JCD 1226

http://archives.umc.org/interior_judicial.asp?mid=263&JDID=1340&JDMOD=VWD&SN=1201&EN=1229

GUARANTEED APPOINTMENT

This decision was also deferred from the spring session and I repost my comment on JCM 2011 from last May. It deserves repeating:

“Part of the ‘Call to Action’ legislation was getting rid of the guaranteed appointment. For many quadrennia, petitions have been before General Conference to remove the right of pastors to have an appointment if they were in good standing. None had passed before. The Methodist principle that every church shall have a pastor has as its corollary that every pastor shall have a church. On the basis of this contract, every church would have seamless leadership changes and pastors were committed through conference membership to be available to assure that promise.

“In 1956, the General Conference added phrasing to the Discipline that guaranteed appointments for pastors. The purpose of the addition was to support those who were minorities or were women. The impact was significant. The good bishops had been very conscientious about making sure every pastor had a church and they continued to do that as women and ethnic minorities entered their annual conferences. But not all bishops were good. The law was needed.

“Beginning with the Korean War and continued during the Vietnam War, both of which had the draft, a number of people entered annual conferences who were not as competent because they were safe from conscription as long as they could get through seminary. By the late 1970s, their ineptness came to the attention of bishops and efforts were made to remove them.

“Those efforts led to a change in 1980 that allowed superintendents to initiate complaints against pastors and that allowed Cabinets to initiate involuntary leaves of absence. By 1984, as I watched morale plummet in my own annual conference, I realized that their new power changed superintendents from “pastors of pastors” to “enforcers.” The gap between pastors and Cabinets grew immense. The very power to remove incompetent pastors actually produced pastors who pulled back from doing anything that would draw the Cabinet’s attention. As a result, their ministries languished, and Cabinets had even more pastors not being as effective as they could be. Further, the stress of being between critical superintendents and laity who could be antagonistic led to stresses that affected the health of pastors which increased the appearance of ineffectiveness.

“Thus, by 1984, a cycle of destruction of pastors had begun. Standards to enter conference membership were raised and all the new pastors entering the ministry came in with glowing reports of their energy and competence. Those standards have become so high that many seminarians do not even bother to join our denomination. And the bright and promising new pastors disappeared into the ranks. Even with high standards, the talk of incompetent pastors has only grown over the years. See my post of May 4, “A Persistent Theme” under which is an article about “Incompetent Pastors.”

“There have been two demographic twists to this issue. Because of the denomination’s declining size as older people die and younger people do not join as they used to, many conferences have had to close churches and thus have a surplus of pastors to account for at appointment time. The short term fix, of course, would be to drop pastors from having to be appointed. In the Council of Bishops’ view, the only legitimized way to do that was to end the guaranteed appointment system. Transfers to other conferences needing pastors and changing the structures which have destroyed morale and broken trust of superiors in office were not considered.

“The second demographic twist is that older pastors are retiring at an alarming rate, going out early whenever they can. These two lines, closure of churches and high rate of retirement, have not crossed yet. Very soon, in the next few years, there will not be enough pastors for the churches that are still going.

“On Tuesday, May 1, the petition removing guaranteed appointment was passed by General Conference. There was no provision saying it went into effect immediately so it would become effective on January 1, 2013, along with nearly all the rest of the legislation passed this year.

“On the last day in Tampa, a delegate moved referral of the legislation ending guaranteed appointments to the Judicial Council and it passed by a majority vote even though only twenty percent support was needed.. The Council, having barely completed work on the ‘Plan UMC’ decision before the end of General Conference, had no way it could deal with this request so it deferred it to the Fall session.”

Upon careful and educative review last week, the Council declared the changes voted at General Conference to be unconstitutional because as part of itineracy the right of appointment was being removed and the right of trial and appeal were also being removed.

Cabinets are going to have to get smart. In addition to arranging appointments in other conferences needing pastors or offering golden parachutes to get pastors to retire early, they will need to find other positive options.

The chances are that in some conferences, Cabinets will take the low road and continue to take any complaint as an excuse to put a pastor on involuntary leave of absence and then keep changing the requirements to re-enter the ministry as the pastor seeks to return to appointment.

There is an unusual aspect to the full decision. Because the appellants pointed out the interconnection of other legislation passed by General Conference, the Council struck down as unconstitutional a number of other amendments brought through other Calendar Items to Disciplinary paragraphs passed by General Conference that were not directly included in the original request but were Discplinary paragraphs noted in the changes to P 337. The Council agreed with the appellants that those amendments had to be addressed or they would undermine the decision about the change to the paragraph that was addressed. Thus transitional leave remains voluntary, and associate members of the conference remain available for appointment.

