JCM 1299

JHYPERLINK "http://www.umc.org/decisions/64862/eyJyZXN1bHRfcGFnZSI6IlwvZGVjaXNpb25zXC9zZWFyY2gtcmVzdWx0cyIsImV4YWN0Ijoic2VhcmNoOmRlY2lzaW9uX251bWJlciJ9" http://www.umc.org/decisions/64862/eyJyZXN1bHRfcGFnZSI6IlwvZGVjaXNpb25zXC9zZWFyY2gtcmVzdWx0cyIsImV4YWN0Ijoic2VhcmNoOmRlY2lzaW9uX251bWJlciJ9

RECONSIDERATION OF DROPPING CHARGES AGAINST A BISHOP

The Western Pennsylvania team seeking justice in dealing with an African bishop who they allege (with ample evidence) misused funds sent by them to his conference were denied reconsideration of the decision that closed down their complaint.  In JCD 1275, the Council ruled that since the College of Bishops in Africa chose not to forward the charges against the bishop in question, the matter was closed.

The docket does not include the arguments seeking reconsideration so I cannot comment on those.  As noted in the update on this blog related to JCD 1275, JCD 1281 essentially closed the case so the Council probably felt that was that.  

If past experience means anything, the Council has been put under extreme pressure from the Council of Bishops to back off their occasional efforts to hold the bishops accountable (my terminology, not theirs).  Followers of this blog know of my opinion that nearly all bishops with whom I have personally spoken have been respectful, poised, and gracious but that the Council of Bishops as a body influences good bishops to allow bad bishops free reign to seek more and more control with less and less accountability, especially on personnel issues.  Someone needs to adapt Reinhold Niebuhr’s MORAL MAN, IMMORAL SOCIETY to the contemporary scene in the United Methodist Church.

It is exceptional when the Council rules in favor of an accused pastor even when the bishop has violated church law, and this Council has done that more than any other since 1992-1996.  Church law is usually there to aid the oppressed and block abuse of power and the Council has sometimes been creative in seeking that out.  

Not having anything more than what has been reported in the past to put Western Pennsylvania’s request in context, it may be that church law is not complete enough to overcome actions (or failure of actions) in our system of holding of a bishop accountable.

In any case, because of this ruling no matter what the Council intends, the bishop in question and his episcopal brothers and sisters can feel a little better protected from challenges to the authority they want to have.

JCM 1221

http://archives.umc.org/interior_judicial.asp?mid=263&JDID=1345&JDMOD=VWD&SN=1201&EN=1229

ACCOUNTABILITY OVER THE FAILURE TO USE CONSULTATION IN APPOINTMENT-MAKING

A layperson raised a request at the North Alabama Conference that the Judicial Council review a bishop’s dismissal of a complaint against a superintendent.

At issue was the fact that the Cabinet had failed to consult with a local church
about a number of pastoral changes that had occurred, were angered that the bishop dismissed a complaint against the superintendent who failed to consult with them, and when church members pursued a complaint against the bishop for failing to deal with the lack of consulting, their case against the bishop was also dismissed at the jurisdictional level.

However, unfortunately, the dismissal of charges against the superintendent and bishop were not legislative matters before the annual conference and therefore, since they had been dismissed in the complaint process under the Discipline (P 413), no matter whether or not those dismissals were fair, the request was ruled by the Council to be moot.

There are times I hate church law. This is another of them. It is especially difficult to sort out just how a lay person can seek redress when something unfair happens, especially when the adjudication process is put into the hands of the closest colleagues of the respondent Cabinet officials!

This is one of those situations where the “Pharisee” in church leaders can take over.

The effect of this decision by the Council to be legalistic is to allow Cabinet members to avoid accountability for clear violations of the Discipline. Bishops will feel they can continue to make arbitrary appointments unilaterally. The Council of Bishops will feel it can continue to ignore holding bishops responsible to consult in appointment-making.

Maybe what might be tried is to take the complaint about failure to consult to the Council of Bishops to see what would happen. The Discipline gives them the responsibility to inquire annually about it (P 431.2). The question then becomes, “Where do the complainants go from there if justice is not done?” The Discipline is inadequate so only people of integrity among the bishops can do something about it if the law does not.

In the current administrative culture of the Council of Bishops, it appears taking the easiest way whether it is legal or not and protecting one another are their priorities. Obeying church law is not.

Update: In researching for JCD 1230, I found that the annual conference episcopacy committee is also responsible for implementing the consultation process. See Paragraph 637.3f. That might also work in getting accountability about consultation since JCD 1230 directs such concerns go through the annual conference committee as well as the jurisdictional committee. - No mention of the Council of Bishops....

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 1229

http://archives.umc.org/interior_judicial.asp?mid=263&JDID=1348&JDMOD=VWD&SN=1201&EN=1229

CONSTITUTIONALITY OF INVOLUNTARILY RETIRING A BISHOP

The South Central College of Bishops challenged the constitutionality of the involuntary retirement of a bishop by the jurisdictional episcopacy committee.

They had five questions, the first of which asked about constitutionality and three others that followed up with hypothetical questions. They withdrew the fifth which asked the Council what its rules were for the hearing the Council was authorized to have if the bishop appealed the decision.

