Transcript IOT - Holston

OUR PRAYER
We are no longer our own, but thine.
Put us to what thou wilt, rank us with
whom thou wilt.
Put us to doing, put us to suffering. Let
us be employed for thee or laid aside
for thee, exalted for thee or brought
low for thee.
Let us be full, let us be empty. Let us
have all things, let us have nothing.
We freely and heartily yield all things to
thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Creator, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art
our Lord, and we are your joyful
servants.
So be it. Amen.
CALL TO ACTION
Jesus came near and spoke to them, “...go and make disciples of all
nations...teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look,
I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.”
(Matthew 28:18-20 CEB)
ORIGINS
• Issues & Innovations Emerging Across the
UMC - Congregations and Annual
Conferences
• Table of Agency Leaders and Bishops
• Council of Bishops
• Connectional Table
• Two CTA Groups
• Interim Operations Group
the challenge from The
Call to Action
1. For a minimum of ten years, starting in January
2011, use the drivers of vital congregations as
initial areas of attention for sustained and intense
concentration on building effective practices in
local churches.
2. Dramatically reform the clergy leadership
development, deployment, evaluation, and
accountability systems.
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3. Collect, report, review and act on
statistical information that
measures progress in key
performance areas to learn and
adjust our approaches to
leadership, policies, and the use of
human and financial resources.
the challenge from The
Call to Action
4. Reform the Council of Bishops, with the active
bishops assuming (1) responsibility and public
accountability for improving results in
attendance, professions of faith, baptisms,
participation in servant/mission ministries,
benevolent giving, and lowering the average age
of participants in local church life; and (2)
establishing a new culture of accountability
throughout the church.
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5. Consolidate program and administrative
agencies, align their work and resources with
the priorities of the church and the decadelong commitment to build vital congregations,
and reconstitute them with much smaller
competency-based boards of directors in order
to overcome current lack of alignment,
diffused and redundant activity, and higher
than necessary expense due to independent
structures.
The Adaptive Challenge
To redirect the flow of attention,
energy, and resources to an intense
concentration on fostering and sustaining
an increase in the number of vital
congregations effective in making
disciples of Jesus Christ for the
transformation of the world.
Basic principles undergirding THE WORK
The local “charge” or
congregation is the primary
venue for making disciples.
We are focused on building and
supporting United Methodist
people & their witness on the
ground, wherever they are in the
world.
Basic principles
Annual conferences are the key venue
for investment in organizing the work
of supporting congregations and
generating more vital congregations
because they focus strategically on key
levers for empowering vital
congregations – including: recruiting,
training and deploying gifted clergy.
KEY Recommendations
• Creating clear expectations and
metrics for all leaders
• Creating a non-residential
bishop to lead the COB and
build collaborative work on the
Adaptive Challenge
RECOMMENDATIONS, CONT.
• Cultivating a new generation of young
UMC clergy with education and support
systems that focus on the Adaptive
Challenge
• Creating a unified UMC Center for
Connectional Mission & Ministry
constituted from 10 existing agencies
and changing its governance.
Recommendations, CONT.
Redirect Apportionments in 2013-1016 by up
to $50 million for work on the Adaptive
Challenge including:
• Young clergy seminary scholarships
• New faith communities for new people
Redirect $5 million of the general church
receipts for theological education in the
Central Conferences
Redirect $5 million of general church receipts
for focus on developing young laity as
UMC leaders
Assessing the State of the UMC
APEX RESEARCH
• Key conclusions:
1. Acute crisis of underperforming
economic model
2. Creeping crisis of relevancy
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT
 Lack of mission clarity and congruency
 Struggle with “global church” identity and
mission
 Institutional concerns block
mission/purpose
 Values and culture issues
 Structure and process issues
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Environmental Context, Cont.
 Declining US
membership/attendance trends
 Generation bound
demographics of membership
and clergy
 Difficulty of attracting “young”
generation
REDUCING THE DISTANCE BETWEEN AND AMONG
THE CHURCH’S FOUNDATIONAL UNITS
Lack of relevancy linked to sense of distance
Annual Conference and District Size
Annual Conferences and Districts often too large
Bishop and District Superintendant leadership ratios
Distance aggravated by apparent autonomy
Varying views about accountability
Lack of alignment & agreed common measures
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Apex recommendations
Strengthen Leadership and
Management to Achieve
Mission
Focus: General Conference,
Council of Bishops, Annual
Conference and, later, Clergy
Effectiveness
Apex recommendations, cont.
