Being Disciples, Generally

A response to:
http://homepage.mac.com/madcck/myblog/C942134880/E20051219214033/index.html

Michael Davison has issued a call for "Restructure" for the general manifestation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He asks that the decision makers and vision shapers of the general church boards and structures not start a new paragraph in revising how we are church on the wider level – beyond the congregational – but turn the page a begin a fresh chapter.

Undermining this clarion call is the knowledge all of us share who have been involved in regional and general activities through these last thirty plus years. What Michael is correct about is that Restructure ’67 was too tentative, out of fear that the restructionists would be painted as too radical, and then we would, ah, well . . . lose congregations, which we did anyhow. A third, half, more; it depends on how you frame the question. Would the new denominational structure have lost more, or fewer members and churches if they had been more drastic? Did the cautious approach, open to misinterpretation as maneuver and manipulation (framed as such by some who were, themselves, manipulating and maneuvering), actually cause more locations to "go independent"?

Adding to the complication, as those who were part of or witnesses to the Fifties and Sixties in "brotherhood and assembly life" would want to have said, is that they had to work with the structures they inherited. State societies with wide variation from place to place, general boards with their own investments and constituencies, and institutions that had been entirely independent from the early 1800’s were all part of the landscape that would go into making a general church body, with no element having authority over another. Some of the missional bodies in particular were tied by trusts and bylaws so as to limit their actions even with near unanimous agreement by their boards on new directions.

So what look in retrospect like weak compromises and wobbly lines of accountability are in fact the best deals that could be cut between the parts that make our fractious whole, such as it is. Our overall a-historical viewpoint (think churches with "Founded AD 33" on the cornerstone) has an immediate implication as well as a theological one: we don’t get how we ended up where we are because we know so little about the paths that led here. My own attempt to redress this gap for the Christian Church in Ohio, titled "Being Buckeye Disciples" can be seen at http://epicycles.blogspot.com (check the archive, and it’s a twelve page paper in .doc form).

While I feel very limited in how I can make comprehensive suggestions about current restructure options, I’d like to sketch out some of the issues that made the particular set of compromises from the "Restructure period" so un-viable in today’s mission context for the United States and Canada.

The office of General Minister and President is weak by design. Here too, the designers of the Design were concerned about the looming threat of churches disfellowshiping through the early Sixties. Regional ministers or their contemporary equivalent were adamant that this position in the Design have essentially no authority at all. A cynic might say they were protecting their own "episcopal" turf, but a more accurate and fair reading is that the sheer volume of concern from congregations on the edge made them sincerely interested in making sure that new OGMP was unthreatening to such interests. And yes, it served their own interests, as well.

The boards behind the now Homeland Ministries, Global Ministries, Church Extension, and the Pension Fund are rooted (except for the Pension Fund) in campaigns to raise capital from the 1800’s, and each has provisions built into their bylaws that greatly complicate a simple motion to hand their assets over to OGMP, or the assembly (the action which was actually proposed in those days, hamstrung by the fact that legally, there is no legal person standing in as "the assembly" though our internal rules all talk as if there is), or some brand new third party as new Structure.

One way of understanding this is the recent action, surprising to some, of the Pension Fund announcing that they would soon pull out of providing Church Wide Health Care without certain major concessions by the General Board and Assembly. Rather than having any affirmative obligation to provide something they just began offering as a courtesy not so very long ago – about the time of Restructure, in fact – they had to remind us all that their charter (a very legal document indeed) forbids them from using any of their proceeds for purposes other than pensions, and insurance obligations were about to (in fact, had already) spend pension money on paying CWHC bills. They as a board faced the very real likelihood of participant lawsuits for "breach of fiduciary responsibility" if they continued pretending things could go on as they had.

Without going into detail, each group has a public face ("Global Ministries") and a legal reality ("United Christian Missionary Society", dating back to 1849), of which the former can be fiddled with endlessly in terms of name, logo, press releases, and activities, but the latter having fairly tightly constrained options on how and how much to spend of the assets they control.

