Entries Tagged 'United Methodist Church' ↓

We have blogged a bit about our journey through the ordination process of The United Methodist Church (see our last post or Our Journey Toward Ordination for the longer story). We are currently working through the final stages of this process, having been commissioned as Provisional Elders in June 2009. We are on target to be ordained as Full Elders in June 2011.

There have been some changes at the denominational level (reducing the final stage from three years to two) and at the conference level in recent months/years. With the formation of the new Susquehanna Conference (from the Central Pennsylvania and part of the Wyoming conferences), some new changes have recently been made.

We just learned yesterday at an informational meeting with the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry that a couple of the current requirements (creating a Bible study and writing a leadership paper) are being replaced with an Ordination Project. We think this is a good development and improves the process!

The Ordination Project is essentially a project that we initiate and/or lead in the church. It has to be something new, something innovative — hopefully something we’d be doing anyway! We will have to write a reflection paper on it as well as give a 15-minute multimedia presentation at next year’s Board of Ordained Ministry interviews (March 2011).

We were told that since this is beginning with our class of ordinands, that we are “guinea pigs.” I prefer “trail blazers.”

Fortunately, since we’re caught in the mid-year crunch (future classes will have two full years to plan and develop their projects; we have less than a year), we can go as far back to when we were approved for Commissioning (March 2009).

While we’ll need to put some more thought into it, it’s likely that one or both of us will do something with our journeys through the Five Practices.

The next step for both of us, though, is to write proposals for our projects. We have several months to submit them, but we want to do so as soon as possible.

We will have quite a bit of work to do and/or seminars/retreats to attend over the course of the next year, but one year from this week, we anticipate our final interviews with the Board of Ordained Ministry. Upon approval, we will be ordained at annual conference in June 2011.

At last week’s Bishop’s Retreat, Gilbert Rendle talked about the change that’s taking place in the world and in the church as well as the leadership that’s needed, as a result of the cultural change.

At the end of his presentation on Tuesday evening, Rendle challenged attendees to discover the “ten percent” (the amount of content most people can absorb from a seminar) that they needed to take home with them. After some reflection, here’s what I think I’m taking away from the retreat.

I thought the presentation on cultural change that’s going on both in the world and in the church was helpful, but I want to focus on the content from Rendle’s presentation on leadership, that is, how to lead change in the midst of a changing world.

Leadership vs. Management. Rendle talked about the difference between management and leadership. While both are necessary, most leaders were simply trained to be managers, to keep things running smoothly.

Management is primarily responsible for the present moment, for doing things right. Leadership is responsible for the future and change, for doing right things. While there’s been a growing amount of emphasis on the importance of leadership in recent years/decades, Rendle noted that …

We are asked for leadership at a time when we are rewarded for management. But you cannot do leadership without disrupting management.

So, while I certainly want things to run smoothly, I also realize that part of my job is to “stir the pot” (see my 2006 sermon for more on Stirring the Pot).

The Leadership Challenge. There is a disruptive component to leadership that makes leadership especially challenging. Rendle stated …

One of our tasks is to make people appropriately uncomfortable.

Of course, not everyone will go along for the journey, so Rendle offered a warning …

If you have a ‘no person left behind’ policy, you have already determined that you’re not going to do anything!

Leaders and churches must be willing to do the right things even when there’s resistance, because the alternative is simply to do nothing, or at least nothing worthwhile or life-changing.

Rendle also offered four leadership skills in his final session. But before I reflect on those, I need to review the video of the sessions, which are expected to be posted to the conference website this week.

We are at the halfway point at the 2010 Bishop’s Retreat of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of The United Methodist Church.

We arrived at the retreat, which is taking place at the Willow Valley Resort in Lancaster, PA. Last year, our first time to attend the annual retreat, we came a day early to get settled in and to relax (we also posted some learnings from the retreat).

This year, we chose not to come a day early because we were concerned about how well Sarah would sleep here. We figured two nights would be better than three, at this point (although next year, I think we’ll come early; it’s more relaxing). We did arrive in town a few hours early to shop at the outlets before checking into our room just in time for the opening meal (followed by the evening session).

