Not So Surprising Revelations

Well, through my experience at this year's minister's school and conversations this week with my polity friends, I finally have enough material to make a new post. Acthung, Attention, Warning: I feel a rant coming on...


George Bush doesn't care about black people...in one unbelievable and yet totally believable statement, Kanye West summed up a huge problem in america.

Here's mine. The United Methodist Church doesn't know how to deal with young adult clergy or how to talk to young adults.

This year's conversation at Minister's School concerned The Emergent Church. This conversation is taking place 7 years too late as we are moving away from the Emergent Church into a new ditigal age. The best part of the three day event was the presentation by Tim Keel, the founding pastor of Jacob's Well in KC.

Here's the point: church can not be formulated. A Center for Congregational Excellence will not, can not, speak to the needs of all congregations or how to reach young people who have no interest in the church. There is NO MODEL that will work everytime, in every situation. I hope and pray that the Pathways commission of the UMC and the Centers understand this. Congregations are part of the neighborhood that surrounds them. The ministries of congregation must speak to the needs of the community of which they are a part. The methods and style of a congregation must fit within the reality of the community of which they are a part. And, the PASTORS of congregations should be experts in the needs and styles and character of the communities of which they are a part.

So, why would you move a 25 year old, relatively high-tech, pop-culture, rock and roll, city boy to two rural congregations made up of farmers and teachers? Because the UMC doesn't know what to do with young adult clergy. And because the itineracy system doesn't work anymore! Now, i love the people in my congregations more than i love myself. But, i am doing them a disservice because i don't know their needs and issues, what's important to them, i speak a different language than they do, i come from a different world than they do. I will preach, visit, lead worship, marry people, bury people and be faithful in my service to these churches for as long as I am appointed here. But, there is a limit to what I can accomplish here. And, yes, I know that we have faith in God who works without the aid of the church, and that God has plans for my congregations. But, in order to become a part of God's ministry, through the local church, the leadership of a pastor who relates to the community has to play a huge role.

I feel like I was in a setting in which I belonged with a community with which i could relate. I had a pastor who had a chance to become a great influence and mentor in my life and affect my whole career. Instead, i was told it wasn't working out and the DS's had to scramble to find a place for me.

I am in polity class right now. Learning about the itineracy covenant and the candidacy process. You really want to bring the average age of ordained ministers down: Let's talk about the ten years it takes become ordained, let's talk about the mininum salaries and lack of insurance support. let's talk about the probability of changing jobs, moving families, every three years. let's talk about the lack of respect and involvement and participation and opportunity if you're not at least commissioned.

The candidacy process is five years too long and five times too hard. There's is a better way to ensure the accountability and readiness of all clergy without taking ten years to get through the process. The earliest you can be ordained is 29. Fact. The better way to ensure accountability is through the connection and relationship between clergy throughout their careers. Supporting, encouraging, and strengthening the connections between colleagues should be the role of the Center for Pastoral Excellence, not creating a check list of effectiveness that's supposed to work for every pastor in every situation. The process has to be reformed. Instead of hearing everywhere we go to find future clergy in our churches, the process needs to be reformed.

The itineracy process is also something that needs to be dealt with in order to encourage young people to become a part of the clergy. The average person changes jobs every 8-10 years. We change jobs every 2-3, especially if we're in the process and not commissioned or ordained and on part time local church appointments. That's not attractive to people considering ministry. Why would they want to do that if they could get a good steady job, without 7 years of education, with health benefits that much much less demanding than this job is. The itineracy comes from a church-past when pastors actually rode horses from town to town. The world has changed, is changing, will change, and the church must change with it.

As part of the conversation with the Bishop at minister's I stood up and made some points about how this new ditigal age is just reality to people like me, not something to studied or a problem to be solved. And the more the church sees and lives into this new time as reality, the better. The bishop thanked me graciously for my points and then said he would love to get a group of commissioned and ordained young adults together to have more conversations just like this. Now, we're getting somewhere. Young adults want to do that too, most of us are just waiting to be asked. But, did you hear it? I am immediately left out of that converation because of the time it takes to become commissioned and ordained. I am neither. Does that mean I have nothing to give to the conversation of the church's reaching young adults? I am a young adult for crying out loud!!!!

There is no model, there is no formula. The old paradigms simply don't work anymore. The new model is intense, contextual studies of certain areas and their needs, wants, styles, and other demo. stuff. Something must be done.

For example, downtown KC has seen a mass influx of young upwardly mobile hipster type folks. The only UMC presence down there is Grand Avenue, with an unbelievable place in the history of worldwide homeless ministry. But there's an opportunity to build on the old and reach the new. Using the homeless ministry identity of that church, Grand Avenue could be rediculously effective as a young adult downtown, emergent/ditigal age church. And I'd love to be a part of it. But, as for now, I'm a lisenced local pastor, so it's hard to get people to listen.

The times they are a-changin'. And if something doesn't change in the methodology, polity, and ministry of the UMC, the times are going to leave us behind.

Stop throwing your young adults out in to the country (or for that matter your young adult rural pastors into the cities) Stop putting your young adults through hell to become a part of the ministry of the UMC. Stop asking pastors and their familes to move at an awful rate. Stop NOT offering your young adults benefits that only fulltime pastors recieve (if we boycott walmart for the same reason, what does that say about us?) And stop sitting around in conference rooms talking about how to reach young adults.....JUST ASK ONE OF US!!!!

Dedicated to the ministry of God on this earth and hopeful for the future of the United Methodist Church within that ministry, Reverend Bradley James Bryan.