Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Not much wrong with the prognosis, but…


In an interesting commentary on UM PORTAL Donald Haynes of Hood Theological Seminary has highlighted the rapidly approaching crisis for the small church in USA Methodism.He speaks of the rising cost of stipends, insurance and pensions and of the dwindling number of older, serious, givers among the membership. He recirculates a series of "creative proposals" that were considered in the 1950s and pleads for "a resurgence of innovative and creative commitment to the people who brought us to the dance."' Our heritage, he says,is in the smaller-membership church.
In my view his analysis fails to identify the central issue. It's not the rising cost of clergy nor the inability or unwillingness of people to pay for them. The problem is the clergy. We pastors have conspired with our people in what I call the heretical principle that trained, ordained experts must be personally engaged in frontline ministry in every small congregation. So the answers of the 1950s, as he presents them, were all to do with spreading ordained people more thinly to "cover" every situation. No denomination can do that indefinitely.
Local Shared Ministry starts from a totally different perspective. It is “innovative and creative” and it certainly represents total commitment of the judicatory to the people of the small church. But essentially it invites commitment from the people. It declares that the ministry of the local community belongs to the whole people of God in that setting. If they don't have a fat budget and can't afford to employ a minister - or even a portion of one – the denomination must offer a strategy that enables them to get on with their mission with the resources that they have among their own membership.
LSM tells us that trained clergy can best help these congregations best by withdrawing from personal engagement in that ministry and concentrating all their skills, education and energies on enabling the local leadership to do it well themselves. It’s not a matter of walking away and leaving them to it. Last Sunday (see my previous post) Bev and I saw the results of that. But when the denomination is able to free, challenge and enable the local people, everyone’s paradigm of ministry is changed.

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