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During the Ministers Council Senate this past August, I attended a presentation by General Secretary Roy Medley and Associate General Secretary Jeff Woods about the proposed new denominational structure. At the time, I asked several questions of clarification, and perhaps because of that was asked to write an article for this edition of Minister. That’s what curiosity will get you. |
I write as pastor of a loyal American Baptist congregation. We are generous supporters of American Baptist mission, we have a few members who will occasionally attend ABC gatherings, and a couple of folks serve on boards of ABC-related institutions. We have a member who goes on a regionally-sponsored mission trip to Nicaragua every year. Nearly every year we have an ABC missionary or seminary professor or national staff person preach in our church. Our church serves as the American Baptist ministry to Iowa State University. This congregation has stronger ties to and greater familiarity with the denomination than most ABC churches. Despite all of this, many folks are not especially well informed about ABCUSA and don’t see this connection as being terribly important. Many members feel good about being American Baptist mainly because it means we are not Baptists of a more conservative ilk.
With this and other congregations in mind, I will begin by asking a basic question: How much does denominational structure affect the local church, anyway? Do the way that regions and program boards and agencies of the denomination relate to one another and the way that we set priorities and work together on a national and global scale matter all that much to local congregations?
One of my first thoughts was to turn to history. As American Baptists, we have been through this before, and it seemed worth considering how previous denominational reorganizations affected local churches.
I considered asking members of my church who have been here 40 or 50 years how SCODS and SCOR affected First Baptist Church back in the 1970s. But I could imagine the strange looks and the responses I might get if I asked such a question – and if someone in the church actually understood the question, I could imagine the kind of answer I would get.
So I turned to a volume on my bookshelf, Where the Spirit Leads, published in 1980 and edited by Martin Marty. It was a kind of “State of the Union” for American churches; each chapter was devoted to a different denominational group. The chapter on American Baptists dealt almost exclusively with the denominational reorganization of SCODS and SCOR, with hardly a word about worship, mission, ministry, or theology. The outside observer might have believed that the only things happening with Baptists had to do with issues of polity.
What was interesting was that this was true of several of the articles in the book. In his “Afterword,” reflecting on articles written about various Christian traditions, Martin Marty noted that “with few exceptions, the authors stress ‘order’ more than ‘faith.’”
He went on to ask, “If by some divine fiat or swoop, all the ordering questions of the churches were solved, would faith and practice be much different? Could it be that we become expert at polity because tinkering is easy when it comes to something so visible?”1
Marty’s words certainly ring true today. Problems of organization are much easier to address than differences in theology and social ethics or shortfalls in revenue. And American Baptists are certainly not alone in focusing on issues of polity as a way to address deeper concerns.
The changes brought about by SCODS and then SCOR in the 1970s were a response to the cultural situation facing us as American Baptists at that time. We are now in a vastly different culture, with different needs and pressures, and the proposed new structure is an appropriate, if of necessity imperfect response to the needs of our time. While the new structure will not solve our differences in theology or cure our financial ills, it will make these situations easier to live with. But from a strictly congregational perspective, my feeling is that the reorganization of the 1970s did not affect churches or clergy in a significant way, and that current changes will not have a great effect on churches and ministers today.
Having said that, I would like to make a few brief observations on how the proposed changes may affect clergy and churches, and then to turn to a larger issue.
| 1. | The number of persons necessary to fill national board positions will be significantly less under the new plan. The General Board originally had 150 members; the Board of General Ministries will have 46, and the Board of General Ministries will meet less often than the General Board once did. The national program boards will likely be much smaller as well. Serving on a national board is a way that some folks become “cheerleaders” and “salespeople” for the denomination, and local churches that have board members among their members are (generally) more plugged in and supportive of the denomination. We will have fewer churches in which this will happen. |
| 2. | The process necessary to give public witness on societal issues will be more cumbersome and difficult. Public Witness Statements must be approved by three-quarters of the covenanting organization boards. This is a high bar. Meaningful statements might need to be “watered down” to gain ¾ approval, and by the time ¾ of the region boards could vote on a given issue, the issue at hand may no longer be current. All of this may serve to increase the importance of the prophetic role of the General Secretary, and it may make it more important for regional bodies and local pastors and churches to speak to such issues. Of course, different regions and different clergy will often be on different sides of significant issues, but if American Baptists are to speak to our culture, it will probably not be through official pronouncement of the national body. |
| 3. | A related observation is that the new structure will reduce the potential for conflict. Since we will be less likely to speak to divisive issues, issues of sexuality may not provide the flashpoints they have in the past. For local pastors and churches that have been caught up in fighting over homosexuality, this change will be welcome. Of course, this will not necessarily ease conflict within regions, which can be more intense than national battles because of proximity and familiarity. |
| 4. | With the new structure, it appears that the National Staff Leadership Council will be the power center of the denomination, limited as that power may be. All of the members of this group will represent a region, national board, or institution, and the welfare of these entities does not necessarily correspond to the best interests of clergy. Who will represent ministers? The Ministers Council Executive Director alone will specifically represent the interests of ministers in that group. (There will no doubt be local church pastors on the Board of General Ministries, but that group will have less responsibility and authority than the current General Board.) |
| 5. | The hope is that the Biennial will be a time of celebration and mission focus, with minimal legislative function. That sounds quite appealing. Biennials that focus on celebration and mission with a minimum of disagreement and discord would certainly be welcome, but the official agenda alone cannot insure this. |
I can think of a few other changes that may affect churches and clergy, but it seems to me that on the whole, the proposed restructuring will not have a great impact on local congregations or on pastors. But perhaps the question is not, “How will the change in structure affect clergy and churches?” I would argue that a bigger question is, “How are the pressures that prompted the proposed restructuring affecting clergy and churches?” The bigger story is that the same factors affecting the national structure are already having an impact on ministers and churches.
