Despite its natural beauty, Spring blooms with anxiety for United Methodist clergy and congregations, because this is the time of the year when pastoral appointments are announced. This year two newly disclosed pastoral changes serve to punctuate the long and the short of itinerant ministry, offering guideposts on the way to United Methodism’s future.
Shock was the most often expressed emotion on Facebook when the Rev. Jay Williams, lead pastor of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, and the Rev. Eric Folkerth, senior pastor of Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas, announced they are leaving their respective pulpits. The length of their tenures underscores the dismay felt by many, because Rev. Williams has been at Glide less than a year, while Rev. Folkerth will complete 18 years at Northaven this June. In both cases, these two popular pastors’ moves came at their own requests after periods of deep discernment, according to their Facebook posts.
Rev. Williams and Rev. Folkerth show how the process of itineracy works much better than it once did, when clergy didn’t learn until annual conference whether they’d be moved to a new church. There’s a joke that back in the 1950s, before the United Methodist Church was formed, a tradition in one annual conference was to have clergy kneel before a bishop and respond, “God is good, Bishop,” when his appointment was announced. Upon learning of his appointment to a church with an unsavory reputation, however, one flustered pastor supposedly blurted out, “Good God, Bishop!”
Today, the Book of Discipline requires that district superintendents consult with local congregations’ staff-parish relations committees facing a change in appointments. Many annual conferences employ a process in which churches are asked to outline their theology and culture. Likewise, a prospective pastor gets to meet with a congregation’s SPRC prior to appointment, kind of like a first encounter made through an online dating service. However, it’s not until we live together that we really learn how compatible the two are.
For Glide and Rev. Williams, the “fit” proved untenable. In his own words from Facebook: “While I love GLIDE, I do not love its organizational structure. In many ways, I have been Lead Pastor in name only. Dynamics in the current configuration of GLIDE (comprised of the Glide Foundation and Glide Memorial Church) prohibited me from leading fully as a trained Christian theologian called to ordained ministry as an Elder in The United Methodist Church. I leave in love and look toward the future, and all that awaits, with hope.”
As the young pastor said in his April 15 sermon, his decision to request a return to his previous appointment at Boston’s Union United Methodist Church isn’t a case of “cut and run.” “I love GLIDE. It is an idea...a people...a dream,” Rev. Williams said in a YouTube video. “Sometimes loving means leaving.“
For Northaven and Rev. Folkerth, the “fit” has been so compatible that they’ve stayed together nearly two decades – a tenure almost unheard-of in contemporary Methodism. To the best of my knowledge, the longest continuous pastoral tenure record belonged to my own late pastor, the Rev. Wil Bailey. He served as the pastor of Casa View UMC in Dallas from its founding in the booming 1950s until his retirement in 1993 – close to 40 years in one appointment.
Rev. Folkerth told me on Facebook that Rev. Bailey had been on his mind for about three years as he began discerning whether to request a new appointment. Speaking as one of Wil Bailey’s former flock, I recall that Wil always presented himself as an itinerant pastor ready to move at his bishop’s choice, but in reality, his long tenure at Casa View destroyed his “appointability."
Rev. Williams and Rev. Folkerth – and the churches they serve – benefit from the evolution of the United Methodist itinerancy. Much will depend on their new congregations’ willingness to enter a committed relationship that places the mission of disciple-making for world transformation above personal spiritual assurance. Reluctance to embrace new pastoral relationships has long been the biggest stumbling block to the United Methodist itinerancy. Unless both pastor and congregation agree mutually to create new practices for the church’s sake, experience shows that the enterprise fails.
This need for mutual adaptability also lies at the heart of what’s coming in the unity proposals headed for the 2019 Special General Conference. Avoiding the risk of creating theological monocultures that will kill off the church depends on our willingness to work through changes, not resist them or avoid them. Our embrace of God’s “new thing,” whatever it may be, will demonstrate that we trust in God’s power to renew us in grace through Jesus Christ.
Two millennia of Christian teaching, rooted in Scripture, tell us that faith is not an end, but a journey. Like any journey, we are called upon to respond to what we meet along the way. In their own discernments, Rev. Williams and Rev. Folkerth have given us guideposts of mature Christian faith to follow. Let’s heed them as we move through this appointment season and on to the 2019 Special General Conference.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.