JCD 1310

http://www.umc.org/decisions/67272

Plan UMC Revised

To understand the details of what aspects of the Plan UMC Revised were constitutional and which were not, read the decision.  It is clearly written.

You will find that the cluster of petitions called “Plan UMC-Revised” sent in together in one package violates the separation of powers at some points, violations which would have given bishops more authority over things that the Discipline and constitution do not allow.

Here is a quick history behind this “plan.”  At the 2012 General Conference, it seemed like two-thirds of the plenary session was taken up extolling then arguing the merits of legislation called Plan UMC.  Pushed by the Council of Bishops, it was finally passed two days before the end of General Conference.  Then without discussion, it was referred to the Judicial Council for review of constitutionality.  The Council overturned it, pointing out its flaws of giving authority to bishops that the constitution does not support.  See JCD 1210 and the commentary on this blog for it from 2012.

To avoid that embarrassment, the Council of Bishops first had an individual send in the package over his own name.  Then, the Council of Bishops voted in May of 2015 to request a declaratory decision on the constitutionality of this latest plan.  Despite statements to the contrary, they were hoping to get the Council to accept this new version and grease the skids to get it through the 2016 General Conference.

The balance of powers worked in that case.  In JCM 1303 in November of 2015, the Council pointed out that this was only one of many possible plans that might be before the General Conference and a ruling only on this plan would intrude on the legislative process, appearing to be a preferred option.  So they punted!  They deferred making a ruling until their General Conference session in May, 2016.

But then the Council did just what it said it intended not to do.  It ruled on the constitutionality of Plan UMC Revised the day before the opening of General Conference.  Had they stayed true to their approach, they would have waited until the delegates asked for review.  Hence, the bishops got what they wanted, just not the result they’d hoped for.

For practical purposes, it must be said, Plan UMC Revised ended up “dead on arrival” and never got any real traction as a package.  In fact, the plan was broken up into smaller clusters of petitions by the originator of the package in order to be accepted by the Petitions Secretary since five or so different legislative committees would have responsibility for various portions of the package.  I can’t say which portions were actually passed but the desire of the bishops to marginalize several of the monitoring agencies (Status and Role of Women, et al) and shifting control of certain financial and other functions to a group under the control of the Council of Bishops were not passed, as far as I know.

Now let me beat on a dead horse for a moment.   Over the years, I petitioned General Conference an average of forty per quadrennium since 1976.  Several times, I was chastised for dealing with more than one issue in a petition or addressing more than one paragraph.  Paragraph 507 has been used to prevent individuals like myself from putting together a coherent set of petitions needed to correct flawed systems like the administrative and judicial handling of complaints and personnel.  

Yet every four years, agencies like the General Board of Higher Education and Ministries submit complex packages of petitions which deal with those very systems.  They may do it and I was not allowed to.  

Similarly, the Council of Bishops through whichever agency wishes to help them out, has been submitting clusters of petitions, contrary to Paragraph 507 as long as I can remember.  The Council in JCM 1310 did note the possible violation of Paragraph 507.2 but left enforcement of it to the General Conference rather than include it in its own decision.  Maybe next time the Council will consider disqualifying such packages.  They didn’t need to this time.

JCM 1303

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PLAN UMC REVISED

As predicted (see this blog’s post on JCD 1210), “CALL TO ACTION/PLAN UMC” with most of its worts has been resurrected to eat up time and attention at General Conference in Portland, OR, next year.  

It is still based on the presumption that the bishops have been flawless in their ministries and that the blame for the decline of our denomination lies with everyone else, especially with the General Commission on Religion and Race and the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women, which the revised plan marginalizes.  Oh yes, they also want to diminish Archives and History.  I find it interesting that the three agencies which have the facts about what is happening in the Church and have an advocacy role (history does so by just being there!) that can challenge the bishops are the principle targets of the “reorganization.”  

I do not believe it is coincidental that the Council of Bishops sent in the request for a declaratory decision.  The Council Table, a body “created or authorized by” the General Conference” (¶2610.2c), could have done it.  I really think it is the Council of Bishops’ arrogance, unrecognized by them, and rarely withstood, that caused them to try to triangulate the Judicial Council into the argument.

Wisely, the Judicial Council has deferred any decision on the constitutionality of Plan UMC Revised.  They have thus avoided being sucked into the argument.  They are waiting to allow other plans to be presented before they decide on the constitutionality of Plan UMC Revised.

They did not say the request was hypothetical.  They have jurisdiction since a request for a declaratory decision may be prospective when the decision directly affects the work of the conference addressing the issue.  

I believe the same arguments laid out in JCD 1210 will make this “revision” unconstitutional, primarily that it directs bodies to give up their constitutional authority to other bodies.  That would be how decision-making and financing are put into the wrong hands.