As a church body/denomination, there is in fact a very simple resolution to these limits. Walk away. Just move on, create new structures from scratch, and maybe someday qualify for support from the boards which, in fact, would continue. If pretty much everyone just walked away from the Disciples of Christ, there are millions of dollars held "in trust" that no one would "get," but would need to be given in the prescribed measured doses that define them, to activities in line with their obligations.

So we have funds that are reliable, but small: not small enough to walk away from, but small enough to require more income to do, um, well, what we’re used to seeing them doing. Unlike congregational giving, you can pretty much count on what’s coming in from it, another attractive quality, but like congregational giving, you can’t just up the amount. (Footnote: the institutions, namely some seminaries and campus ministries, who had rules loose enough to let them start withdrawing capital in a pinch, have all either already done so to the point of extinction, or saw the edge coming soon enough to pass non-breakable rules to forbid themselves from doing it anymore.)

Still, it seems worth pointing out that we could, as a denomination – as the General Board & Assembly – just create a new structure on a blank sheet of paper in pretty much any two year period, as long as you do it with no assumptions about income. All the mechanisms exist to do that right now. But if you have to plug together autonomous giving from congregations/regions with the boards of HM, GM, CE, and PF, respecting everyone’s prerogatives under the law, you can only get . . . what we have. If a new structure was proposed as a truly autonomous upper judicatory, CE and PF would go on basically as they are, and GM would have their stable of missionaries, and HM would . . . I have no idea what they would do. I’d have to read their trust documents to know for sure. After obligatory passthroughs they would have enough money to rent some office space and get a receptionist and a staffer and a half, I’d guess, which is just about where they’re at anyhow.

Then there’s the regions. Oddly enough, to me at least, few know or realize that the regions to this day have some major embedded differences in governance and polity. Some have a strong bishop, others more of an executive director who implements the board’s will, such as more than thirty people who meet four to six times a year have a will (no matter how meaningful the worship time they share).

There are regions with major assets tied up as outlined above, and there are regions who hold a reversion clause on much of the property held by congregations, a shocking idea in some parts of Discipledom. There are regions who have developed an active "Order of Ministry" for their clergy which is a vital center for church life, and others who are heavily centered on their camp or retreat center property, with clergy pretty much interchangeable employees. In all of these, their ability to turn major authority over to a strong vision casting General Pastor-type person is limited, even should the regional board or cabinet want to, by their assets whether physical or fiscal.

On the other hand, if they were to tear the identity of "church" away from the assets and create a new structure from scratch, they could do it tomorrow in most regions. Again, to illustrate for those who are baffled by what I am saying (not proposing, not yet, anyhow), let me offer up Christmount, in North Carolina. A large retreat center, which is a great asset to the region that surrounds them, but if every Disciple disappeared into the Mothership tomorrow, Christmount would continue. Their fundraising mailing list would require some major revision, but they have their own (not enough, I’m told) endowment, a board which owns their property, and their own management plan which includes regional goals and vision, but as a courtesy, not as an absolute legal obligation. Ditto some of the funds and causes which regional boards manage but do not, to the final dollar, control.

Unrealistic? Sure it is, which is why no one has done it. But the moment you commit to creating an authority structure that automatically defers to other legal entities, you commit to managing a shell corporation, not a management structure. We talk management structures a whole bunch, but we actually operate shell corporations.

So many regions have turned, somewhat by default and modestly by design, to creating ever tighter personnel structures. Almost no region in the Disciples had a structure, let alone assets, tied to clergy and ordination, other than a few scholarship programs managed by Commissions on Ministry.

You can require almost anything you want of clergy, unlike congregations who own their property and usually control their budget to a fault ("no one’s gonna tell us how to spend our money!" ™) even as to health insurance. But ministerial standing or licenses are given or withheld entirely by regions since Restructure, though many effectively controlled it before. So the last few years have seen a significant increase in the time and energy regional Commissions on Ministry put into "standing management," requiring creditable but mandatory workshops on sexual abuse, anti-racism, and slated mandates for continuing education or regional participation.

All of which says we prefer to manage that which we can control. Right now, clergy are about all we can control in the Disciples of Christ, so we’re giving them a pretty good once over twice.