As noted by church media, P 338 which allows bishop-initiated appointments to part-time churches, was not noted in the changes to P 337. Under the new law, bishops can make an appointment that was voluntary before but now could be involuntary.

It will be interesting to see which conferences fire off requests for a ruling from the Judicial Council on that. So from January 1, 2013, until late October of next year, bishops will be experimenting with using part-time appointments on “incompetent” pastors.

In conclusion, clergy are only slightly more secure in their jobs than they were before the unconstitutional changes to P 337 and its ancillary amendments that got through General Conference. Bishops still have the authority to appoint pastors to the smallest churches available, take any minor complaint and turn it into a big deal to get rid of a pastor they don’t like, or intimidate a man over 50 or an ethnic or a woman into retiring early or taking leave of absence by designating them as “unappointable.”

Even the Council’s staunch endorsement of fair process as required before a pastor can be left without appointment will not have an impact as long as bishops are not held accountable for such violations.

Update: I have read the Brewington-Nelson-Riss brief which shows they added the other legislation related to Paragraph 337 and have changed the text above to reflect that.

JCM 2011

http://archives.umc.org/interior_judicial.asp?mid=263&JDID=1332&JDMOD=VWD&SN=1201&EN=1211

GUARANTEED APPOINTMENT

Part of the “Call to Action” legislation was getting rid of the guaranteed appointment. For many quadrennia, petitions have been before General Conference to remove the right of pastors to have an appointment if they were in good standing. None had passed before. The Methodist principle that every church shall have a pastor has as its corollary that every pastor shall have a church. On the basis of this contract, every church would have seamless leadership changes and pastors were committed through conference membership to be available to assure that promise.

In 1956, the General Conference added phrasing to the Discipline that guaranteed appointments for pastors. The purpose of the addition was to support those who were minorities or were women. The impact was significant. The good bishops had been very conscientious about making sure every pastor had a church and they continued to do that as women and minorities entered their annual conferences. But not all bishops were good. The law was needed.

Beginning with the Korean War and continued during the Vietnam War, both of which had the draft, a number of people entered annual conferences who were not as competent because they were safe from conscription as long as they could get through seminary. By the late 1970s, their ineptness came to the attention of bishops and efforts were made to remove them.

Those efforts led to a change in 1980 that allowed superintendents to initiate complaints against pastors and that allowed Cabinets to initiate involuntary leaves of absence. By 1984, as I watched morale plummet in my own annual conference, I realized that their new power changed superintendents from “pastors of pastors” to “enforcers.” The gap between pastors and Cabinets grew immense. The very power to remove incompetent pastors actually produced pastors who pulled back from doing anything that would draw the Cabinet’s attention. Their ministries languished, as a result, and Cabinets had even more pastors not being as effective as they could be. Further, the stress of being between critical superintendents and laity who could be critical led to stresses that affected the health of pastors which increased the appearance of ineffectiveness.

Thus, by 1984, a cycle of destruction of pastors had begun. Standards to enter conference membership were raised and all the new pastors entering the ministry came in with glowing reports of their energy and competence. Those standards have become so high that many seminarians do not even bother to join our denomination. And the bright and promising new pastors disappeared into the ranks. Even with high standards, the talk of incompetent pastors has only grown over the years. See my post of May 4, “A Persistent Theme” under which is an article about “Incompentent Pastors.”

There has been two demographic twists to this issue. Because of the denomination’s declining size as older people die and younger people do not join as they used to, many conferences have had to close churches and thus have a surplus of pastors to account for at appointment time. The short term fix, of course, would be to drop pastors from having to be appointed. In the Council of Bishops’ view, the only legitimized way to do that was to end the guaranteed appointment system. Transfers to other conferences needing pastors and changing the structures which have destroyed morale and broken trust of superiors in office were not considered.

The second demographic twist is that older pastors are retiring at an alarming rate, going out early whenever they can. These two lines have not crossed yet. Very soon, in the next few years, there will not be enough pastors for the churches that are still going.

On Tuesday, May 1, the petition removing guaranteed appointment was passed by General Conference. There was no provision saying it went into effect immediately so it will become effective on January 1, 2013, along with nearly all the rest of the legislation passed this year.

On the last day in Tampa, a delegate moved referral of the legislation ending guaranteed appointments to the Judicial Council and it passed. The Council, having barely completed work on the “Plan UMC” decision before the end of General Conference, had no way it could deal with this request so it deferred it to their Fall session.

