The immediate and most important result that I want to report is the Alignment Task Force is working from a timeline that would have us present a preliminary alignment plan or rough draft at Annual Conference, June 2010. Then our goal would be to present the final proposal at a called session of the Annual Conference in Fall of that same year. This would allow us to focus carefully on one of the most important shifts in our conference history, aligning our structure, a structure that includes staff, districts, the processes and systems of the entire annual conference. We would implement the plan after Annual Conference 2011.
Some thoughts about our process:
We are looking carefully at what other conferences around the nation have done, are doing, and are getting ready to do. There is a tsunami of change happening in our denomination, both as a result of crises but also an expanding vision of our mission. There is great hope and enthusiasm out there today. It is a season of learning and willingness to change.
Our consultant Gil Rendle continues to guide us as does input from these many conferences, leadership from those conferences both in conference offices as well as in local churches.
We are researching the present reality of our own conference, both in our structure as well as in data that reaches back many years. That reality has some positive points, but in the light of world change and increased population the last 20 years in our conference, we don't feel like we have come close to our potential. This must change and to change a reality, the system that produced it must change. Our faith, passion, and mission is unquestioned as a church. The concern is our system. Let's change it.
We are also examining some of the alignment possibilities, structuring and focusing. These possibilities help us work with concrete ideas as we examine our existing structure. What is working here, in other places, what is not working, what needs to end, what needs to begin. What might we look like if we were shaped by our mission, and what structures must we have as set in place by General Conference and our Judicial Council. As you can see, this is quite a task.
We hope to define an outcome, one already somewhat in place by the clarified mission statement for our denomination as well as by the Central Texas Conference's claimed mission. As we focus on a clear mission, we then must define the system that is able to produce that outcome. What do you think the outcome of the local church ought to be, the conference, the Methodist Church? We must begin with the end in mind. There are two typical ways institutions and churches operate, they either watch the old die as they desperately seek to maintain it, or they are actively building the new. What are we going to build? This is a high risk, high reward season.
What we do must be within the boundaries of The Discipline and the financial constraints of the conference.
Thanks to Bishop Mike Lowry, Dr. Georgia Adamson, Dr. Bob Holloway, and a creative task force of folks from a variety of places in the journey of serving God in the Methodist Church. They have already done a great deal of work and will do more.
We will be involving many other leaders in the conference as this process moves rapidly forward. You can begin your involvement by praying, signing up for posts on this blog, and commenting as you feel led. This is our conference and we are in an exciting season as we prepare for a renewed future. We have ownership of our conference and ownership means we each, clergy and lay, are responsible for its success or failure.
Mike Ramsdell
Task Force Chair
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Dear Rev Ramsdell,
ReplyDeleteThank you and the rest of the team for taking on this important effort. I wish the best for you and will be praying for the team.
Four comments:
1. It would be helpful if you would post a short bio of the team members so that we know a bit about them. I recognize some of the names but not others.
2. I would strongly recommend that you find ways to publicize this effort more broadly within the Conference. I happened to hear about it from my pastor in a conversation about another topic. I don't think you can assume that the majority of UMC members regularly go to the church web site. More visibility would build more support and input (especially from the laity).
3. I would suggest you add some business books to your reading list. There are a number of books about reinventing organizations and change management. While the church is not a business (it is so much more important than that) some of the same principles apply.
4. The only thing that bothers me is your time line - it is way too long. Having been a part of significant organizational change many times, we need to start implementation immediately after the called conference, even if the first changes are small steps. Waiting until the June 2011 Annual Conference will cause the ideas to lose momentum and allow the "opponents of change" to find ways to block or delay the changes. Speed is your friend!
Blessings to you and the team.
Jeff Roper, Meadowbrook UMC member
Thanks for the hard work you are doing as a task force.I ran across this quote that may add to the conversation.It is offered with appreciation for your task as a comment of appreciative inquiry from the research of David and Nancy Cooperrider at Case-Western Univ.:"...in every piece of art there is beauty.Art is a beautiful idea translated into a concrete form."And this quote from Philip Rabinov Jacobson,in an interview in the Dallas Fine Art Examiner,April 10,2009:"The highest role of the artist is to inspire,rather than make merely negative or empty,art that is without meaning,without feeling,without any sort of vision,instead of genuinely creative works that heal,unify,inspire an evolved awareness,higher ideal,vision or significant reality."My prayer is that the task is a creative process to create a work of art,not simply a new plan of business as usual.Tim Boeglin
ReplyDeleteThanks for your openness about your progress.
ReplyDeleteI have always thought it a little odd that we house our district & conference offices in secular buildings, paying rent to secular landlords. It makes much more sense to me to find churches in each district who could house our district offices, and have a mutually beneficial relationship. If the conference office remains in the Fort Worth Area (even though that is not geographically central to our conference), it would make a lot of sense to house the Conference office at Texas Wesleyan or PolyTechnic or University United Methodist, again being mutually beneficial to the church & the offices. Many other conferences have this as their practice.
Lastly, there are conference positions held by clergy persons which would be better suited to lay people with expertise & training in that area.
Thanks again for the opportunity to offer an opinion.