Ethan was with us last year, too, and this year, it’s a first for Sarah. Ethan hasn’t always handled being dropped off at child care in these kinds of “strange” gatherings very well, but we were hoping that having Sarah (a familiar face) with him would make things easier this time. Such was not the case. Last night, as we arrived at the door to the child care room, we experienced his worst ever response (too bad I didn’t have the video camera ready ). I had to chase him (while he cried loudly) down the hallway. I caught up to him at one of the exits. Of course, he continued to cry until shortly after we left. He was fine then and had a good time. This morning, we experienced a much less eventful drop-off, leaving two more drop-offs to go (this evening and tomorrow morning).

Since this is a “retreat,” we get Tuesday afternoons off. For us, that means trying to get the kids to take a nap. We gave up with Ethan and Joleen took him to the pool (which caught up to him later; see photo below). Fortunately, Sarah, who did not get much sleep last night (she went to sleep very late and woke up very early), had a good (up to) hour-and-a-half nap.

Last year, Ethan’s favorite spot was the fountain (which Ethan calls “mountain”). That’s still true this year. This morning, on the way to dropping him off at child care, we stopped at the fountain for a quick look. When we got to the child care room, he immediately started telling the child care workers, and everyone else, about the fountain (and how the water goes “up the pipes,” something I had explained to him yesterday).

Well, I’ll say more about what we’re learning from Gil Rendle, the speaker at this retreat, a little later. For now, I’ll simply say, there’s a lot of good stuff on leading change to chew on. Both the communication and the content are very good.

Here are some images from today …

 

In my post on the Provisional Member Retreat, I mentioned that we were preparing for upcoming interviews with the Board of Ordained Ministry, as part of the ordination process.

On Tuesday, we travelled to Halifax, PA for those interviews. The interviews went very well and we learned Tuesday evening that we have been approved to move onto Level 2 of the provisional membership process (Level 2 officially begins after the clergy session of next year’s 2010 annual conference).

We’ve written about the ordination process, including Becoming Provisional Elders and Our Journey Toward Ordination (which goes into more detail about our stories).

Basically, the rest of the process looks like this …

1. Continue meeting with our mentors and covenant groups.
2. Attend required retreats (September 2010 and May 2011).
3. Attend two different seminars in NYC and DC (January and April of 2010 or 2011).
4. Complete the last batch of paperwork, including responses to theological questions, a sermon, a Bible study, and a leadership paper.
5. One more interview with the Board of Ordained Ministry in March 2011. Passing these interviews will allow us to be ordained at the 2011 annual conference.

Anyway, one more step in the process is behind us.

If you’ve followed our journey, you probably know that we are Provisional Elders in The United Methodist Church working toward ordination. As part of the process, we attended a retreat Sunday evening through Monday afternoon. On Monday, Revs. Greg Myers (Wilkes-Barre District Superintendent) and Mark Webb (York District Superintendent) each led us in a discussion about transformational leadership.

Being → Doing
The event amplified some things that I have been feeling challenged about recently, specifically the importance of being, not just doing. A few weeks ago, I wrote the following in my leadership paper (presented to the Board of Ordained Ministry in preparation for next week’s interview) …

Maintaining the connection between being and doing … is vital for me as a Christ-following leader. I want my doing to naturally flow out of my being. As my spiritual gifts develop and strengthen, it becomes easier for me to rely on myself and less on God. In other words, sadly, it’s possible to go through the motions of performing the work of ministry without being vitally connected to God.

In light of this challenge, I am committed to following Christ faithfully, to maintaining a vital connection with God, and to growing in my relationship with God. I seek to maintain a vital connection with God through the practice of spiritual disciplines.

Monday afternoon, Mark Webb specifically talked about being and doing in a session that was especially meaningful/challenging for me, personally. Here are some statements from the day (direct quotes and/or personal reflections on what I heard) …

The old model of ministry leadership emphasizes doing while the new model (i.e., transformational leadership) emphasizes being. Truth is, only leaders who are personally being transformed themselves can help others experience transformation.