The Call to Action

While the General Conference finally voted on issues related to The Call to Action days later, this seems to be a good spot to discuss it at length

There are some bishops who feel they are called to the ministry of reorganizing the denomination to fulfill their vision of the Church. If they were the retired ones, I could understand that impulse. And I would be tempted to take them seriously if for no other reason than they were more mature and experienced.

It appears some very bright “young bucks” caught the fever of simplification of structure that has been attempted across the United States but which the Judicial Council has invariably struck down because those plans took Disciplinary authority away from bodies and attempted to give it to others, contrary to the Discipline.

To be clear about what was involved, remember that bishops have been in charge of each board and agency since General Conference was persuaded that those groups needed monitoring to minimize turf fights, rampant expenses, and other bureaucratic problems. A bishop has been president of each and has had the pleasure of a half dozen or so episcopal colleagues on the board with them to help in the monitoring and governance of each body.

So now after all these years under their careful administration and watch, they joined with the Connectional Table (but not all the executive secretaries of the boards and agencies) and some others (successful pastors of mega-churches) to cut the expenses, the staffs, and the independence of those bodies. They called their plan, “The Call to Action.”

It was intended to revitalize local churches and make the denomination leaner but more efficient.

I don’t know whether they were covering up their ineptness for not fulfilling their responsibilities as the presidents of those bodies or whether they actually saw where changes could be made or were just wishing to continue experimenting with structure (often called “re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”) or offering something else to save money rather than their own financial packages or seeking something more Calvinist in our structures so eventually it will be easier to merge with the Southern Baptists. (I’ve been warned that I sometimes say things in cutting ways. That happens when one cannot get a word in edgewise.)

Simply described, The Call to Action sought to eliminate the guaranteed appointment, reshuffle the boards and agencies to make them smaller and compacting their functions, and to gain a set-aside bishop who could help coordinate the ministries of the Church and the Council of Bishops, and to speak on behalf of the Church. It would save lots of money and “we’d all be happy and gay,” as the old camp song says.

And it would finally break the back of those darned kingdoms known as boards and agencies.

If you are following me on this, you are hearing me right if you see I am saying that the Council of Bishops is tired of having their own programming compete for authority and resources with the programming boards and agencies.

There was a challenge to The Call to Action which really was only a little different, called Plan B. It was rolled out early so that the two were the focus of presentations to the press last February.

Both plans were attacked quite widely from within the boards and agencies and from outside. An alternative that had substance needed to be developed and one was, after finally bringing to the table younger ministers and representatives of the regional (central) conferences outside the US (none of whom, it appears, knew the Discipline nor the Judicial Council decisions related to the issue).

It was finally passed . . . in pieces.

The first to be passed was the ending of the guaranteed appointment. More on that below. See May 1 – “Guaranteed Appointment Removed”

The set-aside bishop proposal was not passed. More on that below in “April 30 – The “Set-Aside Bishop” posting.

Something of a merger (Plan UMC) was passed only to be struck down by the Judicial Council on the last day of the conference.

It is a subtle thing but it is my opinion that the Council of Bishops felt it would have more influence over programming if they could influence a group they wanted to make the decisions rather than the ones to whom the Discipline gave that authority. I do not see in JCD 1210 a warning to the bishops to stop taking authority where they didn’t have it. Maybe it is only in the eye of this beholder.

At numerous times over the years, I have warned the Church about bishops wanting more authority all the time in every way they could get it. To me “The Call to Action” was the biggest such incursion I’ve seen yet. I warn you, gentle reader, wait till you see what they come up with for 2016!

In summary, then, the United Methodist Church – 2, the Council of Bishops -1* at the end of the General Conference.

*The guaranteed appointment “score” may be taken away because the Judicial Council has accepted a request to test the constitutionality of its removal and will rule on it in late October.

April 28 - The Seminarian

Legislative committees were winding down on Saturday, many having finished handling the petitions assigned to them. I was late getting to Tampa and had two appointments, one at lunch with the seminarian and the other at suppertime with a one of the translators who wanted to discuss pension rights with me.

The seminarian was surprised I was not a lawyer. She expected that because of the kinds of petitions I had written for this year’s General Conference. She asked about how I got started in advocacy, the association of which I’m a part, and how I came to write so many petitions. My answers satisfied her and what she said she needed for her report to the class.

I asked how it was she was interested in my petitions. I learned that someone close to her had been poorly treated and she had been old enough to understand how the Church had operated and how that differed from her reading of the Discipline. She hoped she would be able to help somehow to improve how personnel were handled in the Church.

