Here is the report from Nick Strobel, one of your lay delegates to the 154th Annual Conference that took place June 12-16, 2002. Those of you interested in my notes on the workshop for Congregational Development can select this link to jump directly there.
For me the 154th session of the California-Nevada Annual Conference began with the words of welcome from the conference Lay Leader, Pete Taylor, and the district lay leaders (our district's is Barbara Keith) and plenty of singing in the Laity Session---the one thing United Methodists like to do is sing! The theme of this year's Annual Conference is ``Walking with Jesus, Living in Faith''. The lay leaders shared briefly about their walk with Jesus. There was no orientation for first-time members this time even though a significant fraction of the delegates were there for the first time. Pete Taylor invited all of us to the Local Church Lay Leaders Training on October 19th. It is a free training event for any layperson who wants to learn to be a more effective leader in their local church or in any district or conference ministry.
Evening worship was great! The music of the service was Japanese drumming by the Procession-Taiko drummers. Two drummers stood on either side of a large drum with their feet firmly braced (one behind the other) as they beat their side of the drum, sometimes swinging almost their entire body to make the beating as loud as possible. However, all of the time there was a fluidity and grace to their motions, so the drumming was actually a dance. There were other drummers on their own individual drums, but the two-person drum was the center of attention. Drummers for the two-person drum would switch off to give the drummers a rest (and give the others a chance to go to town on the big drum).
Near the beginning of the service was a ritual for the four directions from the Native American traditions. We all stood and turned in the four compass directions during the ritual. The scripture was the walk to Emmaus story, but it was fleshed out a bit in the retelling and quite literally fleshed out with an interpretive dance. Bishop Shamana gave the sermon---man, can she preach! She focused on the part of the story about the disciple's reaction when they finally recognized their companion was actually Jesus when he broke bread with them. They saw Jesus anew as if for the first time.
She also related her experience at the retreat for youth who will be confirmed into the church. One youth at the youth had asked her if ``God had done this before''---had God created another world with people on it to get some experience before creating the Earth and us? The youth was concerned that God was messing up because there was a lot of conflict, hate, and death in the world. At the retreat Bishop Shamana managed to turn the question around and got the youth to share how they would fix things and work on the side of creation and life. But the youth's question has remained with her (and now us) as we look at the state of our world and how things are done as if for the first time.
The next morning's session began with devotions on the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We discussed with our tablemates the times or situations in our lives when we've been either the victim, one who passes on by, or the helper. In the bishop's State of the Conference address, Bishop Shamana mentioned 3 upcoming events: the establishment of a Laity Cabinet that will focus on mission, leadership, and training; a Children's march on the state capitol (she meant Sacramento, so the Nevada folks later reminded her about their state); a conference-wide visioning on Hispanic ministry---an honest evaluation of what's happening today, what's worked, what hasn't worked and why, and how we can have effective Hispanic ministry in the future.
The Thursday afternoon session began with worship in Spanish and English. The scripture was about Jesus' healing of the paralytic who was lowered through the roof of a very crowded house. Dr. David Maldonado, the president of Iliff Seminary, gave the message. Dr. Maldonado said that all of the people in that standing room only house had run to be sure and get a good position to listen to Jesus. He equated those people with long-time church members who have followed the rules and who have worked hard in the church. We've built a nice house and feel we deserve our nice viewing position of Jesus. The paralytic could not get in to see Jesus because he couldn't walk, much less run. Those who help the crippled man lost their chance of getting a good view of Jesus because they had to stop and help the crippled man. When they tried to get in to the house to see Jesus, they were rebuffed by those who had earned their choice spot in the house. Dr. Maldonado noted that Jesus did not scold the paralytic's friends when they damaged the homeowner's property when they made a hole in the roof to lower the paralytic down to Jesus to be healed. Who in our community wants to get into the church to meet Jesus? How are we like the other people in the house telling others to ``not cut in and go to the back of the line''?
The time before dinner was spent in our legislative sections. There were a total of 33 recommendations. Every legislative section dealt with 4 or 5 of the recommendations. My section was responsible for discussing the recommendations dealing with: 1) the required reporting of compensation of those appointed to an extension ministry or to a setting beyond the local church; 2) a call for support of the General Board of Church & Society and the Women's Division, the staff of which have been under continued and personal attacks by the Institute for Religion and Democracy; 3) an increase in the pension rate for those who served before 1982 by $30/year; 4) the creation of a stet-by-step set of procedures for the screening of those who work with children; 5) the discontinuance of the Soledad UMC. All of them were unanimously approved by my section so they went on the consent calendar. The entire body of conference delegates will deal with only those items that were controversial enough to not be approved or rejected by 85% of a legislative section's members.