God has called you to be a leader!

Churches often expect leaders to be a …

• Leader
• Manager
• Chaplain
• Hospice Worker

While pastors will perform each role at times, leader is the primary call! However, many times, leaders are simply not willing to lead (fear, lack of confidence, unwillingness to change, etc.).

On the call to lead, I love the statement at the beginning of the article, “The Work of Leadership” (Harvard Business Review), which we were asked to read in preparation for the retreat …

Followers want comfort, stability, and solutions from their leaders. But that’s babysitting. Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones. Then they manage the resulting stress.

On the importance of the spiritual formation of a leader, Mark said, if you are spending all of your time visiting, preparing Bible studies, writing sermons, attending meetings, you will not be the leader God called you to be.

The role of the leader is to REPRODUCE (see the Easum quote below).

Finding the big YES: What has God called us to do and be about, primarily? Say no to other things. (You control your calendar!)

God ➞ Family ➞ Church
The order matters. Too many clergy who have made the church first, then God, then family, which has negative consequences. Getting the order right helps to put being before doing (so that doing can flow out of being), which leads to one of my favorite statements from the day. Mark said …

Being must lead to doing. Doing must be based on being.

Mark also discussed a “plan for personal growth,” which was adapted from John Maxwell’s plan in Your Road Map for Success (formerly, The Success Journey). But I need to write another post on that.

During the afternoon break, I took a brief walk and reflected on what I sensed God was saying to me, then wrote …

I am committed to my own spiritual formation. When I leave my current appointment (and/or any other place I serve), what will my legacy be? What will I be remembered for? While I certainly want to be productive/fruitful (doing), I want my legacy to be something like, I really grew more like Christ (i.e., experienced ongoing spiritual transformation) in this part of my journey (being) and I helped a lot of other people experience spiritual transformation as well (being → doing).

Throughout the day, there was a statement running through my mind, a statement I heard Bill Easum make on the early-September event, The Nines (which I wrote about here and here). Easum, who was making the point that leaders must set their own agenda, based on their call and their vision, said …

I can’t tell you how many pastors reach age 55 and look back over their ministry and they never have done what God called them to do, they did what the church wanted them to do.

That’s a regret I want to avoid!

Incidentally, The Nines videos were just posted today. For more on being, David Foster’s video on preparation is a must-see!

Well, as I said, God must be trying to get my attention about this being/doing stuff!

A couple months ago, we wrote about becoming Provisional Elders in The United Methodist Church, which took place at Annual Conference last month.

Over the course of the next two years, leading up to ordination as Full Elders, we’ll have some work to do. One part of the process is to work with a Covenant Group, composed of our clergy mentor, another Full Elder, and four members from each of our churches.

Our two Covenant Groups will actually meet together with our two clergy mentors every other month over the next two years. We will meet individually with our mentors on the alternating months. Our meetings will be guided by a learning covenant that each of us will put together with our mentors in the next few weeks. The purpose of the group is to provide support and feedback.

We had our first group session last night, which was primarily introductory. We also settled on a book to study together in the months ahead — Simple Church by Thom Rainer. It is a book about developing a clear focus for the church’s discipleship process.

Google Books has a preview that includes the first 50+ pages of the book (also, Lifeway.com has a PDF of chapter 1 available.) And last month, Thom Rainer posted a reflection on his blog in which he restates the purpose the book and reflects on the impact it has had in the three years since it was published.

We are looking forward to this part of the process. We are grateful to those who have committed to making this part of our journey meaningful — we believe it will be an important part of our ongoing growth as Christ-following leaders!

I recently heard that the United States is currently the fifth largest mission field in the world (third in the English speaking world), which is discussed in this article at umc.org.

That’s an incredible statement! People in the U.S. have as much (or more) access to the gospel of Jesus Christ than in other nations and yet there are so many people who are not following Christ.

As I noted last January , the UMC has named starting new churches as a goal in response to this current reality. This effort aims to “equip 1,000 church planters to start 650 new congregations” by 2012. These churches, in turn, would commit to beginning new churches within their first ten years of existence.

