Ministry Makeover

Recovering a Theology for Bi-vocational Service in the Church

Picardo

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781630878504
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Ministry Makeover examines the decline within the church, especially the United Methodist Church (UMC), and some causes for this decline. It calls for a reforming of United Methodist structure and polity by drawing more attention to the value of the bi-vocational model of ministry and a re-visitation of the Wesleyan/United Brethren view and historical perspective. This book establishes a solid theological foundation upon which to build this shift and it goes a step beyond typical ecclesiology (the study of the church) to identify Trinitarian theology as the basis for the practice of the church. In turn, this text reveals bi-vocational ministry and support of new congregations as not only a viable option, but also arguably the model towards which the church is heading. These insights will transform the church and lead to more effective church ministry with respect to resources, structure, and reach in a post-Christendom world context. Picardo uses Embrace Church (Lexington, KY) as a case study, and incorporates his experiences into this text in order to show how these implications have played out in a true bi-vocational, church-plant context.

1

An Alarming Decline

Since the merger of 1968, the United Methodist Church has declined every year. It has gained some attention, but not as much as the dwindling financial resources. It is hard to conceive the financial problem when net assets have increased by 217 percent to total over $52 billion dollars. Total giving has increased by 144 percent, and total giving by worshipers has increased by 178 percent. These totals take into account the inflation rate as of 2009. The finances, without a doubt, have increased at a significant rate since 1968, but the expenses have unfortunately grown at the even more alarming rate of 44 percent after inflation.1

The real financial problem is, as Lovett H. Weems says, that “virtually everything related to people went down, such as the number of churches, worship attendance, membership, professions of faith, and children and youth.”2 While the spending has gone up, the giving has gone down, and that was exacerbated by the 2008 recession, where there was a $60 million dollar decline.3 With no new people coming in, and the main givers in the UMC aging, it is the same people carrying a heavier load, and it is crushing them. For instance, more than 10,000 of our 35,000 local churches have thirty-five or fewer people present for worship on a typical Sunday. The vast majority of these churches were built to serve the population as it was one hundred years ago, when 40 percent of Americans made their living by farming.4 This is a clear indication that people are leaving the church, and it is time for pastors and congregations to work on addressing why this is happening.

There are practical solutions to make a stopgap financially, but that does not necessarily solve the problems related to vision/mission, attracting new people, and creating vitality in the life of a congregation. Not to say that the following are not important, but instead of focusing on spending cuts, reducing the sizes of districts and annual conferences, and creating programs, there has to be more of a focus on building people up, and the greatest avenue to do this is in the local church. This calls for investing in the major players, who are the clergy and laity. This also calls for focus on the gap that exists between these two parties.

In order to understand the current reality of the United Methodist Church (UMC) and mainline denominations, the first priority is to understand and define the problem. Christendom in the United States is no longer a cultural norm, and mainline denominations have been directly affected by this reality. The fact remains that since the 1968 merger in Dallas between the Methodists and Evangelical United Brethren, the newly formed UMC has experienced decline in North America for over forty years. The decline was even taking place for both denominations prior to the merger. Extensive research shows that by 1970 the UMC reported a total membership of 10,671,744 and 40,653 organized churches. In a fourteen-year period, by 1984 the UMC had lost 13 percent of its total membership, bringing it down to 9,266,853. That translates to a weekly loss of 1,930 members. Worship attendance declined by 11 percent in that fourteen-year period, and 2,665 local churches closed their doors. The UMC is not the only mainline denomination that declined in total membership and worship attendance, resulting in church closures. The Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) all saw this same trend.5

Recent studies by experts such as Lovett Weems through the Lewis Leadership Center show how numbers have continued to decline when it comes to virtually every category involving people. Weems shows this in figure 1 to illustrate the point.6

The previous statistics show how decline has hampered the UMC; however, it is important to note increases that have taken place since the 1960s. Such increases have been in categories like net assets, with growth through endowments, buildings, and property. Also, total giving and spending per giving unit have increased because of inflation. Figure 2 shows how dramatically statistics involving money have increased over time since the 1968 merger.7

Nearly 28,000 UMC churches reported having no building debt in 2009 but had appreciated building assets including parsonages that totaled over $52 billion. Churches have spent a lot more. After taking inflation into account, the difference translates into a 44 perce...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: An Alarming Decline
• Chapter 2: Bright Spots of Hope
• Chapter 3: Rethinking Resources
• Chapter 4: Biblical Precedents for Bi-vocational Ministry
• Chapter 5: Lessons from Early Revivalists
• Chapter 6: A Theology of Work for the Church
• Chapter 7: A Bi-vocational Prognosis
• Chapter 8: Rethinking Church
• Bibliography