Address Agency
Governance Structure
Improve alignment
Turn, Turn, Turn
• Anatole France
All changes, even the most
longed for, have their
melancholy; for what we leave
behind us is a part of ourselves;
we must die to one life before
we can enter another.
Church Vitality Research
Conducted by Towers Watson
• Comprehensive and robust research
intentionally focused on North America
• Response & participation rates in
interviews and surveys ensures the
findings are reliable at a 95% level of
confidence
Church vitality research
• Calculation was done for
32,228churches where data were
available
Church vitality research
• Based on vitality index, we found
that all kinds of UMC churches are
vital –small, large, across different
geographies, and settings (e.g.,
urban, rural)
findings
• We conducted regression analyses
to identify drivers of the vitality
index and four key drivers of
vitality stand out –findings are
actionable
• Four key drivers of vitality are
consistent across different types of
churches
AN OBVIOUS KEY LEVER IS
PASSIONATE AND EFFECTIVE CLERGY
LEADERSHIP
We asked:
What would make it possible to recruit,
develop and deploy more gifted clergy leaders
for connectional ministries to foster vital
congregations?
IOT CALLS FOR CHANGE IN clergy system
•
Foster consensus about the personal and
professional gifts, skills and practices needed
for effective clergy.
•
Congregations increasingly foster a "culture of
call" in which they regularly invite and
encourage persons with the needed gifts to
consider if they are being called.
•
Make the recruitment of gifted young people
to full time ministry a priority and devote
resources to helping them complete their
theological education.
CLERGY SYSTEM
•
Expect & work with seminaries to train for the
skills and practices most needed to revitalize
existing churches and start new ones.
•
Continue to purposefully avoid deploying
clergy based primarily upon seniority/salary
and toward deploying persons where their gifts
can have the greatest impact.
•
Improve ability and processes to more
promptly exit low performing clergy from the
system.
Changes needed in the episcopal system
1. Greater consensus about leadership qualities needed
for Bishops in the 21st Century.
2. Bishops have public accountability for improving
vital indicators in their Residential Areas
3. One bishop dedicated and accountable for the
encouraging and supporting others on the Council
of Bishops
4. Align appropriate work of general church more
closely with Annual Conference strategies for
embracing the Adaptive Challenge
CONNECTIONAL TABLE
ACTION ON IOT
RECOMMENDATIONS
AFFIRMATION
Performance of Clergy
• Adopt updated performance qualities and vital indicators for clergy
• Bishops lead in requiring that assessments are used consistently in
every annual conference on an annual basis
• Focus training and continuing education efforts to enhance
performance of new and experienced clergy in relevant
competencies based on assessments
• Appointments should be made based on proven performance and
potential for achieving the desired outcomes
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AFFIRMATION
Performance of Bishops
• Adopt performance qualities and vital
indicators for bishops, addressing both
spiritual leadership and temporal oversight
• Jurisdictional Committees on Episcopacy
and Area Committees on Episcopacy lead in
implementing annual assessments with
results sent to COB
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AFFIRMATION
Role of Seminaries
•COB and appropriate general church
offices shall work with seminary
leadership to identify and develop
curriculum requirements for seminaries
as well as clarify expectations, measure
performance, and tie funding to the
outcomes
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Recommendation
Guaranteed Appointment of Clergy
• We must make necessary changes in policy and
practice to allow for a just, reasonable, and
compassionate process that provides for the
transition of low performing clergy from the
itinerancy.
• Therefore, the Connectional Table supports
legislation for policy changes which improve the
process for transitioning pastors.
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An Additional Set of
Recommendations
Consolidate program and administrative
agencies, align their work and resources with
the priorities of the Church and the decadelong commitment to build vital congregations,
and reconstitute them with much smaller
competency-based boards of directors in order
to overcome current lack of alignment,
diffused and redundant activity, and higher
than necessary expense due to independent
structures.
The interventions are not our mission.
The Adaptive Challenge is a focused way to help
us better direct our resources and efforts to
achieve the mission.
The mission is to make disciples of
Jesus Christ for the transformation of
the world.
We welcome your encouragement, critique,
thoughts & prayers
Turn, Turn, Turn
•
Mark Twain
Twenty years from now you will be
more disappointed by the things
you didn't do than by the ones you
did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.