But what if . . . what if we tried to create a structure without control? An "accountability hierarchy" without coercion and minimal standardization? There is no management model that will affirm us, but we might be able to feel our way to a Biblical model that could resonate with liberals and conservatives alike. To address Michael’s proposal in detail:

"A new structure could be:
Office of General Minister and President is responsible for proclaiming the Disciple vision of being Christian. . ."

Ok by me; and we could do this right now.

"All DMF funding would flow through the OGMP for the General manifestation."

Let’s come back to this one.

"Disciples Home Mission, Overseas Mission, Church Extension would dissolve their boards and become accountable to OGMP and the CC(DOC) board"

They can’t do it, so this is a nonstarter unless we’re just walkin’ away from the dollars, which we could, in theory . . .

"Working with representatives from the College of Regional Ministers and constituency groups, the GMP would determine the needed services that the General manifestation would offer regions and congregations."

Which they will/are/have been telling us they are doing, but those darn congregations won’t come to the programs and workshops and events we put on! Without sounding like a Bill O’Reilly free-marketeer, there is a remarkable resistance to accepting that if attendance at certain kinds of stuff keeps dropping, that might be meaningful data.

In fact, as Michael points out early in his piece, there are "Disciple dollars" a plenty floating around out there. Week of Compassion, which is amazingly (why is it amazing, he asked himself?) transparent and responsive, gets major funding. I get a weekly – or more – email telling me what they’re doing, with specific things retold, with our giving, and regular breakdowns of the budget in terms any financial idiot (read: most clergy) can understand. I share them in worship because they tell compelling stories, I use them in print materials because they are concise and use everyday language.

"Regions would covenant with each other to keep 47% of the giving to fund regional ministries, and each region's board would affirm this covenant at each regional assembly. Regions would send 53% to OGMP, which would place 3% in a pool developed with the Christian Church Foundation to aid regions with funding issues. The OGMP would then determine the use of the 50% sent to them for the services and ministries they provide by whatever means is appropriate and affirmed by the CC(DOC) board"

Oy. Aside from asking how this would work, let’s set it aside for the moment. No precedent from Scripture or Tradition mandates or affirms this model, anyhow, so we don’t need to wrangle over why people "should" want to follow this model, or how to convince (i.e., force) regions to go along with this.

What happens to the moral and theological authority of the wider church if they simply work with what they receive directly for their ministry? That’s what pastors and congregations do, and – while I know there is very solid Christian teaching and preaching behind mission support – the understanding of what and why we give to middle and upper judicatories has been lost since Restructure behind a screen on indirect obligation and vague guilt.

Where we’re heading now is a version of exactly that: a de facto defunding of wider ministries, based partly on the stresses of supporting an imperfectly professionalized clergy (a whole ‘nother essay) and partly on a growing sense that whatever they are doing in the regional and general office, it ain’t ministry in any way that we understand (I point the reader to Michael’s post on GYC just a bit earlier as Exhibit A).

So walk away. Lose a certain amount of security and full-time staff positions, but gain one of the most amazing tools in the modern world for ministry, a blank sheet of paper, free of legal entanglements. Look at the Episcopal Church USA, which could solve many of the problems weighing them down if people didn’t care about real estate. Leave out the real estate, and you either have two very vital faith bodies with different approaches growing out of a common worship tradition, or a common body made up of significantly diverse interpretations. But leave in the stone arches and fine green lawns, and people have to either agree or go . . . and then some in leadership are indignant that so many are going.

Disciples do not have all that much of a unique heritage, contrary to popular belief. We have weekly communion combined with immersion of mature believers, and congregational ownership of property tied to autonomy (sort of) in hiring and firing clergy under primary lay leadership. That’s it. It is a particular heritage which I treasure, and wish to see continue, but it assumes very little about wider structures, which have changed radically and vary widely over the last mere century.

So I agree with Michael’s thoughts bout how the Disciples need a new chapter, not a new paragraph, but I want us all to be very clear about what the last chapter said, and where the plot necessarily takes us in broad outline.

I hope this dialogue continues, because the current structure has no future to speak of ahead of it, at all. We can shape a new chapter, or get one handed to us by the courts numbered chapter 11 or thereabouts.