Their questions were actually sent in prior to any final action taken by the jurisdiction and its episcopacy committee.

The Council’s review noted no restrictions in the constitution to the General Conference providing for involuntary retirement through the jurisdiction and therefore ruled P 408.3 to be constitutional.

This decision is well after the fact following the request of the college of bishops, because the committee held a hearing with the bishop and his counsel, decided to retire him involuntarily, which decision was then supported by a vote of the jurisdictional conference.

I wonder if the committee would have thought to ask the conference to vote on their recommendation if the bishops had not gotten their questions referred to the Council.

Years ago, in JCD 475, the Council ruled that only those who elected a bishop could hold him/her accountable. That is why the Council of Bishops no longer is where complaints against bishops are handled. Unfortunately, the parallel related to superintendents (P 429.3), written at the same time that the one where bishops were held accountable by the Council of Bishops, still stands.

Since 1984, petitions seeking to take accountability for superintendents out of the Cabinet have been voted down by General Conference. I know. I submitted them from then all the way through 2012.

The bishops get around JCD 475 by having General Conference put their accountability in the college of bishops on the jurisdictional level. While that has been modified to allow for the supervisory response to be handled by one bishop plus two members of the episcopacy committee rather than two bishops (see P 413), it has been impossible to hold a bishop accountable for Disciplinary violations outside of those related to sexual misconduct (see JCMs 1221).

Until this year….

The Judicial Council has scheduled a hearing for the bishop. He has appealed the episcopacy committee’s decision to involuntarily retire him. That hearing will be held Nov. 10 in an extraordinary session.

If the Council does not overturn the involuntary retirement, a whole new chapter on accountability of bishops will finally open up.

Note: P 413, which is the route taken to hold the bishop accountable for failing to use consultation in appointment-making in the North Alabama case (JCM 1221 above), provides the other way to handle a complaint against a bishop. P 408.3 does not appear to require a complaint to arise through P 413. Provisions of P 413 can end up in the hands of the episcopacy committee of the jurisdiction under P 413.3e). In the case of Bishop Bledsoe, no complaint was ever brought so P 413 was not used. They went directly to the jurisdictional episcopacy committee under P 408.3.

I hope JCM 1229 means that P 413 as it is now written will eventually become superfluous and bishops will no longer have a hand in handling their own accountability. By all means they should challenge one another to go on to perfection and to obey church law and to avoid harm. That would be characteristic of a good professional relationship. But they should not participate in the processing of one another’s violations of the covenant of clergy and church law.

Update: In researching the decision of the Council when they met in November to hear Bishop Bledsoe's appeal, I discovered that the Council president is a member of the annual conference presided over by Bishop Bledsoe. In the past, when a Council member was from the same conference as a case, the member recused himself or explained why he or she did not. There was neither recusal nor explanation in either this docket item nor the Bledsoe hearing.

The rationale he might use is that he was not part of the jurisdictional processes and therefore recusal is not an issue.

But with their respective offices being close in Dallas, and with Dr. Lawrence being under Bishop Bledsoe's appointment to be Dean at Perkins, I am uneasy about the situation.

Summary Remarks for JCDs 1212 – 1229

1. The new group seems to have picked up where its predecessors left off, avoiding being factional and sticking with church law pretty rigorously. The new Council has also shown little propensity to side with the bishops automatically and has opened the door to accountability of bishops beyond the cases where one may be involved in sexual misconduct.

2. That objectivity about accountability of bishops will face tests in a special hearing set up in November reviewing an appeal of a bishop who was involuntarily retired and again next spring when a former bishop may seek readmission to being a retired bishop.

3. I personally appreciate the posting of the original requests for Judicial Council rulings as they were sent to the Council.

4. In the past, the Council has been unable to resolve cases because of the lack of needed materials that should have been sent in by appellants and conference secretaries. For this session, the New York Conference (JCD 1218) was alone in not sending in all the minutes that would have helped the Council get the full context of the case from them. Another bishop made assertions that he did not document (JCM 1224), something that was not the fault of the conference secretary. This degree of discipline getting documentation asked for by the Judicial Council is admirable and certainly helps facilitate the Council’s work.

5. With the one exception (JCM 1214), the Council wrote in ways that were good continuing education for those needing to know church law.

6. Consistency is always a goal and some questions about it could be raised on the basis of these decisions from the Council (especially JCM 1214).

7. Because of the absence of a “regular” member for whom an alternate had to sit in, there were three “first-timers” dealing with this very big docket. The overall quality of the decisions approaches the level reached by the previous group who had worked together for four years.

8. Even so, there were some things that will have an impact that cannot be fully anticipated (JCDs 1212, 1215, 1218, 1226, and 1229). And maybe some which I think the Council may need to reconsider or they will leave in place some things that hurt the church (JCDs 1216, 1221, and 1228).

9. Finally, if only the rest of us pay attention and provide insights and information useful to this new Council, the denomination will benefit the most.

Note: Many have honored my request for their critiques of these posts as I worked on them. I take full responsibility for what each of these posts says but much wisdom has been shared to improve them.