10 Year Call to Action Plan for UMC. We are now into step 3 which involves tracking vital signs beginning January 1, 2014. http://vitalcongregations.holston.org

1. OUR PRAYER
We are no longer our own, but thine. Put us to
what thou wilt, rank us with whom thou wilt.
Put us to doing, put us to suffering. Let us be
employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted
for thee or brought low for thee.
Let us be full, let us be empty. Let us have all
things, let us have nothing.

2. We freely and heartily yield all things to
thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Creator, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art our
Lord, and we are your joyful servants.
So be it. Amen.

3. CALL TO ACTION
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Jesus came near and spoke to them, “...go and make disciples of all
nations...teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look,
I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.”
(Matthew 28:18-20 CEB)

4. ORIGINS
• Issues & Innovations Emerging Across the UMC Congregations and Annual Conferences
• Table of Agency Leaders and Bishops
• Council of Bishops
• Connectional Table
• Two CTA Groups
• Interim Operations Group

5. the challenge from The
Call to Action
1. For a minimum of ten years, starting in January
2011, use the drivers of vital congregations as
initial areas of attention for sustained and intense
concentration on building effective practices in
local churches.
2. Dramatically reform the clergy leadership
development, deployment, evaluation, and
accountability systems.

6. 3. Collect, report, review and act on
statistical information that measures
progress in key performance areas to
learn and adjust our approaches to
leadership, policies, and the use of
human and financial resources.

7. the challenge from The
Call to Action
4. Reform the Council of Bishops, with the active
bishops assuming (1) responsibility and public
accountability for improving results in
attendance, professions of faith, baptisms,
participation in servant/mission ministries,
benevolent giving, and lowering the average age
of participants in local church life; and (2)
establishing a new culture of accountability
throughout the church.

8. 5. Consolidate program and administrative
agencies, align their work and resources with the
priorities of the church and the decade-long
commitment to build vital congregations, and
reconstitute them with much smaller
competency-based boards of directors in order to
overcome current lack of alignment, diffused and
redundant activity, and higher than necessary
expense due to independent structures.

9. The Adaptive Challenge
To redirect the flow of attention,
energy, and resources to an intense
concentration on fostering and sustaining
an increase in the number of vital
congregations effective in making
disciples of Jesus Christ for the
transformation of the world.

11. Basic principles undergirding THE WORK
The local “charge” or
congregation is the primary
venue for making disciples.
We are focused on building and
supporting United Methodist
people & their witness on the
ground, wherever they are in the
world.

12. Basic principles
Annual conferences are the key
venue for investment in organizing the
work of supporting congregations and
generating more vital congregations
because they focus strategically on key
levers for empowering vital
congregations – including: recruiting,
training and deploying gifted clergy.

13. KEY Recommendations
• Creating clear expectations and
metrics for all leaders
• Creating a non-residential
bishop to lead the COB and
build collaborative work on the
Adaptive Challenge

14. RECOMMENDATIONS, CONT.
• Cultivating a new generation of young UMC
clergy with education and support systems that
focus on the Adaptive Challenge
• Creating a unified UMC Center for Connectional
Mission & Ministry constituted from 10 existing
agencies and changing its governance.

15. Recommendations, CONT.
Redirect Apportionments in 2013-1016 by up to
$50 million for work on the Adaptive Challenge
including:
• Young clergy seminary scholarships
• New faith communities for new people
Redirect $5 million of the general church receipts
for theological education in the Central
Conferences
Redirect $5 million of general church receipts for
focus on developing young laity as UMC leaders

16. Assessing the State of the UMC
APEX RESEARCH
• Key conclusions:
1. Acute crisis of underperforming
economic model
2. Creeping crisis of relevancy

17. ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT
 Lack of mission clarity and congruency
 Struggle with “global church” identity and
mission
 Institutional concerns block
mission/purpose
 Values and culture issues
 Structure and process issues

18. Environmental Context, Cont.
 Declining US
membership/attendance trends
 Generation bound demographics of
membership and clergy
 Difficulty of attracting “young”
generation

19. REDUCING THE DISTANCE BETWEEN AND AMONG THE
CHURCH’S FOUNDATIONAL UNITS
Lack of relevancy linked to sense of distance
Annual Conference and District Size
 Annual Conferences and Districts often too large
 Bishop and District Superintendant leadership ratios
Distance aggravated by apparent autonomy
 Varying views about accountability
 Lack of alignment & agreed common measures

20. Apex recommendations
Strengthen Leadership and
Management to Achieve Mission
Focus: General Conference, Council
of Bishops, Annual Conference and,
later, Clergy Effectiveness

21. Apex recommendations, cont.
Address Agency
Governance Structure
Improve alignment

22. Turn, Turn, Turn
• Anatole France
All changes, even the most
longed for, have their
melancholy; for what we leave
behind us is a part of ourselves;
we must die to one life before we
can enter another.