I joined Lisa and the girls for dinner and had fun playing in the park so I missed the evening memorial service.
During Friday morning, Lisa and I attended two workshops. The first was about the Faith We Sing supplement led by Daniel Charles Damon who had written several of the songs in the supplement. He told us about the different editions (versions) of the Faith We Sung supplement and led us through one verse of many different styles of music in the supplement. We sung the song the Bishop taught us at the Wednesday evening service, #2208---Guide My Feet Oh God. Some other great ones we'll have to sing at Wesley are: #2047, #2130, #2238, and #2244. We did sing plenty of others, but those are the ones that Lisa and I really liked and that we haven't sung before. By the way, the reason why the song numbers start with 2000 is because the supplement came out in the year 2000.
The second workshop was about Congregational Development, led by Tom Hillman. He talked about the life cycle of a church using a S-shaped curve with the numbers 1, 2 on the bottom of the S, 3 and 4 on the upward diagonal part of the S, 5 near the top of the S, and 6 and 7 along the top horizontal part of the S. The numbers are stages of a church's life: 1=vision; 2=plant (start the church gathering); 3=growth (concerned with how to have more ministry); 4=organization (concerned with what kind of building they're going to be in); 5=over-management (e.g., trustees worrying with what type of punch will blend in better with the carpet when spills happen); 6=decline (renting out the facility to help pay the bills; Sunday morning offering is not enough to pay the bills); 7=terminal. Most of the churches in our conference are in stages 5+6. At those stages the pastor spends all of his/her time maintaining the membership (not growing and trying to stop decline).
If a church wants to attract and keep young families, then one question that needs to be answered is ``does the music style reflect the taste of the younger families?'' Music is one of the things over which conflicts and fights in a church arise. The other source of conflicts is the facility. Another question is what are the needs of the people you're trying to reach? The pastor needs to delegate maintenance tasks to other lay members, so he/she can do the visioning + planning for growth. It helps to have a ``buzz event'' or an interest club to build relationships. A ``buzz event'' could be a talk/dinner with a well-known speaker and invite the entire community to it with a lot of advertising. An interest club is an example of friendship evangelism---build up a relationship with non-Christians and then invite them to church. Hillman said that those who became Christians more than 23 years ago have lost all of their non-Christian friends. Often, church growth is ``sheep stealing'', a term coined by Hillman to describe them switching of church members among the churches in a community but no new Christians joining the faith community.
Hillman introduced the three types of leadership: catalyzers (entrepreneurs great a starting churches but tend to get filtered out of our system), organizers (gather the jumble of pieces into an orderly organization), and operators (can keep the organization going and is what the UMC specializes in). There are also the four types of church members or personality types: radicals---change for change's sake, idea people, not planners, hate meetings); progressives---like change with adequate reasons and general plans, a good bridge between the radicals and conservatives and traditionalists); conservatives---like status quo but can be won over with extensive research and in-depth plans, like the details; traditionalists---keep status quo at all costs, NO change is GOOD change, keep things the same, good or bad, often the ``pillars of the church''.
There are also good resources available for church growth on the web and in print:
Bill McCord, retired pastor now in Carson City, NV said he has always been able to get churches he served to grow. He is willing to talk to any church about how to grow for free: (775) 883-2902.
Plenty of reports from various conference agencies, ministries, etc. Appointments for a couple of districts announced. The $8 million dollar year 2003 budget for the conference was presented (a 1.7% increase from the 2002 budget). The largest increases are due to increased health care and insurance costs. You can view the budget by selecting this link (it will download the 32.1 kB PDF file to your harddrive).
The Committee on Religion and Race led us through the Continuum on Becoming a Multicultural and Multiracial Church. The parts of the continuum are: an excluding church (enforces a racist status quo), a ``club'' church (maintains power of a particular race's privilege & is tolerant of a limited number of people from other races & ethnicities with the ``proper'' perspective), an open church (says that it is committed to inclusion of people from other races and ethnicities but is unaware of habits of privilege & paternalism), an awakening church (desires to eliminate discriminatory practices and inherent advantage but decision makers still conform to norms and practices derived from the dominant group's world view), a redefining church (begins to see benefits of a broader racial and cultural perspective in its ministry and is active in auditing all aspects of church life for openness to participation), and a transformed church (sees diversity as an asset and there is full participation in decisions that shape the church by diverse racial, cultural and economic groups). We were asked to stand up when the particular church type matched one of these parts. I stood up for the open church part and I found out later that Caroline also stood up at this part too (the seating arrangement for every delegate was randomized: I sat at table R8, Caroline was at table J1, and Marty was at table M18). Most people stood up at the awakening church part when they were asked to describe the annual conference as a whole.