We live in tumultuous times.  It is sorely tempting to let someone else handle the difficult decisions rather than fight the good fight in democratic processes.  There are those who believe all authority resides with them and would love to take over decision-making to make it easier for the rest of us and to make it easier to make decisions.  What a blessing these self-identified “servant leaders” can bestow upon us by accepting the power we don’t mind letting slip away.  That’s how autocracies devolve from democracies.

I could be incorrect about my presumption that Plan UMC Revised is unconstitutional.  The Council may actually think it is okay and are just postponing having to say so.  An endorsement at this time would ease the railroading of it through General Conference.  In any case, I hope the wise heads among the delegates will do a better job of identifying causes for whatever malaise there is in our Church and provide better solutions than the top-heavy Plan UMC Revised offers.

Postscript:  The Judicial Council occasionally does things that seem counter-intuitive.  In this case, it has to do with who is actually the appellant.  

In a case a few years ago, a bishop was appealing his being dropped from episcopacy.  When questions related to his case went before the Council, however, he was not considered the appellant.  The bishops who pushed for his unseating were.  In that case, the advocate failed to bring the questions in writing and the College of Bishops did!

In this case, the ones most critical of the Plan UMC Revised were not considered the appellants.  In fact, they were not even allowed to address the open hearing of the Council.  The Council of Bishops pre-empted criticism of Plan UMC Revised by bringing the question of constitutionality and none of the ones who were identified as parties to the request were actually arguing against it.

JCD 1210

http://archives.umc.org/interior_judicial.asp?mid=263&JDID=1331&JDMOD=VWD&SN=1201&EN=1211

OVERTURNING THE REORGANIZATION OF THE DENOMINATION

At the instigation of the Council of Bishops with little or no input from the Boards and Agencies of the denomination, a wide-ranging plan named “A Call to Action” was developed over the past quadrennium. It had many features and many critics. By the time it reached General Conference, it had been broken up into various parts, as discussed in my posting on this blog of “April 25 – Dr. Chomingwen Pond,” under which I included a section called “A Call to Action.”

Right after lunch on the day it was passed (May 2, two days before adjournment), the plenary voted with no discussion to refer this variation on reorganization called “Plan UMC” to the Judicial Council. This was such a high profile set of legislation, having taken up all the oxygen in the room at General Conference that the Judicial Council took it up immediately.

As they have done with so many reorganization plans submitted from annual conferences, they discerned the primary flaw of this one, an attempt to move decision-making from the bodies granted it by the Discipline, and placing it in other bodies.

Here again, as I’ve written before, the Council of Bishops was seeking to gain control over more and more of the organizations of the denomination. Nowhere in any version of the segments of “A Call to Action” was there an effort to look at where the bishops in their duties may have contributed to whatever malaise they were trying to resolve with their plan. The problems of the denomination were with everyone else, as the plan clearly pointed out.

But the Judicial Council stuck with examining the plan for constitutionality, not for its inherent weakness. With care, they laid out the constitutional flaws of this reorganization attempt, the same ones they have explained over and over in previous rulings dating back to JCD 364, a decision given in 1972. See also the most recent, JCD 1198, from 2011.

One special feature of this decision is that it did not restrict itself to the possible constitutional issues identified by the one making the request. Under the general rubric of determining constitutionality, the Judicial Council found its own grounds for determining that the legislation lacked constitutionality. Again with careful argument, the Council was clear about what it found. Future efforts to reorganize the Church better take these into account.

I do not expect those who cobbled together “Plan UMC” will do any better when they try to revive this kind of thing for 2016.

The immediate effect of this decision had a serious impact, though, in three ways.

First, the years spent over the past Quadrennium working on “A Call to Action” suddenly were seen by many observers to be the waste they were. And the hours spent trying to keep it alive at General Conference despite its questionable objectives were not lost on the majority of the delegates in Tampa.

Second, the impact of this effort led by the Council of Bishops further eroded the respect with which they had been held by the rest of the Church. Many episcopal leaders expressed dismay at the lack of trust they were being shown by the actions of the General Conference. See my posting of May 29 on “Trust of Bishops.”

Third, two agencies, the General Commission on Religion and Race and the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women, were preserved. Under Plan UMC, they would have been merged and would have had next to no resources to continue in any serious way, if at all.

In conversations I had among bishops during General Conference, I found every one of the bishops with whom I talked stunned at what had happened to their “wonderful” ideas meant to “enliven” the denomination. We can look forward to similar efforts for 2016, though this General Conference did not fund a new study. I do not see that stopping those energetic leaders from bringing many petitions professionally packaged to sell in the next conference’s prime time. The Judicial Council better be ready for more work in Portland, OR, in 2016.

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.