Then she addressed another concern she and the rest of the students were watching closely, the possible end to guaranteed appointments.

“That was written in 1956 to protect women clergy,” she said.

I did not remember that from seminary which was just a couple years later. I thought it related to the age old Methodist practice of “A church for every pastor and a pastor for every church.” I found out later that she was right.

“Frankly, as one of my classmates put it, we’re really scared. The male candidates who are Caucasian will have fewer problems. It’s we women and ethnics that are most likely to be on the list to be left without appointment,” she said.

I offered that Cabinets are under obligation to the Discipline to include women and ethnics on an equal basis and have been assured by superintendents I know that such prejudice would not be the case.

She said her class has been meeting with superintendents and has become aware that Cabinets have lists on which they prioritize the pastors in the order of their progression for appointments. The top ones are in the “A” section. Women and ethnics are in the “Z” section.

“But you still want to serve in our denomination?” I asked.

“I was born and raised a United Methodist. I cannot imagine serving in another faith, though many of my classmates are actually aiming to do that,” she said.

She packed up her notes and papers, offered a sad smile, and headed out to write up her assignment. She stopped, turned, and thanked me for the interview and conversation.

I told her I hoped she and her classmates were having a good experience and I wished her well.

Now I was scared for that whole generation of future clergy.

Update: Not only did the removal of the guaranteed appointment occur but the General Conference did not ease the requirements to become clergy. In 2008, young pastors and seminarians came to General Conference wearing artfully designed caps that looked like spotted owls. Their caps brought to the session’s attention problems young seminarians faced. Maybe the spotted owl device should have been tried again. Even the African caucus could not bring about the desired change in 2012.

May 1 - Guaranteed Appointment Removed

The Council of Bishops has been deeply concerned about incompetent pastors and removing them because they were the obvious cause for the malais of the denomination. Every bishop, foreign or domestic, raised the question with me, “What do we do about incompetent pastors?” See the posting below entitled “Incompetent Pastors.”

Having worked with many pastors identified as incompetent by their Cabinets over the years, I saw that those who were really incompetent got removed sooner rather than later.

Those who were competent either walked away, wiping the dust of the UMC off their shoes as they walked out the door, or stayed and fought. The bishops had a hard time with the latter.

They had judged the pastor and now the pastor was disagreeing with them! That shouldn’t happen. No one should disagree with as Christian, hard-working, and conscientious a person as their bishop.

Why should the system slow down the process of removing them outright, especially in “right-to-work” (right to fire-at-will) states? Bishops have the authority to fire-at-will Local Pastors simply by not giving them an appointment.

That kind of power is needed to unload pastors who are too old (50 or older males) so that women and ethnics can replace them. That kind of power is nice to have to deal with the ones who are not loyal to the bishop (those who raise question at conference, advocate for a pastor in trouble, or disagree openly or in writing with something the bishop says or does).

For this General Conference, the bishops again sought the right to remove incompetent pastors by seeking an end to guaranteed appointments for the ordained members of annual conference. The presumption is that then the bishops would not have any more problems and the church should wax strong again, unencumbered by lousy pastors.

That Tuesday morning, the legislative committee and then the General Conference gave the bishops the removal of the words “guaranteed appointment.” And in effect, the legislation allows bishops to choose to place an Elder into a part-time ministry or to not appoint a pastor at annual conference.

BUT NOT UNTIL AFTER JANUARY 2013 when the new Discipline goes into effect.

But there are two things that the bishops did not ask for. One is that the legislation has been referred to the Judicial Council for consideration of its constitutionality which will be ruled on in late fall. I expect a very carefully thought through decision from the Council since Dr. Lawrence is a real Discipline wonk and will not allow any carelessness to be featured in the decision. And I will not predict what that would be.

The other thing the bishops did not anticipate, as I understand the legislation, was that while a pastor can be put involuntarily on transitional leave for up to two years, the Cabinet then has to document why that pastor may not then return to be appointed. They could not get away from having to prove incompetence sooner or later.

Practically speaking, they can dump a pastor any time they want. They do already, contrary to the Discipline. But some pastors are pretty motivated by unjust treatment and will follow all the options they have to fight what they see as unjust. If they don’t walk away the first week, being out for two years will not stop their seeking to return to full appointment status. The confrontations and processes have only been put off.

If the Judicial Council feels the change is unconstitutional, the bishops are right back where they started from.

Will any of them learn creative imagination to re-examine their presumptions and find wiser and more Christian alternatives? Will they realize their own role in discouraging pastors into unenthusiastic ministry?