Is the UMC Still in the Wilderness

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Now Caleb calmed the people before Moses and said, “We must go up and take possession of it, because we are more than able to do it.” But the men who went up with him said, “We can’t go up against the people because they are stronger than we.” (Numbers 13:30-31 CEB)

I’m getting ready for a pastoral transition by reading…reading a lot. Demographics, leadership rosters, church administration texts, Biblical commentaries are all on my nightstand. Bob Kaylor’s excellent new book Your Best Move [LINK] has helped organize & direct all that reading, as an excellent primer and overview to best practices in times of pastoral moves & reappointments. It is a must-read for pastors who are leaving, arriving, or supervising a transition.

Reading Kaylor reminded me to explore William Bridges’ classic Managing Transitions [LINK], with an abundance of Biblical imagery for a management text! As I learned about the middle stage of transitions—the “neutral zone” (a term borrowed from the sociology of Arnold van Gennep)—I came across this passage describing what happens to organizations that get stuck between saying goodbye to the old order and fully embracing the new way.

Given the ambiguities of the neutral zone, it is easy for people to become polarized: some want to rush forward and others want to go back to the old ways. Under the pressure of that polarization, consensus easily breaks down and the level of discord rises. Teamwork is undermined, as is loyalty to the organization itself. Managed properly, this is only a temporary situation. But left unmanaged, polarization can lead to terminal chaos. For this reason, some organizations never emerge from the neutral zone. (41)

Sound like any organization you know? How about The United Methodist Church, circa 2014? If you aren’t convinced, Bridges also documents concurrent rises in anxiety and drops in motivation in the neutral zone, alongside with the lived reality that “…with so much uncertainty and frustration, people lose confidence in the organization’s future…” (ibid). Like the spies’ report from Canaan, many want to avoid the conflict that leads into the preferred future, while some urge moving forward no matter the cost. The result? Terminal chaos…perhaps for decades.

Old expectations and ways of doing business (or church!) clearly no longer apply, but new pathways and guidelines haven’t set in yet. Anxiety runs high, disorientation and confusion runs rampant, with even the leadership unsure how to proceed or even if the whole thing is going to work! “Moving forward into God’s future” is a pithy slogan, but if many are unsure what that means, unclear about how to even start doing it, and unfamiliar with the new context for ministry, then it only generates polarization and antipathy. Is it possible that the stresses we are experiencing as a denomination are significantly about unmanaged and unfinished transitions which have created a no-man’s-land for us to aimlessly wander?

The decline in significance and ecclesiastical measures since 1968 is much remarked-upon. I wonder if the problems and chasms we currently face in our beloved UMC, like theological and doctrinal battles or adapting ministry to a rapidly-changing context, are also right now symptomatic of deeper seismic concerns. For more than 45 years, we’ve had massive structural changes, a new identity, systemic racism, far-reaching cultural shifts, accelerating urbanization, emerging challenges to belief and faith…and so much more. The dawn of the millennium has brought a surge of people who are ecclesiastically unattached; 9/11 and the War on Terror prosecuted world-wide; increasing economic instability both personally and collectively; the global rise of personal technology, social media, and mobile devices; and experimentation with new forms of church and ministry at the denominational, conference, and congregational levels. Is it possible since the uniting conference in Dallas, and especially in the last 15 years, The United Methodist Church has actually not exited these “neutral zones” into a true beginning? Unable to leave the old behind, perhaps we’re also unable to enter the new.

The neutral zone isn’t the only possible explanation for why there’s so much grist for Methodism’s mill of existential angst right now, but it does shed an interesting light on why we’re here…and perhaps how to emerge from the wilderness. Anthropologist Victor Turner built on van Gennep’s work to understand the neutral zone as a threshold or liminal time, in which role reversals and polyvalent meanings were acceptable in rituals, and the creative potential of such a wilderness period could be unlocked into the whole community as well. I pray that if The United Methodist Church is indeed still in the wilderness—without even knowing it?!—that we are able to live within paradox, embrace imaginative responses together, and swap our leaders’ robes for the towels of the Servant.

Rev. Josh Hale is an ordained elder of the Texas Annual Conference entering his 10th year of ministry. Josh is married to Christie, also an elder in the conference, and they’ll begin new appointments in July as pastors at Mission Bend UMC in the most diverse part of the most diverse city in the United States, Houston. Their 4 children explain why he has lost most of his hair at this point! As Executive Committee member of Texas’ Board of Ordained Ministry for the last 5 years, Josh has had a front-row seat to many of the challenges United Methodism currently faces, yet he harbors faith, hope, and love for our future together.