Unity Apart from Mission is Sterile

I was doing a little spring cleaning and came across a Perkins School of Theology Journal from 1967! Before the formation of the United Methodist Church. And the headline was "Unity Apart from Mission is Sterile." It featured lectures by my old professor (a decade later) Richie Hogg. Of course he was right. And the lectures, which I hope to post, read 52 years later like prophecy.

I won't claim to represent Dr. Hogg, but I'll explain why he was right, and why the unity forged in 1968 was and continues to be sterile. 

The first and only enduring unity of the early congregations of the Christian church came through their participation in the apostolic mission given by Jesus Christ. 

The early church structures, practices, liturgies, and creed’s came into being to serve that shared mission. The life of the community served to strengthen and guide members in the witness of their daily lives. Moreover in their life together they were to be an evangelistic sign of God’s Reign in Jesus Christ. Beyond the congregational level, structures of cooperation and mutual accountability served to support the ministry of the apostles and share in the particular ministries of individual congregations.

Unfortunately, these things that existed for the good of the Church are often confused with that which is essential for the life of the Church. As a result unity is asserted to exist in particular hierarchical structures, shared dogmas, and common liturgies; forgetting that it is the apostolic mission that defines the apostolic church. 

As we read the New Testament we discover that unity of the diverse congregations in the early church was perpetuated by the peripatetic ministry of the apostles. The reason the apostles were peripatetic was their fulfillment of Christ’s command to go into the world proclaiming the gospel. The church became global only because Christ sent the apostles into the whole world. Just as the apostles united the far flung congregations through their teaching and oversight, so the congregations supported the apostolic mission.

Structural relationships that perpetuated the common teaching and oversight were from the beginning both varied and pragmatic, and have varied widely over Christian history. They are not essential, and when they become irrelevant or a hindrance to the mission Christ gave the apostles they can and must be discarded. 

Methodists above all should get this, since beginning with Wesley we have readily shucked or bypassed ineffective structures to get mission done. Whether we were breaking with the Church of England or breaking up with each other, our history of division is the greatest sign of our faithfulness to the urgency of God’s mission.When things aren’t working out we move on. There is still work to do and it is in working together for the mission first given the apostles that we find our best and deepest unity.

So why our current obsession with unity based on hierarchy, discipline, and dogma? I expect because we have confused what is good for the church with what is essential. Our mission has become a lower priority than institutional maintenance, a set of priorities virtually written into the Discipline. Or perhaps more kindly, we’ve come to believe that we can’t really do mission right unless we are united in our structures and our dogma. 

Traditionalists have been clear that their priority is to defend the traditional family and the Christian tradition more generally as they see it in the UMC. In short they appear to believe that common structures, whether hermeneutical, social, theological, and ecclesial, are essential, and are the basis of our essential unity. Apparently the mission will somehow follow. 

On the other hand for progressives a common commitment to social justice and inclusion of the oppressed in both society and the church has become essential. Thus structures that are both inclusive and socially engaged have become the essence of being a Christian Church, the source of unity, and quite possibly constitute the whole of its mission as well. 

Because both traditionalists and progressive understand the unity of the church in terms of its inner life, efforts to achieve unity inevitably devolve into struggles to control that inner life, and thus for political power.

So are the structures and dogmas over which United Methodists fight essential? The General Conference votes don’t really tell us anything. The real democratic institution in the UMC is the passing of the collection plate and planning the local church ministry. And in this democracy United Methodists have already voted. Apportionments to support our structures are dropping precipitously. All that actually unifies us are the few enforceable laws that govern clergy behavior and property ownership.

And mission? While Annual Conferences and the General Board of Global Ministries still serve as a organizing center for joint mission their work pales next to the idiosyncratic congregational mission initiatives. We are churches in missions, not a Church in mission. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. David Scott, in the UM&Global blog  http://www.umglobal.org/2019/04/recommended-readings-new-forms-of.html points out how “polity innovation” is advancing our shared mission.

But we’ll probably need to go further. For us to really innovate in polity for mission we need to transition to become a global Methodist Church made up of autonomous annual conferences. Such a global church would actually be most directly continuous with both the early churches and Wesley’s earliest organization; which focused on coordinating the work of preacher/missionaries and addressing the problems that arose as they carried out their mission. All else would be left to the pragmatic outworking by annual conferences of what is necessary to the mission of the church in their social and cultural contexts. 

Can such a thing be done? Yes. We already have a World Methodist Council. What remains, and is indeed inevitable, is the dissolution of the never really United Methodist Church into autonomous annual conferences that can voluntarily join that council. 

Will there be a cost? Yes, unless carefully managed the transition of support from the current apportionment system to the pragmatically useful general boards and agencies could prove catastrophic to their vital work. But surely if the leaders of the current warring factions used their collective intelligence to solve this problem instead of inventing ever more creative ways of propagandizing for their causes it could be done. 

But for this to happen we don’t need a commission on a way forward. We need a commission on the way back, to our true Wesleyan roots, and ultimately to the unity found only in carrying out the mission Christ gave the apostles.