Is The United Methodist Church Dysfunctional?

January 24, 2016

1:49 PM

Gleaning at General Conference

Missions such as this gleaning project from the 2012 General Conference outweigh The United Methodist Church's deficiencies, writes the Rev. Jerry Eckert.

A UM Insight Exclusive

I'm a Packer fan and have been sad to see how dysfunctional the Packer offense has been the second half of the season that has just ended for them when Arizona beat them in overtime last Saturday.

As Packers Coach Mike McCarthy has said, "We still won ten games and got into the play offs, winning our first game there."

So when I read in a recent UMNS article of a colleague calling the UMC "dysfunctional," I had to laugh. Every institution, including families, football teams, and denominations, is dysfunctional in some respect, at some time, with respect to something, but as the Packers could do, continue to function pretty well, if not perfectly.

The UMC is not perfect. It has many aspects that are dysfunctional besides how it handles certain violations of some Discipline passages. Over the years I have pointed out several and my focus has been quite narrow, mostly with respect to personnel management. As large as we are as a denomination, we could easily spend the day pointing out other dysfunctions.

But I am a United Methodist because we are still a very strong mission-oriented institution, mobilizing millions of caring people to provide help where it is most needed. I am a United Methodist because we have an open theology which hangs on to tradition and Bible but lets experience and reason temper our expressions of faith. I am a United Methodist because it has been the source of my most enduring friendships, among whom I found my wife, and where my children were given support and encouragement to be the wonderful human beings that they are. I am a United Methodist because we have survived major shifts in culture, overcoming mistakes (the 1844 split among others), and have not usually fallen back into making them again.

Hardly any of that is in jeopardy because of the disagreement over the seriousness of issues related to homosexuality. We are all a part of many dysfunctional social units that bumble through life, some more successfully than others. We find ways to do better when we can. Like most fans of the many different sports leagues, maybe next year we'll get it right.

The Rev. Jerry Eckert of Port Charlotte, Fla., is a retired clergy member of the Wisconsin Annual Conference.

Comments (3)

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What you present...

is a description of the UMC that probably describes every other declining mainline denomination in America. I find myself wondering that if the UMC can not make a unique contribution to the Christian landscape in America, why bother?

Ella Pauline more than 8 years ago

I want to find

...something :functional." Institutions, like families, all possess a mix of functionality and the lack of it. We do better than many: look at the Catholics, Mormons, and Southern Baptists.

George Nixon Shuler more than 8 years ago

John Wesley would cringe at this statement

"I am a United Methodist because we have an open theology which hangs on to tradition and Bible but lets experience and reason temper our expressions of faith." And I can testify that this so-called open theology leaves the rank and file person in the pew learning a whole lot about nothing in particular. That is NOT what made early Methodism a vibrant and successful movement. And if you try to use John Wesley's sermon "Catholic Spirit" to defend this "open theology", then you need to make a careful study of the much ignored second half of that sermon that describes a person with a truly catholic spirit. He never intended for the catholic spirit to be used as an excuse for multiple theologies to exist within one denomination; he was very protective of what was taught in the Methodist Societies while respecting the beliefs of others who were not part of early Methodism under his supervision. The amount of messiness currently present in the UMC exceeds my expectations of messiness and dysfunctionality that I would expect to see in any organization that hopes to survive; and that messiness and dysfuntionality all centers around a lack of consensus when it come to who God is and who we are and what God expects of us in this lifetime as well as how the church functions. And that creates a toxic atmosphere for the person in the pew.

Ella Pauline more than 8 years ago