed that we reconsider several small-membership church paradigms from the 1950s: the extended parish, the larger parish, the group ministry and the federated parish. Those structures placed a lay minister or staff minister from a larger church in every pulpit every Sunday. Other than Sunday school and worship, all the proposed arrangements brought congregations in common trading areas together for office equipment, program staff and program ministries. I boldly propose that all bishops look anew at these parish arrangements before they say to a small station, “We are going to put you back on a circuit.”
Another option is a harder bullet to bite: We are ill-prepared to define what is meant by “ineffective ministry.” However, if a pastor’s track record shows a recurring of the same concerns and conflicts in a series of appointments, some empirical data does emerge. Another dimension of ineffectiveness is the level of expectation we have in our definition of “effective ministry.” Many of our churches have been in a downward spiral of membership and attendance for so long that losses in these columns go uncriticized.
Even as I write these words, the faces of my former students and some dear friends appear in my mind. We want to live in the best of worlds, but like the rest of society we are forced to live in a new world that requires more bravery, courage, faith, faithfulness and commitment to our convictions.
The future belongs to those who have vision to which they will devote task. Vision without task is a pipedream. Task without vision is drudgery.
This old war horse is still driven by a “woe is me if I preach not the gospel” and a commitment to being “a workman who needeth not to be ashamed.”
We have a great message in this grace theology. We must not wring our hands in self-pity while secularism and fundamentalism walk away with our children, our children’s children and eventually our houses of worship.
We have some bullets to bite as we bear the pain, but bite them we will even if amputation is required for wellness.
Dr. Haynes is an instructor in United Methodist studies at Hood Theological Seminary. dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.
Donald Haynes