23. Church Vitality Research
Conducted by Towers Watson
• Comprehensive and robust research
intentionally focused on North America
• Response & participation rates in
interviews and surveys ensures the
findings are reliable at a 95% level of
confidence

24. Church vitality research
• Calculation was done for
32,228churches where data were
available

26. Church vitality research
• Based on vitality index, we found
that all kinds of UMC churches are
vital –small, large, across different
geographies, and settings (e.g.,
urban, rural)

29. findings
• We conducted regression analyses to
identify drivers of the vitality index and
four key drivers of vitality stand out –
findings are actionable
• Four key drivers of vitality are consistent
across different types of churches

38. An obvious key lever is
passionate and effective
clergy leadership
We asked:
What would make it possible to recruit,
develop and deploy more gifted clergy leaders
for connectional ministries to foster vital
congregations?

39. IOT CALLS FOR CHANGE IN clergy system
•
Foster consensus about the personal and
professional gifts, skills and practices needed
for effective clergy.
•
Congregations increasingly foster a "culture of
call" in which they regularly invite and
encourage persons with the needed gifts to
consider if they are being called.
•
Make the recruitment of gifted young people to
full time ministry a priority and devote
resources to helping them complete their
theological education.

40. CLERGY SYSTEM
•
Expect & work with seminaries to train for the skills
and practices most needed to revitalize existing churches
and start new ones.
•
Continue to purposefully avoid deploying clergy based
primarily upon seniority/salary and toward deploying
persons where their gifts can have the greatest impact.
•
Improve ability and processes to more promptly exit low
performing clergy from the system.

41. Changes needed in the episcopal system
1. Greater consensus about leadership qualities needed
for Bishops in the 21st Century.
2. Bishops have public accountability for improving
vital indicators in their Residential Areas
3. One bishop dedicated and accountable for the
encouraging and supporting others on the Council
of Bishops
4. Align appropriate work of general church more
closely with Annual Conference strategies for
embracing the Adaptive Challenge

42. CONNECTIONAL TABLE
ACTION ON IOT
RECOMMENDATIONS

43. AFFIRMATION
Performance of Clergy
• Adopt updated performance qualities and vital indicators for clergy
• Bishops lead in requiring that assessments are used consistently in
every annual conference on an annual basis
• Focus training and continuing education efforts to enhance
performance of new and experienced clergy in relevant
competencies based on assessments
• Appointments should be made based on proven performance and
potential for achieving the desired outcomes

44. AFFIRMATION
Performance of Bishops
• Adopt performance qualities and vital
indicators for bishops, addressing both
spiritual leadership and temporal oversight
• Jurisdictional Committees on Episcopacy
and Area Committees on Episcopacy lead in
implementing annual assessments with
results sent to COB

45. AFFIRMATION
Role of Seminaries
• COB and appropriate general church
offices shall work with seminary
leadership to identify and develop
curriculum requirements for seminaries
as well as clarify expectations, measure
performance, and tie funding to the
outcomes

46. Recommendation
Guaranteed Appointment of Clergy
• We must make necessary changes in policy and
practice to allow for a just, reasonable, and
compassionate process that provides for the
transition of low performing clergy from the
itinerancy.
• Therefore, the Connectional Table supports
legislation for policy changes which improve the
process for transitioning pastors.

47. An Additional Set of
Recommendations
Consolidate program and administrative
agencies, align their work and resources with the
priorities of the Church and the decade-long
commitment to build vital congregations, and
reconstitute them with much smaller
competency-based boards of directors in order to
overcome current lack of alignment, diffused and
redundant activity, and higher than necessary
expense due to independent structures.

48. The interventions are not our mission.
The Adaptive Challenge is a focused way to help
us better direct our resources and efforts to
achieve the mission.
The mission is to make disciples of
Jesus Christ for the transformation of
the world.
We welcome your encouragement, critique,
thoughts & prayers

49. Turn, Turn, Turn
•
Mark Twain
Twenty years from now you will be more
disappointed by the things you didn't do
than by the ones you did do. So throw
off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe
harbor. Catch the trade winds in your
sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.