The UMC Lifecycle

Part 2 on the necessity of The Protocol in the UMC

I didn’t start blogging again to write on my denomination (The United Methodist Church) or The Protocol. However, I felt compelled to set the record straight before moving on to other ordinary spiritual thoughts. One of the things I have tried to allude to in Part 1 and the Interlude was the necessity for something to change in The United Methodist Church. I want to expand this even further in this post because I don’t think it is just a UMC crisis, but an institutional crisis.

I have pastored several different churches. I have attended many different consultations, workshops, seminars, conferences, etc… I have been in two different programs around church leadership. I must have seen this or a similar depiction of a church lifecycle at least a hundred times.

Most of the time they want you or the church to locate where you are on the lifecycle.

Where do you think most churches would rate themselves?

Where do you think most churches actually are?

Would these points align?

Now apply this to the institutional level of The United Methodist Church.

Where do you think leaders in the institution would rate the denomination?

Where would people in the denomination rate the denomination?

Would these points align?

Most of the information that I have heard over the years is that there are three ways back from the right side of the chart to the left side of the chart. These three ways correspond with where you are on the chart.

1. If you are in maintenance, you need to renew. Renew the vision. Wake everyone up. Shake them out of their slumber. The church would enter a renewal phase which helps people reclaim their strategic growth.

2. If you are in preservation, you need to reinvent. It is time to cast a new vision, reinvent the church into a new body before you can seize momentum growth.

3. If you are on life support, you need to restart. The church cannot be sustained any longer. It must be completely rebooted to move back over into a new launch.

   

Now here is the problem. Have you ever tried to do any of these? Renew, reinvent, restart? They are extremely difficult to do in all but the best of circumstances, and they get even harder to do as the church progresses around the curve towards the bottom. Ask any pastor who has tried these things and they will tell you. The closer to the bottom you get the harder it is to turn around. Pastor Mike Slaughter used to joke that when he was first appointed at Ginghamsburg, he grew the church from 90 to 50 his first year there. People left! This happens all the time. You cannot move from the right side to the left side without losing people! It is simply impossible. Not everyone will come along.

I have tried at three different churches. At all three churches, people dropped as we transitioned to the other side. It was painful because some of these people were people that we dearly loved. As a pastor I felt each one of these wounds. It broke my heart that we lost people through the process. I remember at one church I did everything but beg someone to come back. Repeatedly. However, they never did. They had moved on. They couldn’t transition with us.

So you have to think of this transition in a different way.

The last time I attempted a church revitalization project, I tracked those who fell away during the process. I noticed that they usually always ended up in another church. At first I wondered if this was my fault. I wondered why this church instead of our church or why they like this other pastor instead of me. This is when I realized I was making this about ME not God. They were actively going to church and engaged in discipleship! It may not have been my church, but it was a church. If I took a kingdom minded approach to this I could see that this is good for the kingdom!

If the result of the transition is that two churches are increased (the kingdom increases), wouldn’t we say the process worked?

The Protocol creates this opportunity for transformation for the denomination! All of us from our churches to our Bishops would have the opportunity to enter into renewal. We have to stop thinking in black and white like one Methodist denomination is this and the other Methodist denomination is that. It really doesn’t matter which Methodist expression you end up in. I love what Bob Phillips writes when he talks about terrible reasons to join the Global Methodist Church and good reasons to join the Global Methodist Church. This is true for either of the Methodism created with the protocol. We should really see this opportunity for creating transformation in Methodism. The truth of the matter is that Methodism has never been found in one denomination, but in many denominations. I count 33 unique Methodist denominations alone in North America! This doesn’t even include Pentecostalism which started through Methodism.

From the very beginning of the announcement of the protocol until now I have referred to the protocol as a tool of multiplication not division! My number one pet peeve is people who keep referring to this as a denomination split or division. It makes me want to pull my hair out. People on both sides keep saying it, the Bishops say it, and the media says it. I want to say: STOP IT. If we spend all our time worrying about who might leave during the church transformation process, then we will never make it. We have to start see multiplication as a good thing.

The kingdom growing is a good thing.

I was once at a church that dreamed of launching a new campus on the south side of town. They planned it, worked on it, talked about it, had listening posts, etc… The did this ad nauseam for 10 years! By this time the south side of town had fully developed, property was sky high, and there were already 15 other churches planted there. They missed their chance. When I asked the pastor what they thought was the reason, they told me that they were ultimately afraid to lose anyone from the church. Starting this new campus meant they would lose people from the church. Fear kept them from growing the kingdom.

So I have four challenges for us:

1. Can we start thinking in a kingdom way?

2. Can we stop demonizing one another, and seek ways to bless one another?

3. Can we start seeing the protocol as multiplication, not division?

4. Can we let go of fears that have no place in the kingdom?

If we can do all four, I can see two flourishing Methodist expressions!