I think this is a great goal. Starting new churches is a necessary move. But it’s also important, of course, that established churches get involved in the mission of reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Both strategies are challenging, but both are needed in helping us make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world!

At around 4:00 p.m. today, we wrapped up annual conference with the ordination service. The ordination service is always one of the highlights of annual conference. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the service is at the end when the Bishop invites people from the congregation who sense that God may be calling them to (servant-leadership) ministry. I love watching people respond to the leading and prompting of God’s Spirit.

The ordination service was a particular highlight for us today as Joleen and I were both commissioned as Provisional Elders in The United Methodist Church (I recently wrote about the process we’re in for the next two years.)

Twelve people were commissioned and five were ordained as Elders. If everything stays on track, we expect to be ordained in 2011. There could be a large ordination group next year (2010) as we have an overlap of Provisional Members in the former 3-year process with those in the current 2-year process. There may also be a few candidates from the Pennsylvania churches of the Wyoming Conference (which are uniting with the churches of the Central Pennsylvania Conference in 2010).

Well, as I suggested last night, Ethan was ready to come home today. He woke up early this morning — about 5:30 a.m. On top of that, he missed his afternoon nap, playing in child care during the ordination service. But he did sleep for nearly two of the three hours on the road home.

In the near future, after I’ve had a chance to process my experience at Annual Conference, I will try to blog some of my reflections. In the meantime, here’s a PDF at the conference website with the voting results of the 32 amendments. The final results (of members of all conferences) will be announced by the Council of Bishops at their fall meeting later this year.

Now, I need to get some rest before tomorrow’s worship service!

Home. That’s a word that Ethan has been saying over the course of the last 24 hours or so. Ethan is ready to go home.

Being in an unfamiliar place in a sea of mostly unfamiliar people is pretty daunting, especially for a soon-to-be two-year-old who is getting a lot of attention!

Today’s session of annual conference included a lot of “worshipful work,” including 32 amendments to the constitution of The United Methodist Church (along with 61 other U.S. annual conferences this summer; to pass, an amendment must receive two-thirds of the votes of all the voting of members across the connection). There was also a Bible study in the morning and a celebration of ministry service in the evening where pastors who are retiring were honored for their years of service.

Following the evening’s service (which I skipped out in the middle of to put Ethan to bed), Joleen and I attended the rehearsal for tomorrow’s ordination service where we will be commissioned as Provisional Elders (thanks, Nancy, for hanging out in our room while Ethan slept!).

We head into Saturday trusting that (1) commissioning will be meaningful, and (2) that Ethan will survive another day of annual conference!

We are at the annual conference of the Central Pennsylvania Conference this week taking place at Messiah College. We arrived yesterday to settle into our room and to attend a dinner with the Board of Ordained Ministry for those who are in the commissioning process along with their mentors.

Annual Conference began this morning with separate clergy and laity sessions. In the clergy session, Joleen and I were among those approved for commissioning as Provisional Elders in The United Methodist Church. We’ll probably say more about that at the end of the week!

As meaningful as that was, the real highlight of the day for us was serving as a “Gospel-bearing family” during the evening’s Memorial service where the three of us each carried Bibles to the altar during a song of preparation for the reading of the Scriptures.

We weren’t sure how Ethan would handle it — it was a long hard day spending part of the day in child care and later taking an abbreviated nap (unfortunately!) on the balcony as we took our place with the writing staff of the “Daily Link” (the daily newspaper of annual conference).

At the last minute, we decided to see if Ethan would walk, carrying his small Bible. We figured if that didn’t work, we’d pick him up and carry him. When we first got into the aisle and Ethan took my hand, he froze for a moment, then proceeded to walk forward. He also climbed the steps under lots of pressure as well over a thousand people watched! When we got to the back of the stage, I placed the large pulpit Bible on the altar, then lifted Ethan so he could place his Bible on top of the pulpit Bible; he knew just where to put it even without a practice run-through! (Thanks to Michelle Bodle for taking the photos.)

Today was a day of remembering and celebrating our calls to ministry. It was also a reminder that our family is the most important ministry we’ll ever have!