Before dinner we gathered in the adjoining hall for a Service of Repentance for Racism. Selected clergy of various racial and ethnic backgrounds shared their experiences of racism at the institutional and/or personal levels. The scripture was the story of Jesus healing the blind man at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26). Dr. Maldonado led us through the story, line by line, in his sermon.
Caroline and I went to the Fresno District Dinner. There was good food and fun getting to know some people from other churches in the district. Most of the people at our table were from Visalia; one was from Riverdale. We had fun recognizing retiring pastors (they were given a whirly light sort of toy by the district superintendent to continue being a source of light in a world of darkness) and other transitions in the lives of the people in our district. People with noteworthy transitions were given a polished stone to make the ``milestone'' in their lives. We all eventually got a stone to mark the milestone of the Fresno district dinner at the 154th session of the CA-NV Annual Conf. I spent the rest of the evening with Lisa and the girls instead of going to the Bishop's Reception. I heard the reception had good dancing!
The Saturday morning session was more presentations and reports: children at conference, Cokesbury, Conference Lay Ministers, Local Pastors, the Laity Address by Pete Taylor, recognition of retired former bishops of the CA-NV AC. There was little bit of discussion about the budget but no controversy (unlike some other sessions of other annual conferences I've been in) so it was approved by nearly everyone. Caroline and I joined Marty and three good friends of his at a local sandwich shop that gives generous helpings (including half a loaf of sourdough bread to everyone). Lisa and the girls spent the morning & lunch at the zoo.
It wasn't until the last afternoon session of the conference that we got to the controversial recommendations. The conference spent about an hour or so on what to do with the property of the Central United Methodist Church in San Francisco that had been declared abandoned after following the lengthy procedure given in the Discipline. The recommendation from the Bishop's Cabinet and the Conference Board of Trustees had recommended that the property be sold (valued at 23 million dollars) with the proceeds to be used to create an endowment for Hispanic ministries within the Annual Conf. Most of the Thursday legislative section that dealt with the recommendation agreed to the proposal. A lengthy minority report from the was given in favor of an alternate proposal that would have delayed the selling of the process for at least a year and a request for the development of an action plan for Hispanic ministry. The minority report had 4 or more other things they wanted to happen before the property could be sold.
There was a great amount of confusion about what the minority reports writers were proposing because their report was not available in written form for others to study. It would have been sensible to have such a lengthy alternate recommendation copied off for the delegates to study ahead of time (other conferences I've been in require this). There was some scrambling to get the proposal displayed on the large screen at the front after a break in the debate to hear other reports and recognitions. When debate resumed, only part of the minority report had been typed up and only sections of that part could be displayed at a single time. Sigh!
However, I think the conflict boiled down to a struggle between the people from the San Francisco area wanting to keep the money in the Bay area and the people from the rest of the conference. The only good point in the opposition was that the conference or any Bay area United Methodist church agency would never have the resources in the future to buy that property back. However, I wonder why none of the Bay area churches or ministries had stepped in to use the Central UMC facility. In the end the alternate Bay area recommendation was defeated and the original recommendation prevailed by a significant margin. It was about 4 pm when final vote on the Central UMC proposal was taken. I did not stay for the other recommendations that would have to be voted on by the entire body since I still had a 4+ hour drive ahead of me. (Marty and Caroline left at that time too.) We trust that the conference made reasonable and faith-based decisions on the other controversial recommendations: stop drilling in the Los Padres Nat'l Forest, appropriate responses to terrorism, affirmation of the General Board of Church and Society (social justice ministries branch of the UMC), a request for the Council of Bishops to meet with the President to press for a peaceful and equitable resolution to the Israel-Palestinean conflict, and a late proposal to study ways to reduce the number of days of Annual Conference (select the links to download the PDF version of the proposals, except for the Annual Conference length proposal). Lisa, the girls, and I got home a little after 9 pm.
The best parts of Annual Conference are the worship services and fellowship times. The times when reports are given are usually fine. I don't look forward to the debates on resolutions, policies, and the budget (particularly when people have not done their homework or the presentations are not clear). If you have any other questions or thoughts about our conference or this report, please let me know!
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Report put on website on June 16, 2002