Laser-like focus

The FACT report given to the Iowa Annual Conference was quite clear in its direction to clarify our vision and set, if possible, no more than three strategic priorities. During our Annual meeting in June 2013 the Annual Conference voted to support the following three strategic initiatives:

1. Creating World-Transforming Communities of Faith

2. Equipping Ourselves and Others as Transformational Leaders

3. Directing Our Resources to Our Common Goals

While there are many tools available through which initiatives #1 and 2 can be addressed, it seems prudent for us to have a laser like focus on the implementation of #3 first. Boldness and risk have always been fundamental to the growth and witness of the United Methodist tradition. Beginning with Wesley preaching to coal miners, through sending circuit riders across our continent, beginning the Temperance movement, opposing child labor, building Africa University and most recently the audacious goal of ending malaria, laser beam focus in vision and bold and faithful risk has been that which has led to many of our greatest accomplishments as a denomination.

While many ministries and missions have deep significance to many of our congregations and conference organizations the suggestion is to put most of our effort and resource in one specific basket to make a bold run at accomplishing initiatives #1 and 2.The specific “basket” is the Healthy Church Initiative.

“The Healthy Church Initiative (HCI) is a process designed to transform churches. (The) focus is on providing resources and strategies to church pastors, staff, laity, and congregations so that they in turn will be able to reach new people for Christ and become the church God wants them to be in their community”

The Healthy Church initiative has proven successful in Missouri and other locations in completely transforming laity, pastors and congregations. Many congregations have grown numerically and most have grown in their witness and mission. Unlike so many initiatives, over the years, the Healthy Church Initiative is already packaged and several dozen churches in Iowa are currently in the process. Therefore, it seems prudent for us to pursue Initiatives #1 and 2 by aligning conference resources more fully with the Healthy Church Initiative process.

Being a Disciple

A disciple, in addition to being a follower, is a learner. In the gospels, disciples of course were followers of and learners from Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

The Matthew gospel (28:18-19) ended with Jesus commissioning us to "make disciples," to baptize them, and to teach them in accordance with His teachings.

Later, St. Paul in his letter to the Church at Ephesus, would explain that Jesus placed in the Church some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to equip the saints [disciples if you will] for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, to maturity, to the full stature of Christ.

I understand the "making of disciples” to mean the connecting and baptism of the lost or unsaved or non-Christian or non-believer to God through Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The equipping of the saints (disciples thus made) and the "building up of the body (all such saints or disciples takes place primarily at the local church level through the ministry of the aforementioned "apostles, prophets, etc.  It is the so built up body that transforms the world by reproducing after its own kind, i.e., by themselves making other disciples or at least getting them started on their way.

The transformation that the world undergoes is that disciples live and thrive in accordance with Kingdom principles--the will and the way of God.  Why?  That is what is meant by the "full stature of Christ."  It is God's heart's desire that we all be a bunch of Jesuses running around His earth.  Before He returned to heaven, Jesus said that not only would we do what He did, but even greater things. That is the end result of a transformed world.

That--to a certain extent--simplifies our task. As we examine Conference staffing, anything that does not create a disciple in the "full stature of Jesus" must be redirected to doing so. Selah.

Rev. Curtis DeVance

Design Task Force - Keeping the Conference up to date

“Conference staffing at all levels will be reassessed and redesigned with the support of the human resources department and input from communities of faith to address current needs based on our strategic priorities by June 1, 2014.”  We on the ‘Design Taskforce’ have a comprehensive and difficult job ahead of us but we want to keep the conference, clergy, & laity up to date to where we stand. 

As a group we decided that there are a few key pieces that will be the foundational as we move forward.  First, we needed a working definition of the words ‘transformation’ & ‘disciple’ in order to be faithful to the Mission statement of the Iowa Annual Conference; my colleague Rev. Curt DeVance will be addressing this in another article.   Second, we affirm the Strategic Design and we are committed to including the Healthy Church Initiative & Healthy Small Church Initiative into our final proposal; my colleague Rev. Mike Morgan will be addressing this as well.

The third piece of our foundation is that we believe in a grassroots approach in moving forward with our task.  I am sure many of you have heard this story before but it goes like this, once there was a young Methodist minister, fresh out of seminary.  He got a call to this wonderful little church in Georgia. He was anxious to make a great start and get things going. He pulled up to the church, and the first thing he noticed was a gnarled old tree blocking the side doors of the building.  He thought, “I’m going to cut that tree down and show this church how ambitious I am.” What he didn’t know was that John Wesley had planted that tree on his mission to Georgia in the 1730s.  So, he ended up cutting down Wesley’s historic tree and was removed as pastor, before he even got to his first Sunday. The good news was he didn’t even have to unpack his bags. The bad news was he wasn’t ministering there anymore. 

This story is a top down approach to ministry in which the one in power imposes their will upon others.  This approach doesn’t typically work within the church.  If I impose my agenda on my congregation there will be opposition to all that I do and it will not last. 

At the last church I served we had an empty lot beside the fellowship hall.  Often I would look at this property and think to myself, wouldn’t it be neat to have a community garden?  I would ask others what they thought about that empty lot and they would tell me why we have it, what we planned to do with it, and why it remained empty, but sometimes I would hear their dreams for what it could be.  Over the course of a year and half the congregation grew in their faith and had a willingness to try new ministries.  One night at a Trustees meeting someone mentioned using the empty lot for a community garden and my reply was, “I love that idea!”   

For all intents and purposes the ‘Strategic Priorities’ are a top down approach and so it is ironic that I write about a grassroots design.  Yet, when you take a hard look at the priorities they are designed to make the laity, clergy, and churches flourish from the bottom up.  The real question is how do we implement them without imposing them?       

As a design taskforce we are strongly committed to designing a structure that allows congregations and local churches a greater voice.  We want to design our conference staffing so that their primary focus is to help local churches make disciples for the transformation of the world!

Every few years we go through a restructuring process hoping that this one will be the one that stops our decline.  We want to design a structure that makes a big enough Band-Aid to stop the hemorrhage.  As the ‘Design Taskforce’ we ask for your prayers and support during this process.  On a final note, I can make one guarantee, this new design will not be perfect, but we do follow one who is.  So as we move forward please consider the words of the Pharisee Gamaliel found in Acts 5:38-39, ““If this program or this work is merely human, it will fall apart, but if it is of God, there is nothing you can do about it—and you better not be found fighting against God!”     

In Christ,

Rev. Tim Frasher