In my own region, financial pressures have caused Mid-American Baptist Churches to eliminate the five area minister positions. On top of all of their other responsibilities, it is difficult for the region Executive Minister and Associate Executive Minister to provide pastoral care for all of the clergy in the region. To help fill this need, our Ministers Council is attempting to begin a “Pastor-To-Pastor” program wherein clergy provide care for one another. Similar programs exist in other regions. The trend is for pastoral leaders to take responsibility for their own care. The demise of the Ministerial Leadership Commission a few years ago is another example of a vacuum that makes the Ministers Council’s work of advocating for clergy even more vital.
Financial pressures also affect churches in more direct ways. With the economic downturn, congregations already struggling will find it even harder to pay the bills, afford a minister, and provide health insurance for employees. I know of several churches dependent on endowment income that are struggling mightily because of the stock market. This, of course, is not news to anyone.
The move toward the ABC as a looser federation rather than a more centralized bureaucracy is also happening at the local level. In my area, the clergy-led Together in Ministry group has replaced the Area Minister-led cluster group. Members of the TIM group need not be church staff - or even American Baptists. With looser organization and less regional and national staff and programming, ministers and local congregations are taking greater responsibility for support, networking, continuing education, and shared ministry efforts. Churches and clergy will choose (and are choosing) to network around common interests, theologies, and ministry settings in addition to or instead of the traditional geographic and denominational networks.
This may include networks of urban churches, rural churches, university churches, emergent churches, ethnic and language networks, churches with a passion for social justice, and churches that relate to one another on the basis of shared worship styles (liturgical, contemporary, Taizé, etc.) Young clergy networks, Women in Ministry, “techie” pastors, and other clergy groupings will grow in importance. Technologies ranging from listservs to conference calls to video conferencing to Facebook help to facilitate such networking.
Looser ties make it easier for churches to have a variety of connections, and our increasing diversity increases the variety of connections possible. We have long had a number of congregations that have long been dually affiliated in terms of denomination. Many of our churches are also affiliated with one of the African-American Baptist conventions, and others are dually affiliated with CBF, the Disciples, the UCC, or another (or more) denomination(s).
For many, denomination is not necessarily the most important affiliation, and this trend will no doubt grow. There are ABC churches that are in the Willow Creek Association, in the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, the Alliance of Baptists, the Baptist Peace Fellowship, Cornerstone Church Network, and more. In many cases, these ties may be stronger than ABC ties. For other congregations, the local Council of Churches or Ministerial Association will be as significant as ABC membership.
Some may look at all of this with sadness, remembering wistfully the time when ABC churches had more of a common culture. But those days are long gone, and the ABC is not alone in this. Several years ago, Joe Coulter of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary described the Presbyterian ecology for nurturing the faith.2 He noted those factors that were declining or no longer significant in faith formation for Presbyterians. Blue laws, public schools, Wednesday Bible study and worship, men’s groups, Sabbath observance, and family devotions were no longer significant, he said. Youth ministry, Synod Schools, church publications, church camps, church-related colleges, campus ministry, Sunday School, and women’s groups were declining in significance.
All of this and more would be true of the ABC. We have not had a denominational hymnal since a 1970 joint hymnal with the Disciples, and our diversity (not to mention the move away from hymnals in many churches) makes another American Baptist hymnal extremely unlikely. Only a small percentage of ABC Sunday School classes use ABC-produced Sunday School materials, and this becomes a vicious circle – we can’t produce materials if they are not purchased. The American Baptist ceased publication several years ago. I am not arguing that this is good or bad, but simply stating the reality that many of the common experiences that once helped to mold ABC identity no longer exist. You might also notice than none of these factors have to do with polity or structure.
Religious life is changing rapidly in our culture, but there will continue to be an important role for denominations as communities of support and belonging, a way to do mission, a provider of resources and theological education, a network of shared ministry, and a theological tradition on which one stands. In this post-denominational age, however, denominations are not the only place for churches and clergy to fill such needs. Structure is not the most important thing, but a more loosely connected and more streamlined ABC structure fits the times in which we live.
1 Marty, Where the Spirit Leads: American Denominations Today (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980), 232.
2 Joe Coulter, “The Presbyterian Ecology for Nurturing the Faith.” Handout provided by Ed White of Alban Institute, 1996.