United Methodist Restructuring – Can We Move Beyond The 1960s?

One of the significant issues that came before the 2008 General Conference was the proposal on the World Wide Nature of the Church. Twenty-three constitutional amendments would be required to make possible a new structure that would divide the church into regional conferences. Details as to how the new plan would operate were to be entrusted to a Task Force that would report to the 2012 General Conference.

Despite the importance of this issue the conference never had a chance for full debate. The reason is that the time set aside for consideration of the proposal was taken up by debate and discussion about whether the make-up of the Task Force to work out details was fully inclusive, specifically in regard to the presence of youth adults. So consideration of the substance of the proposal was derailed by the obsession with inclusivity on the Task Force.

One of the legacies of the 1960s has been the fragmentation of society into groups based on age, gender, race, status and geography. This fragmentation extended to the United Methodist Church. Previous to the 1972 General Conference the church had been operating as a closed corporation. In the Methodist Church, for example, the Board of Education in the 1968-72 quadrennium was made up of 39 persons, 37 of whom were white, male, middle-aged liberals. Only 7 were pastors; 13 were associated with universities or seminaries; the rest were bishops or church bureaucrats. The church needed to be opened up to other voices. However, It is unfortunate the way it was opened up. In the General Conferences of 1968-70-72 groups like Methodists for Church Renewal pressured the church, sometimes by demonstrations and marches, to break up the old power structures and substitute them with socially engineered ways of thinking and doing things. Out of this ferment the commissions on Religion and Race and the Role and Status of Women were established. The conferences established quota systems. The 1968 conference passed a resolution in support of civil disobedience. In other words, the church was capitulating to the more extreme elements in its midst. Or course the extreme elements understood their actions to be “prophetic.”

A dramatic example of how this negatively affected the church can be seen in what happened to youth ministry. Even before 1968 the Board of Education of the Methodist Church was introducing a new philosophy of youth ministry. Because “youth” were beginning to care deeply about the political and social issues of the day, according to this new thinking, any guidance the church might offer in the future should be directed not to matters such as Bible study or subjective experience, but to teaching youth how to think and how to be involved in the larger issues of life.

But “youth” themselves took this thinking much farther. Along with other demonstrating groups, “youth” were very much present as decisions about restructuring were taking place, especially at the 1970 General Conference. Youth “spokespersons” were extremely critical of how youth programs in both the Methodist and EUB church were being conducted. The word often heard was “Mickey-mouse.” “Youth” no longer wanted youth mottos, youth benedictions, youth handbooks, or even adult leaders telling them what to do. The Sunday school was for them infantile and irrelevant for the challenges of the present age.

The General Conference and the subsequent re-structuring of the church capitulated nearly 100% to the “youth” demands. A stand-alone agency, National Youth Ministry Organization (NYMO), was established, to be staffed by youth. The Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF), the successor to Epworth League, was simply eliminated in the 1972 structure. NYMO would be given responsibility for youth ministry, such as it was, and given charge of the mission funds of the former Methodist youth ministry (Youth Service Fund). Slots would be preserved for youth on the various agencies of the church.

This marked the beginning of the decline of youth ministry within United Methodism. The youth of NYMO were, first of all, college-age radicals, not the ordinary youth of local churches. Annual conference youth delegations that attended the 1970 General Conference were told their presence was not needed nor wanted in what must be understood today as a radicalized “Youth Caucas.” The youth who ran NYMO were simply not mature enough nor knowledable enough to run a youth program. One of the policies of NYMO was to mandate that at any NYMO meetings half the delegates needed to be ethnic minorities or the delegations would be refused vote. The result was that a number of annual conferences simply withdrew from youth ministry as conducted by the denomination.

NYMO was voted out of existence at the 1976 General Conference but youth ministry would never recover. In 1967 there were 13 youth staff under the Methodist Board of Education, along with15 secretaries, 52 full-time conference directors, and 1,200,000 pieces of curriculum material per quarter. By 1976 the merged church counted one part-time youth staff, one secretary, and 400,000 pieces of curriculum materials per quarter. The Youth Service Fund under NYMO had funded gay and lesbian causes as well as other political and social causes. Within four years what had taken the church decades to develop (MY Fund) simply dried up. Youth church school enrollment in the local church decreased by as much as one-half. During this period Good News, the evangelical renewal group, cried the alarm at the disintegration of youth ministry, and put its finger exactly on what had caused the disintegration, but these cries were dismissed as disruptive, divisive, and “right-wing.” United Methodism’s progressive corporate culture would never admit to bad decisions based on a bad process undergirded by bad theology.

If anyone benefited from UM actions in the area of youth it was the para-church groups. Youth for Christ, Young Life and Campus Crusade saw some of their most spectacular growth during the UM implosion. Part of the grand exodus from UM congregations was because families sought churches with vital youth programs for their children and youth. In many annual conferences evangelicals organized their own camping programs, as well as caravans and mission opportunities to help keep United Methodism viable.

Unfortunately, the church still lives with the legacy of the 1960s. The presence of observers from the Role and Status of Women at the 2008 General Conference looking over the shoulders of African delegates to monitor the political correctness of their speech should have been an embarrassment for anyone at the conference. Disruptive floor demonstrations after the vote on the practice of homosexuality, especially with the collusion and participation of bishops, was a page taken directly from the 1960s.

The legacy of the 1960s is summed up well by an observer from Europe who commented that the difference between the church in America and the church in Europe is that in America persons who serve on general boards often feel a greater loyalty to the group they were “representing” than to the agency’s larger purpose.

We still live with quota systems. Quota systems, whether informal or mandated, should never be seen as ends in themselves. They are of value only as they strengthen the church’s effort to make disciples. Have they accomplished that? It is doubtful.

The Steering Committee for Action, the Connectional Table, and the Council of Bishops, face a herculean task before them: how to restructure the church for the 21st century. One first suggestion would be to leave the 1960s behind.