Corporate reorganization
Religion sociologist Bob Wilson predicted 50 years ago that The United Methodist Church would respond to change with corporate reorganization strategies -- without addressing the foundation questions of why change is happening. (Photo by GuerrillaBuzz on Unsplash)
Oboedire | April 7, 2025
My conviction that “business is usual is over” deepens and widens these days. Today, I am thinking about this in relation to a conversation I had with Bob Wilson at Duke Divinity School in the late 1970s. Some of you will remember he was a beloved professor of the Sociology of Religion. Jeannie and I became good friends with Bob and Betty while at Duke in my PhD program (1977-1981).
The conversation I am remembering was about the future of the United Methodist Church. When Bob learned that I had majored in Sociology in college, he enjoyed sharing his insights and I benefitted greatly in learning from him. In the conversation I am recalling, he was describing what he believed would be an inevitable major decline in institutional Christianity, a decline the UMC would not escape.
He said that the UMC would manage the decline by sociological means: merging Annual Conferences, reducing the number of Districts in a Conference, having fewer Bishops and Agencies, staff reductions, etc. He saw these as necessary for the institution’s survival. And in the years since, these kinds of things have occurred, and continue. [1]
In the midst of his analysis, Bob surprised me when he said, “All this only postpones the inevitable: the collapse of institutional Christianity (and the UMC) as we know it. The adjustments, while necessary, forestall asking the question, ‘Why is this happening?’ but it is the question we cannot ignore.” He was hoping that a new generation of ecclesial leaders would face the “why” question. And as I view things, some have. [2]
But the decline continues, even escalates, putting a corporate model of Church in greater peril. [3] The term radical change is increasingly used these days. But in my humble opinion, much that goes by the name is not radical enough. We continue finding ways to postpone the inevitable.
All this would get depressing very fast, except for one thing: Christianity made it nearly 500 years without most of what we mean by “the institutional Church.” We are not dependent on most status quos (and no sacred cows) as we envision the future of Christian faith. Radical change means, as Brian McLaren put it, “everything must change.” [4]
With a “back to the future” mindset, we have much to learn from those who followed Jesus for centuries before the Church as we think of it came into being. In much of the early church (and in subsequent renewal movements–the early Methodist movement being one of them), we have what it takes to enact radical change. [5]
Back to Bob Wilson. He believed it is possible to be “radical enough.” His tribe is increasing (e.g. Richard Rohr’s “Wisdom Pattern”), and despite the pain necessary to move onto a new day, they are labor pains of new birth. In fact, we may be unable to postpone the inevitable because it is already here. God is doing a new thing (Isaiah 43:19), and the prophet’s question to the people of his time is now God’s question to us, “Do you see it?”
Natalie Sleeth saw it in 1985, and put into music with these lyrics,
“In our end is our beginning.” [6]
We are resurrection people. We do not fear death, not even the death of the institutional church as we know it. We have no need to postpone the inevitable, other than giving us the time and space to make the new wineskins Jesus said we must have sooner or later. We are not in preservation mode; we are in transformation mode. Chrysalis mode.
[1] Bob was among a group of sociologists (e.g. Lyle Schaller) who were envisioning radical changes for the institutional Church.
[2] The Emergent Christianity movement has looked at the “why” question for quite a while now. The Fresh Expressions movement is doing so more recently.
[3] The institutional Church is already “on life support” right now in many respects. The post-World War II ecclesial bureaucracy is unsustainable.
[4] Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change (Thomas Nelson, 2007).
[5] Ashley Boggan’s recent book, Wesleyan Vile-Tality (Abingdon Press, 2025) is an example of radical-change thinking. She joins a growing number of United Methodists (and other Christians too) willing to engage in it.
[6] “Hymn of Promise” #707 in The United Methodist Hymnal.